ICT among most corruption-affected sectors: White Paper

Highlights

• ICT sector plagued by corruption
• Hi-Tech parks fail to attract investors
• Lack of transparency in project implementation
• Misuse of funds to benefit preferred vendors
• Calls for robust project evaluations

The White Paper on the State of the Bangladesh Economy, submitted to the Chief Adviser today (1 December), identified the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector as one of the most affected by corruption.

"The review of the White Paper puts the banking sector on top of the most corruption-ravaged sectors, followed by physical infrastructure, and energy and power," it reads.

ICT was also identified as one of the most corruption-affected sectors by its operational and technological novelty, it added.

The White Paper committee's comment highlights years-long corruption allegations in the key sector the Awami League pledged to improve during the 2008 election for the sake of national progress.

And the story later frustrated the youth and technology experts due to huge waste of taxpayers' money in improper projects. These lacked transparencies and were alleged to benefit people close to the then regime.

In the one and half decades of Sheikh Hasina's ruling, the state spent nearly Tk29,000 crore to build "Digital Bangladesh" and later "Smart Bangladesh by 2041."

Most of the funds were allocated to infrastructure projects, which still require justification from sector experts. For instance, Hi Tech parks outside major cities barely attracted investors.

Government-funded projects aimed at youth ICT training, women empowerment, and local app and game development, costing hundreds of crores of Taka, appear to have primarily benefited officials and their preferred vendors, reveals the gradually unfolding facts.

The interim government in August formed a committee to evaluate the ongoing projects already recommended to downsize them in lots of unjustified cases. It will also dig deeper to find the anomalies in the already finished projects.

In an example of how the government projects were being justified in questioned ways, the white paper mentioned a 2013-18 ICT Division project "Leveraging ICT for Growth, Employment, and Governance Projects" that had a 43% cost increase to Tk774 crore, from its original budget of Tk521.97 crore.

According to the White Paper, the large capacity-building initiative aimed to promote the IT sector and train 30,000 individuals for employment within it. The evaluation report from the Planning Ministry's Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division showed strong satisfaction with the project's success.

However, it overlooked the contributions of training institutions, colleges, and universities that also played a role in advancing the sector, the White Paper stated.

Additionally, the quality of the evaluation report was inadequate, as it failed to distinguish the marginal impacts of training 30,000 individuals on the entire IT sector.

This analytical weakness in assessing the project's impacts has contributed to the continuation of various ICT and other projects that lack tangible benefits.

"It highlights the need for more robust evaluations to ensure that future initiatives are grounded in a clear understanding of their actual contributions to the sector," said the White Paper.

Bangladesh lags behind many comparator countries in a number of technological indexes, despite the digital and smart nation narratives.