A day-long online training on "BigData" was organized by the Bangladesh Computer Council of the Information and Communication Technology Department under the "Innovation and Entrepreneur Development Academy Establishment Project (iDEA)".

State Minister for Information and Communication Technology Junaid Ahmed Palak, MP, inaugurated the event on Thursday (June 11) morning through video conferencing as part of the iDEA project "Education for Nation". Senior Secretary of ICT Department NM Ziaul Alam PAA and Executive Director of Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) Parthapratim Dev were the special guests on the occasion. The online event was presided over by Syed Mojibul Haque, Director (Additional Secretary) of iDEA Project.

As the chief guest, Junaid Ahmed Palak, MP, State Minister for ICT, said Bangladesh is the 8th most populous and largest country in the world where about 170 million people are constantly generating data. Data is being considered as the most valuable resource in the world at the moment. The more information a country or nation has and is able to process and analyze it properly, the more wealthy that country or nation is said to be. There are now more than 100 million mobile phone and internet users in the country and more than 160 million SIM cards are being used where there are millions of computer users including around 40 million smartphone users. Especially in this Corona situation, through the use of online technology, the government is trying to provide education to about 4 crore students and provide primary health care to 160 million people from March 2020 till now, i.e. in the last 3 months.

He further said that through data analysis, it is possible to initially estimate the number of affected areas in Corona situation or the number of symptoms is high, and the number may increase later in the area. That is, there is a strong ability to analyze data. The Hon'ble Minister of State said that now the prevailing posts like CEO, CFO, or CTO as well as Chief Data Officer will be required in all public and private offices. This is because public-private offices are now emphasizing data analysis for decision making. Our main goal now is to enable the country's researchers, inventors, and entrepreneurs to use the country's data to provide new services. He also highlighted the need to use Frontier technology.

As a special guest, NM Ziaul Alam PAA, Senior Secretary, ICT Department said that data-based policies are more sustainable and effective. So whenever we talk about creating evidence-based policy, we need to increase data resources. The more we improve in data management, the better our policies will be. We have started practicing it which we have to continue. However, if we can increase the work in this regard in Bangladesh, we will be able to be richer in data resources. Parthapratim Dev, Executive Director of Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC), who was the special guest on the occasion, said that one of the resources in the present age is information or data. This information or data is very important all over the world now. All in all, it has a significant role to play in the world economy.

ID Project Director (Additional Secretary) Syed Mojibul Haque in his welcome address said that the era ahead is the era of Frontier Technology. So the iDEA project is organizing such events to encourage young people about Frontier Technology. He said that various programs will continue in the future as well.

This training focuses on Making sense of Bigdata, Bigdata & Smart Analytics, and how we can harness opportunities in Bigdata. Data Science student at the University of Queensland in Australia and Deputy Commissioner (Tax) of the National Board of Revenue joined the training as a resource person. Dr. Abdul Bari Tushar, Lecturer in Big Data Analytics at Griffith University School of ICT. Saiful Islam and Habibullah N Karim, Founder , and CEO of Technohaven Company Limited. More than 60 trainees from Chittagong Division took part in the training through the online platform Zoom and will be awarded certificates later. Besides, the whole event was broadcast live on the official Facebook page of "Start-up Bangladesh" so that many interested people get a special idea about "Big Data".

iDEA Project Deputy Project Director (Deputy Secretary) Kazi Hosne Ara, Project Senior Consultant RHM Alaol Kabir, Project Consultant Dewan Adnan, Sohag Chandra Das including Chittagong University, Comilla University, Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET), Noakhali Science and Technology University, Rangamati University of Science and Technology, Premier University, Independent University Chittagong, including students of various educational institutions of Chittagong Division, teachers, BCC and other officials of ICT Department were present online.