This digital artifact is about an integrated national data system (INDS) to be developed with a developing country perspective, like Bangladesh, as to how data could be collected, stored, analyzed, used, repurposed and reused in order to unleash their great untapped potential to generate economic and social values for the society. Target audience of this digital artifact is any individual in general including actors in the public sector institutions, civil society, academia, private sector as well as international and regional organizations.

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Final Project: Digital Artifact
Course: Data for Better Lives: A New Social Contract [World Bank sponsored Massive Open
Online Course (MOOC)]
Title: An Integrated National Data System (INDS) Would be Central to a Digital Bangladesh.

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About: This digital artifact is about an integrated national data system (INDS) to be developed
with a developing country perspective, like Bangladesh, as to how data could be collected,
stored, analyzed, used, repurposed and reused in order to unleash their great untapped potential
to generate economic and social values for the society. Target audience of this digital artifact is

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any individual in general including actors in the public sector institutions, civil society,
academia, private sector as well as international and regional organizations.
Slide Share link to access this digital artifact:
Although data have harmful potentials for individuals, businesses, and societies, they
have tremendous potential as well, still mostly untapped for a developing country like
Bangladesh, to improve the lives of poor people. As a matter of fact, as pointed out in the World
Development Report 2021, data is a powerful weapon in the fight against poverty. In order to
address the tension between helpful and harmful potential of data, a new social contract is
necessary, which would enable the use and reuse of data to create economic and social values,
ensure equitable access to those values, and foster trust that data will not be misused in harmful
ways. An integrated national data system (INDS) would be central to this issue for a developing
country like Bangladesh.
The use of data has been changed in many countries over the years. Although it is not
possible to entirely reject the use of paper documents (thus paper reduction rules are there), today
everywhere the use of digital documents is encouraged. With the rapid advancement of
information and communication technology (ICT), there has been an unprecedented growth of
variety of data alongside their manifold applications in reality. The use of data is changing the
development landscape worldwide. For example, recent COVID-19 pandemic, dramatic
improvement road safety (in Nairobi, Kenya), a granular poverty map (in Croatia) to better
allocate funds, military purpose including intelligence, fisheries project at Amazon Forest (in
Brazil), drought management (in the United States), disaster management of the Odisha state (in
India), monitoring depletion of natural resources like deforestation and illegal fishing, data from

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satellite imagery to enhance agricultural productivity and, thus, a more reliable food security and
so many other gigantic tasks are being carried out using and reusing data worldwide to create
values for the society.
Climate Change and drought

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To give more thrust for the ICT sector, in tandem with its rapid advancement worldwide,
Government of Bangladesh (GOB), in 2002, upgraded the ‘Ministry of Science and Technology’
to the ‘Ministry of Science and Information & Communication Technology’ which shows an
understanding of importance of the sector from the highest policy level. In 2014, the Ministry of
Posts and Telecommunications and the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology
(ICT) were merged to form the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information
Technology to bring a new life to the activities in data governance and to bring a people-friendly
information technology as its mission. Since then, ICT sector, in general, has progressed
significantly to improve the lives of the people. Especially, the mobile phone technology,
satellite telecommunications, financial technology, data center, Bangladesh National Portal (see
Link 1 below) etc. are a few of them and the progress has been continued in many other fronts.
Although not completely saturated, some policies and operational guidelines are already
there to support a culture of data in Bangladesh. As mentioned above, like elsewhere in the
world, there are significant misuse of data that we usually see in the social media platforms.
Also, public institutions should work strongly in the cyber security front, especially aiming at the
financial agencies. Ownership of a space satellite (Bangabandhu Satellite-1), no doubt, added an
advantage toward the advancement of the ICT sector. A national statistical system (NSS), called
Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS), has been working persistently to enhance the quality of
data in order to put positive impacts on the country’s development landscape (see Link 2 below).
Additional information about the projects already completed as well as those in progress and
other pertinent information on the policies of the GOB could be obtained from the website of the
ICT Division (see Link 3 below). Even if significant progress has been made in the development
of infrastructure (e.g., submarine cables, space satellite, data centers, IT parks, union digital

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centers at the root level etc.) and in everyday works of digital correspondences to support a
culture of data, the country still needs to move way farther in order to exploit the full potential of
data, still untapped. Country to be fully digitalized with sufficient internet speed, an Integrated
National Data System (INDS), as mentioned in the World Development Report 2021, could
prove fruitful in the long run. Thus, government could mull over to formulate policies to
establish this system, pursuing the said report, in the country. Establishing a long-term
government-wide INDS could be helpful to capture data and turn them into values, even though
it may appear challenging, especially for lower-and middle-income countries as they lack the
infrastructure and skills. Alongside, the World Development Report 2021 mentions that the full
potential of data for development can only be realized if countries continue to work toward
strengthening national data systems engaging all stakeholders at the national level, along with
closer international cooperation – bilaterally, regionally, and globally. To this end, data needs to
be considered as an integral part of the government’s strategy, moving away from just the IT
department into the whole government-wide operations as envisioned in the INDS system. Two
other articles obtained by Google search (see Link-4 and Link-5 below) could provide additional
insights for this purpose.
To conclude, under the discussion and information presented above, an integrated
national data system (INDS) would be central to build a digital Bangladesh in the long run.
Certainly, it could help materialize the essence of the phrase ‘Data for Better Lives’, and so for
the people of Bangladesh.

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LINKS:
Link 1: Bangladesh National Portal https://bangladesh.gov.bd/index.php
Link-2: Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) http://www.bbs.gov.bd/
Link-3: ICT Division, Government of Bangladesh https://ictd.gov.bd/
Link-4: Integrated Data Systems (IDS) and NNIP;
https://www.neighborhoodindicators.org/integrated-data-systems-ids-and-nnip
Link-5: The promise of integrated data systems for social policy reform;
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2016/01/19/the-promise-of-integrated-data-systems-
for-social-policy-reform-a-qa-with-dennis-culhane-and-john-fantuzzo-principal-investigators-
actionable-intelligence-for-social-policy/