'Coping with automation to be one big challenge for new govt'

It has been a decade since the Awami League-led alliance came to power with a promise to build a highly digitized nation, labeled as 'Digital Bangladesh', by the year 2021.

Now that the same alliance is taking over the reins for the third consecutive term, leaders within the ICT sector viewed that tackling the aftermath of digitization-the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution' - will be the biggest challenge for this government in the coming years.

"The coming years will see a lot of technological changes- many of which will be disruptive for a country like us," said Telecom and ICT Minister of the new government Mustafa Jabbar.

"Globally, we will see a rise in automation and artificial intelligence. We have to adopt and cope with such technology," said Mr. Jabbar, who himself is a leading technology entrepreneur.

Mr Jabbar, who was in the charge of the Telecom and ICT ministry for almost a year before the election, took over again the reins of the same government ministry.

Talking to FE before taking the oath on Monday, Mr. Jabbar said that coping with the impact of this fourth industrial revolution will be one of the biggest challenges for the government in the coming years. "Obviously, we cannot avoid this massive technological transformation."

He said: "But at the same time, we have to make sure that such transformation does not become a threat for our huge workforce … we have to find a middle path to make this a smooth transformation."

The minister's view came at a time when the impact of fourth industrial revolution is becoming a major concern not only in Bangladesh but across the globe.

Also termed industrial revolution 4.0, it is characterised by emerging technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, Internet of Things, 5G, additive manufacturing/3D printing and fully autonomous vehicles.

Experts have often warned that the advent of such technologies, especially robotics and AI, may result in massive extinction of jobs which require repetitive manual labour.

According to a study from International Labour organisation, Bangladesh may lose as many as 5.4 million domestic jobs due to global rise in automation while 7.2 million overseas jobs for Bangladeshis will also be vanished.

In this context, Mr. Jabbar stressed on preparing the country's young human resource for this next wave of industrial revolution.

His views were echoed by leaders in the ICT sector, who emphasised on up scaling the academic curriculum to make it compatible with the new technological trends.

"We need to improve and modernize our education system. Things like robotics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and blockchain need to be incorporated in our engineering and technical curriculum," said Syed Almas Kabir, President of Bangladesh Association of Software & Information Services (BASIS).

Earlier, the ruling AL in its latest election manifesto promised to launch a second satellite and a third submarine cable connection in its latest tenure. Introduction of fifth generation (5G) cellular mobile technology was also one of the promises made in that manifesto.

Telecom industry insiders, however, opined that increasing the quality of existing service is the foremost challenge for the new government before moving towards the 5G.

"The quality of telecom service in the country remains below average and it affects the mass people," said Abu Saeed Khan, Senior Policy Fellow of regional ICT policy think tank LIRNEasia.

"Before talking about 5G, the government should move to ensure roll out of 4G services up to the grass roots level," said Mr. Khan, who was also a regional strategy analyst of Ericsson.

Earlier, the Bangladesh government set a target of US$ 5.0 billion annual ICT export by the year 2021. However, the export figure crossed merely US$ 1.0 billion up until now.

When asked about this sloth in ICT export, Mr. Jabbar said the proliferation of local hardware industry, including handset assembling, would drive the growth of IT export in the near future.

"IT hardware manufacturing is an area where, I believe, we will see a major boom in the immediate future. This is an area where I will put a lot of emphasis in the coming years," said the technocrat minister.

E-commerce is another area where the country has seen exponential growth in recent years. The size of e-commerce market crossed Tk 17 billion-mark in 2017 from Tk 4.0 billion in 2016, according to the data available with e-Commerce Association of Bangladesh (e-CAB).

Going forward, however, industry insiders pointed out several avenues for further accelerating this growth.

"The post office is likely to get automated in the coming months. In such case, we hope that it would be possible to provide e-commerce service through post office," said Abdul Wahed Tomal, General Secretary of e-CAB.

"At the same time, there are some restrictions when it comes to interoperability of payment gateways or cross border e-commerce transactions. These also need to be solved," he added.

The IT industry leaders also stressed the need for improving the country's investment climate to attract more foreign investment in this sector. "It's a good thing that a number of hi-tech parks are being developed across the country," said Almas Kabir.

"However, foreign investors will not come to this country if we cannot improve our position in the parameters of ease of doing business," he added.

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