Md. Mamunur Rashid Bhuiyan is the Project Director, Aspire to Innovate (a2i) Programme under the Cabinet Division & ICT Division. As a career civil servant, he has held various roles in both field administration and at the Secretariat. Prior to his appointment as the Project Director of a2i, he served as Deputy Secretary and Joint Secretary at the Cabinet Division where he played a pivotal role in managing the performance of public sector organizations. He also served as a National Consultant at a2i, when this programme was under the Prime Minister’s Office.

Mr. Bhuiyan belongs to Bangladesh Civil Service Administration Cadre. He began his journey in Civil Service in 1999. He pursued his graduation in three different disciplines: Chemistry, Environmental Conservation and Governance & Development. This multi-disciplinary education contributes to his broad perspective on various issues related to the public sector.  His primary areas of interest revolve around Public Sector Performance Management, Innovation in public service delivery and data-driven policymaking. Notably, he has authored ten research articles in various reputable national and international journals.

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 in international conferences on public service innovation and reform, digital financial inclusion, data driven policy making, 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 South-South Network for Public Service Innovation (SSN4PSI) and Co-Founder of 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 in Harvard, Columbia, Boston, Bradford and Oxford universities.