Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) an autonomous organisation under the Ministry of

Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) an autonomous organisation under the Ministry of Science and Technology. It was constituted in 1989-90 to regulate computer and information technology (IT) related activities in Bangladesh. Following the adoption of the Bangladesh Computer Council Bill 1990, an 11-member council was formed to work as the country's highest policymaking body on computer and IT matters. The executive chairman and the vice-chairman of BCC are nominated by the government. Prior to formation of BCC, there was a National Computer Committee (NCC) created in 1983 to formulate necessary policies and to implement programmes for expansion and effective utilisation of computers and IT. In 1988, the government dissolved NCC and formed a National Computer Board (NCB), which was later reorganised into Bangladesh Computer Council.

The objectives of BCC were to promote the utilisation and application of computer and IT for achieving rapid socio-economic development, to develop an infrastructure for IT applications including computer education and planning, to fix up the IT requirement of government, and to finalise the specification and standard of computers. BCC provides support in building well-equipped computer training centres, labs and libraries and provides advice to the government and other organisations on application of computer and IT based activities.

BCC is funded by grants from the government and other organisations. At present, 37 executives are working in BCC at its headquarters in dhaka. It has 3 computer labs equipped with a supercomputer and other modern gadgets. In 1999-2000, it provided computer training to 366 persons. It has special certificate course for women and secondary school teachers at its specialised training centre at rajshahi. The courses offered by BCC are on computer hardware, maintenance and troubleshooting, ORACLE-81 with Developer 2000 for database development, programming in C/C++, application development using Visual Basic, JAVA Programming, computer aided design using AutoCAD, multi-media system development and e-commerce and webpage design.

The BCC has implemented a number of projects to equip educational institutions with computers. Up to 31 December 2000, it gave 396 computers and requisite accessories to 346 secondary schools and other institutes. About 200 school-teachers were also trained. BCC is now (July 2001-June 2003) implementing a project at a cost of Tk 8 million with the assistance from the European Union to help set up one thousand computer labs in secondary schools