Bangladesh Computer Council

The Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) is a statutory government organization operating under the Information and Communication Technology Division of the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology of the government of Bangladesh. It was established by the parliament under Act No IX of 1990. The BCC's headquarters are situated in Agargaon, Dhaka, Bangladesh. The primary mission of the Bangladesh Computer Council is to promote and support activities related to information and communication technology (ICT). This includes formulating national ICT strategies and policies, creating standards and specifications for ICT tools used by government organizations, and working towards the development of human resources in the ICT sector. The Bangladesh Computer Council operates a tier III certified national data center in Bangladesh. This data center provides secure and reliable storage and management of digital data for various government agencies and other organizations in the country. The ICT Division of Bangladesh Computer Council is building a tier IV (most reliable) National Data Center (4TDC) at Bangabandhu Hi-Tech City, Kaliakoir, Gazipur District, with the help of the Chinese government. This data center will be equipped with cloud computing and G-cloud (e-Governance through cloud computing) technology. History The Bangladeshi government established the National Computer Committee (NCC) in 1983. However, in 1988, the NCC was dissolved and replaced by the National Computer Board (NCB). Later on, the Bangladesh Computer Council Ordinance was passed by Act No IX of 1990, which was approved by parliament in 1990. This ordinance transformed the National Computer Board into a statutory body called the Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC). BCC continued to function under the President's Secretariat until 1991. In 1991, the BCC was placed under the Ministry of Science and Technology, which later became the Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology. In 2011, the BCC was placed under the newly created Information and Communication Technology Division of the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology of the government of Bangladesh. The 5th National Girls Programming Competition 2021 was jointly organized by the Bangladesh Computer Council, the Information and Communication Technology Division, and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Daffodil International University. One hundred and twenty-five teams of female students from 49 Bangladeshi universities participated. The fourth Bangladesh Robot Olympiad 2021 was organized in collaboration with the Bangladesh Computer Council, the Information and Communication Technology Division, Dhaka University's Department of Robotics and Mechanical Engineering, and the Bangladesh Open Source Network. Activities and services Testing and quality assurance In July 2018, a Software Quality Testing and Certification Centre was inaugurated in the Information and Communication Technology Division. Initially, it tested software and hardware purchased by the government. According to the Bangladesh Computer Council's website, software quality assurance and testing is a service it provides through the center. Standards development The BCC drafts and develops standards. Due to a lack of coherence and synergy between vendors and technologists, these standards were largely never widely accepted nor recognized by international bodies. Later, versions of standards such as BSCII in essence rubber-stamped the Unicode encoding scheme. An official order to mandatorily install a keyboard layout package kit in 2018 spawned furor on multiple fronts. References