Selected technical professionals from NBR began a four-month, intensive training program at Mango Teleservices in Gulshan, Dhaka, on Monday, December 5th. The training is primarily intended to give technical professionals within the revenue authority specialized technical abilities in creating and managing the enterprise-wide systems used for tax administration and collection.
In his opening address, Mr. Jahid Hasan, the Member of Tax Information Management & Services in the National Board of Revenue (NBR) Direct Taxes, emphasized the importance of the revenue authority becoming self-sufficient in designing, building, deploying, and administering these specialized tax systems in Bangladesh.
He reiterated how important it was to move revenue administration fully into the digital era, especially by giving taxpayers 24/7 access to services and support in line with the Government Digital Bangladesh objective. He expressed his sincere thanks to the European Union for supporting this process to turn digital transformation concepts into technological reality.
Ms. Marga Peeters, the European Union Project Officer wished the students well as they started on this technically arduous learning journey and said that the EU looked forward to observing the benefits of the training in the technology transformation process that NBR has already embarked upon.
The training consists of a wide range of ICT courses, including the Classical IT Training being inaugurated on Monday, as well as future courses such as IT Training for non-IT Managers, Office Automation Tools and more. The course commencing today covers specific software-related domains – from development to systems and database administration to security and quality assurance.
Based on their duties within NBR, tax officers in the technology division were chosen, and they would enroll in distinct courses according to their areas of specialization and anticipated future usage within the company.
Mr Selim Reza, the programming course specialist trainer, mentioned that the courses will be most beneficial to NBR as an organization – but cautioned that attendees would be facing challenging and competitive exercises that became progressively more complex as the courses continued.
A training needs analysis was done by the EU implementation agency to evaluate the technical skills needed within NBR. This led to a formal curriculum being drawn up and that in turn led to these courses – of which the first, is being inaugurated today! A number of technical training institutions were requested to quote for the training solutions and Mango Teleservices Ltd. of Gulshan-1 was selected as the preferred supplier based on both their training expertise and facilities, as well as the competitive price they offered.
This training is a component of the technical assistance provided to the National Board of Revenue by the European Union, which is sponsoring a Public Financial Management reform program in Bangladesh in support of the National Board of Revenue, the OCAG, and the Bangladesh Parliament.
The European Union is financing Public Financial Management (PFM) Technical Assistance to the National Board of Revenue, the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor-General (OCAG) and the three Parliamentary Oversight Committees in Bangladesh to support the Government of Bangladeshi’s PFM Reform Strategic Plan and this training forms part of the technical support to the National Board of Revenue.
