A2i (access to Information) Case Study

A2i

a2i (short for access to information) helps government officials analyze and redesign workflows within and between ministries in order to optimize end-to-end processes and automate non-value-added tasks (Chowdhury,Anir.(2017).Dhaka. Retrieved from http://a2i.pmo.gov.bd.). It is a part of Vision 2021, which was initiated by Bangladesh Awami League party before they won the National Elections of 2008. A2i anomaly looks like a program to digitize Government services. But it does is way more than that. A2i is developing a culture of innovation in Bangladesh. Its aim is to change the mindset of civil servants to put the citizen at the center of all innovation initiatives. That means citizens will be affected by it a lot.

BRAC

BRAC has been implementing different activities under education program to support A2I program of government.A2I is working hard to focusing on digitalization of education system. Their strategy is focusing on constructing computer labs and teaching kids that how to operate computers. They have also setup multimedia classrooms that benefits both teachers and students which gives new idea about many different subject.  BRAC with its training division, e-learning materials development unit, and ‘gonokendros’ (BRAC Education Program’s community-libraries) can contribute towards greater capacity building, content development, and even physical spaces for people to come together and use technology to learn, connect and inspire! Their many secondary schools will soon have such multimedia classrooms and encouragingly, many teachers, who are working with A2I to develop the model, are already demanding that they be taught how to surf the web to learn/gather information and PowerPoint so that they can develop their own slides to teach students. Access to YouTube has been blocked in Bangladesh for a couple of months now and so many of the resources that these teachers were using are now inaccessible. But BRAC Education Program proudly announced its computer aided learning (CAL) materials –which are freely available on line at http://e-education.brac.net/ – which A2I and schools, teachers and students across the country can benefit from. The computer -aided learning program is an endeavor to make the content of textbooks easier, interactive and more stimulating. Research shows that some of the contents, irrespective of the subject, are difficult to comprehend. To assist teachers interact better with students BRAC started the CAL program in 2004, where computers are used as a medium of teaching. The main task of the program is to develop interactive education software, based on the national curriculum.

Female Digital Education Adaptation

Women and girls are excluded from taking part in the digital sphere. Traditionally, men remain the gatekeepers of technology, with fewer numbers of girls accessing digital technology than boys. Many parents are unwilling to let their daughters visit community computer centers, as they are seen as unsuitable and unsafe places for women. Because of these social restrictions, women and girls in Bangladesh have less access to education and digital technology than men, and thus have less access to learning English.