Dhaka: The government is going to introduce National e-Service Bus to ensure sharing of digital information, improve e-services accessibility and facilitate interoperability of inter-government agencies.

The National e-Service Bus will be software driven middleware platform which is being developed keeping a provision to enable online services, sharing of information and data of ministries, departments and directorates to ensure interoperability and end user’s easy access to it.

‘The software driven online services, information and data to be developed by the ministries, divisions and directorates following the standards and frameworks under BNEA will connect NEA Bus which will ensure interoperability and reusability,’ State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak told BSS.

The UK based Ernst and Young (EY), appointed by the World Bank financed Leveraging ICT for Growth,

Employment and Government (LICT) of Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) under ICT Division, has been providing technical support to establish National e-Service Bus under the BNEA.

Palak said in line with the plan to build ‘Digital Government by 2021’, the ministries, divisions and directorates have been developing software based applications to digitize its various services, information and data to ensure easy access to it.

‘But the fact is that these are not interoperable and reusable as the software developed lacks common standards and formats,’ the state minister said, adding that the National e-Service Bus will not only remove hassle to access e-services but also help reduce cost of an organization or individual to develop software, data and statistics.

Executive Director of BCC S M Ashraful Islam said some government organizations spent huge amount of money to gather information and develop database separately for their own use.

But, if these organizations established connection with National e-Service Bus with their information and database, there is no further necessity of re-developing same database by any other organizations at the cost huge money, he said.

Ashraf said the National e-Service Bus will ensure the interoperability of government e-service, information and data, reduce cost for developing services and database and aid in developing standardized, consolidated Government National Databases in a structured and planned approach.

LICT project sources said as part of introducing National e-Service Bus, NEA portal has been launched to make it knowledge repository of the government ministries, divisions and agencies, academia and industry.

‘This portal will serve as a knowledge and research-driven platform for government to assist government officers, academia and industry to learn about BNEA and National e-Service Bus, promote research on BNEA,

TOGAF ®, Bangladesh standards and guidelines,’ said LICT Deputy Project Director Tarique M Barkatullah.

He said the portal is intended to include components like principles, standards, specifications, reference models, architecture design guidelines, e-Services, tools and roadmaps for organizations in-line with Digital Bangladesh vision.

LICT project has initiated a twelve-day knowledge sharing and training program on National e-Service Bus (based onWSO2 open source based middleware platform) from 03 February 2016 to build capacity of government officials, industry and academia, Tarique said and added WSO2 has been selected as one of the open source backbones to support the National Enterprise Architecture implementation for Government of Bangladesh along with Oracle SOA suite solution.