Digital Innovation Fair 2010 concluded with a lot of fan fare in Dhaka's Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Novotheatre on Saturday, March 06, 2010. Final day saw the biggest crowd with thousands of people streaming to different stalls to see the latest e-services provided by various government ministries.
Almost all the government ministries took part in the fair highlighting the various services that are currently being offered. The other highlight of the 3-day long innovation celebration was 7 seminars based on contemporary issues related to ICT service delivery.
Commenting on the seminar, Executive director of D.Net, Dr. Ananya Raihan said, “Such level of excitement among government officials was unthinkable only a year ago. We used to dream about such high level government participation in IT service growth.”
The seminars also saw a standing room only crowd. On average about three thousand participants took part on online. The final day's seminars were on 'PPP and E-Service Delivery" and "Building a positive image of Bangladesh". The key note paper was presented by Dr. Ananya Raihan and Dr. Ferhat Anwar and were chaired by Board of Investment (BOI) Executive Chairman Dr. Samad and energy adviser Dr. Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury respectively.
The day's concluding event was the closing ceremony where the best three stalls on public and private sector were chosen based on public voting. The best public sector stall was that of “Agricultural Information Services and the best private sector stall was E-Krishi of Bangladesh Telecentre Network (BTN).”
Mr. M A Muhit, the Finance Minister, attended the concluding session as Chief Guest. He said: 'It was tremendously heartening to see such mass participation from the public and the government officials surrounding this fair. He hoped that this fair be made an annual event. Among others, Mr. Stefan Priesner, Country Director of UNDP Bangladesh, attended as special guest.
Prime minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the fair on March 4 with a hope that the citizens of the country would be able to meet every basic need through digital technology. Access to Information (a2i) Programme and Science and ICT Ministry jointly organized the Digital Innovation Fair 2010.
