As more and more public and private sector services are being digitized to make them more accessible to citizens, digital literacy is becoming an increasingly essential skill needed to reap the fullest benefits from these services. Without people possessing the necessary digital competency, the benefits of information and communication technology (ICT)-driven public initiatives will not reach out to all the people of a country. The same holds true for Bangladesh, which aspires to become a fully digitized nation. The objective of this research is to a) explore the current state of digital literacy in rural Bangladesh, b) investigate the determinants of digital literacy, and c) develop the first-ever digital literacy index (DLI) for Bangladesh, which we named “DLit_BIGD 1.0”. It is expected that the measure of digital literacy developed in this report will be the first of its kind to address this gap in the literature for a systematic study on digital literacy which will inform and guide further improvement in digital service uptake.
Authors: Shadat, Wasel Bin; Islam, Saiful; Zahan, Iffat; Matin, Maria
Type: Working Paper
Year: 2020