In the last decade, there were quite a few large IT projects developed for Government organizations and also to provide service to the citizens. Some of these are funded by GoB and quite a few by the International Development Partners. Some of these met the expectation and some could not due to different reasons ranging from infeasible project planning, poor execution, limitation of selected vendor, etc. The decision of involving foreign vendors or procuring foreign software were also questionable on some occasions. It is important to analyze the reasons behind success and failure of these projects and retrieve insight to better design such projects in future and bring more benefit in a cost-effective way. In this Panel Discussion, we shall learn the experiences and opinions of different stakeholders to gain some insight. This will help the Government agencies and funding partners to design the projects in a more informed way and also to monitor it better. Outcome of the Panel Discussion could help other developing countries beyond the border of Bangladesh.

In the last decade, the Government of Bangladesh has endeavored to digitize a number of citizen services for the benefit of the common people. At the same time, various IT projects were initiated to bring efficiency and transparency in Government activities and operations. Among the large-scale projects, NID, IBAS++, eGP, PIMS (MOPA), PMIS (IMED), PPS (Planning Division), GRP (ICT Division), Birth Registration, eNothi, International ERP applications at NBR, Bangladesh Railway, Bangladesh Bridge Authority, GTCL, etc. can be considered. Some of these were funded by International Partners and some were entirely GoB funded project. There was participation of international vendors as well as involvement of local vendors in developing and implementing software. In a few cases, in-house team was appointed to build the software. For a number of software applications, several projects were implemented to address the issues of previous versions.

It is noted that some of these projects have well achieved their goals and are now benefiting stakeholders. Again, some projects have considerable scope of improvement to perform at desired level. Unfortunately, some projects were not operational at all. There should be a systematic study on these software projects to learn and gain insight from the experience of the last decade which was undoubtedly the most eventful decade for the IT sector of the country.

• A working paper containing the discussions
• Generation of knowledge that will lead to a larger formal study on this matter

There will be pool of participants from Govt. agencies, International Partners, Industry and Academia with experience of work in large scale projects.

Dr. Md. Monirul Islam, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Bangladesh