Govt takes down ICT white paper from official website

The government-commissioned white paper on ICT has been removed from the official website of the ICT Division just days after it was uploaded.

The division is yet to officially issue any explanation or statement regarding the matter.

However, when contacted, ICT Division Secretary Shish Haider Chowdhury told The Daily Star that the document had been uploaded for about a week but was later taken down due to technical constraints.

“It was removed because of capacity issues, as it is a very large file,” he said, adding that journalists could be provided with printed copies if needed.

He also said the ICT Division is preparing around 100 hard copies of the white paper for journalists.

The white paper on ICT spans 649 pages, including appendices.  By comparison, a much larger sized telecom white paper, exceeding 3,200 pages including appendices, remains available on the websites of the Posts and Telecommunications Division.

A Google search for “ICT white paper” still displays a link to the relevant webpage – ictd.gov.bd. However, clicking on the link now leads to an error message stating, “The requested page could not be found.”

The document, titled “White Paper on Digital Bangladesh: Modernization, Mimicry and the Myth of Digital-Era Development,” was formally submitted following extensive investigation and review by a taskforce, the ICT Division said on January 8.

It added that the paper detailed irregularities, corruption, administrative weaknesses, and structural problems across various division activities over the past 15 years.

Iftekharuzzaman, executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), said the removal of the ICT White Paper without specific explanation raises a question whether the document was intentionally removed to conceal the responsibility of individuals and institutions implicated in corruption and irregularities identified in the report.

He further said the incident adds to the growing list of interim government’s failures to practise transparency and ensure proactive disclosure of public interest-related information.  

Such actions, he added, contradict the aspirations of the July Uprising and commitments of transparency and accountability made by the government soon after it took over the responsibility of laying foundations of state reform, he added.

A white paper found that the Awami League government’s flagship “Digital Bangladesh” vision largely functioned as an “architecture of political slogan” rather than a coherent national digital strategy.

The document noted that the widely publicised promises of technological modernisation, administrative efficiency, and a digitally empowered citizenry ultimately operated as a fragile digital façade, undermined by systemic governance failures, corruption, irregularities, and political capture.