The Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM) is the implementing agency for the eGovernance project. DAM has specified its requirement for automating information recording and disseminating of agricultural product information including prices. Presently, DAM and its 64 District offices and 4 offices at the Paurashava level manage data collection from selected markets at the field locations. The data and information is recorded at these District and Paurashava offices under the overall management and administration of DAM head office located at Dhaka.
The organization set up of DAM provides the institutional arrangement for carrying out the entire work programme of DAM.
1. Expected Citizen Benefits
Access to daily updated information on agricultural market information would benefit citizens in the following ways:
a. agricultural traders can get valuable information on comparative market prices
b. farmers can maximize profits by making informed decisions about market situation
(information can be disseminated to farmes through TV and radio)
c. policy-makers and researchers can find out trends and impacts
2. Plans for Improvement of the Current System through the Use of IT
Under the SICT Programme, the following tasks will be undertaken:
a. coverage of the existing market information system (limited to 10 districts will be expanded
to additional 20 districts.
b. the relevant Agriculture Office at each of those districts will be computerized with a stand -
alone computer that can be access to the Internet through dial-up
c. web-based application to upload, retirve and disseminate data
d. data entry of historical paper-based records of agricultural product market prices-
approximately 350 volumes, each volume containing about 700 pages
e. interactive web-page for public access to daily updated information on agricultural products
f. training of relevant personnel in data entry and retrieval, and administration of the entire
system
3. Specification for Support Software
a. 1 unit of Oracle 9i (5 user standard edition) with upgrade support will have to be provided
b. 22 units of Anti-Virus will have to provided for 20 PCs and 2 severs
c. The operating system of the server wil be Linux
d. The operating systems of the client PCs will be Windows XP Professional |
