Mr. Anir Chowdhury

Mr. Anir Chowdhury

Anir Chowdhury is the Policy Advisor of the a2i Programmme of the ICT Division and the Cabinet Division of the Government of Bangladesh supported by the UNDP. In this capacity, he leads the formation of a whole-of-society innovation ecosystem in Bangladesh through massive technology deployment, extensive capacity development, integrated policy formulation, whole-of-government institutional reform, and an Innovation Fund. His work on innovation in public service has developed interesting and replicable models of service delivery decentralization, public-private partnerships, and transformation of a traditional bureaucracy into a forward-looking, citizen-centric service provider. He is a regular speaker at international conferences on public service innovation and reform, digital financial inclusion, data-driven policymaking, civil registration and digital identity management, SDGs, youth and community empowerment, educational transformation, public-private partnerships, and South-South Cooperation. He regularly writes in reputed national and international blogs, journals, and publications. He is a member of the Prime Minister’s National Digital Bangladesh Task Force, Education Minister’s National Blended Education Task Force, Cabinet Secretary’s Civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) steering committee, WWW Foundation Alliance for Affordable Internet’s Advisory Council, and WEF and UNICEF’s Knowledge and Information Network for Digital Learning and Education’s Steering Committee. He is the Co-Chair of WEF’s Regional Action Group for Digital Transformation and a Deputy Champion of WEF’s EDISON Alliance to improve education, healthcare, and financial services for 1 billion people worldwide. He is the Co-Founder and Board Member of the South-South Network for Public Service Innovation (SSN4PSI) and Co-Founder of the Future of Work Lab in Asia Pacific. He co-founded several software and service companies and non-profit organizations in the US and Bangladesh. Anir graduated magna cum laude in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from Brown University and did post-graduate work on management, marketing, educational transformation, and public sector reform at Harvard, Columbia, Boston, Bradford, and Oxford universities.