Jamiulur Reza choudhury more popularly known as JRC in the country, is one of the key persons 

who are behind all the initiatives taken by the government in promoting the IT sector. A professor of 

civil engineering in Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), JRC can take a

 substantial credit in convincing the government that IT should be the thrust area in government 

policies. One hopes that being one of the key persons in telecom and national IT policy 

committees, he can playa significant role in changing the government's sterile views on some 

important issues. In an open interview, JRC out lines Bangladesh future in IT. 

Q. Why is Bangladesh still not a very exciting place for the growth of Information 

Technology?

JRC :There are two major problems: one is the lack of trained manpower. We do have a number of 

people who are exposed to programming under different environments but the number people having

 experience in managing IT projects in small. That is a major weakness for us. In fact in the last 

two years one of our major efforts has been to create a large pool of trained IT professional. The 

second major weakness is our infrastructure. Our telecommunications facilities are one of the 

weaknesses in the region. Legacy of public sector control is the biggest hurdle. Improvement of 

telecom infrastructure within the country and as well as the connectivity to the global telecom 

infrastructure is taking much longer than we had anticipated. But overall weakness about what IT 

can do for the country. 

Q. How far is the government aware of the immense possibilities of IT in the development 

of Bangladesh?

JRC : Till few years back, our policy makers had the feelings that this labour surplus economy 

does not need computers, which to me was an erroneous view. The experience of other countries 

shows that computerization does not necessarily lead to redundancy of manpower. Luckily our 

policy makers have started realizing the importance of IT, but again it is not at the top most priority 

list. The policy makers feel that others sector are more important. So my effort in the last two 

years was to bring IT in focus in government decision-making and I am happy to note that many of 

the Top decision makers are playing more attention to the growth of this sector. The government 

has declared IT as one of its thrust sectors of export. But still among the top management of the 

public sector units, the realization is still lacking. 

Q03.Software development could be the tour de force of this country? But without 

intellectual property Rights legislation one cannot expect much business in software 

development. When can we expect the enactment of the IPR?

JRC :Non-existence of the IPR legislation is hampering the growth of domestic software industry 

as well as creating a favorable situation for foreign investments. Quite a number of young 

professionals have developed software including word processing in Bangla, database management 

spreadsheet, accounting etc. Since there was no copyright protection, these young entrepreneurs 

did not find a motivated environment to go for further development. The cabinet was approved the 

draft of the new software copyright protection act. Once this is passed, I think more and more 

developers will be interested to be in the development and foreign software houses will also show 

their interest.

Q04.being in different government committees looking at the development, what are your 

proposals to market the country?

JRC :First of all we should participate in different fairs and exhibition in various countries. This is 

happening. Last year, in Comdex there was a small Bangladesh pavilion but this year a large stall 

was set up. We can expect that in the next year we will have a large contingent participating in 

Comdex, second there is a proposal from us to organize only Bangladeshi exhibition in major cities 

of North America and Europe where the potential buyers could know what are our fortes. We also 

recommended that our embassies be more active in promoting the capabilities of Bangladesh. For 

example in Washington, I know that in Indian embassy there are people from the Department of 

Electronics whose responsibility is to poromote the IT sector. Similarly we have recommended that 

our govt take initiatives like these. We are also trying to mobilize non-resident Bangladeshi's 

(NRBs) to take active interest in the development in this sector. I think it will take some times to 

get the required results but the efforts will certainly pay dividends within the next two to three years.