Azerbaijan among world's most digitised economies

By Azernews

By Narmina Mammadova

In recent years, formation of E-government is considered one of the factors contributing to further development of democracy in developed countries.

It became necessary to apply a unified approach and standards in the formation of state information resources and systems, their management and ensuring their mutual integration, as well as accelerating the transition to the digital government. 

The formation  of e-government in our country is based on the international practice, and a legal framework for its activity was established by the Decree of the President of the Republic of  Azerbaijan “ On the approval of  State Program (E-Azerbaijan)  for the development of communication and information technologies in Azerbaijan Republic  in 2010-2012”,  and by the Decree on approval of “Some measures for  provision of electronic services by government agencies” dated May 23, 2011.

For the rapid implementation of this work, President Ilham Aliyev signed the Decree "On measures to develop e-government and transition to the digital government" on March 14, 2018.

After this a lot of work, which brought positive developments, was done in this direction.

Azerbaijan entered top-20 countries leading in application of information technologies in the government.

Business Insider compiled the world ranking of countries that may shift fully to digital technologies in government already in the coming future. The ranking includes 28 countries. Azerbaijan took the 19th place, report.az informed.

According to the publication, the ranking is based on the Global Competitiveness Survey published by the World Economic Forum.

When compiling the ranking, the following questions were taken into account: How fast is the legal framework of your country in adapting to digital business models? To what extent does the government ensure a stable policy environment for doing business? To what extent does the government respond effectively to change? To what extent does the government have a long-term vision in place?

Singapore leads the ranking. It is followed by Luxembourg and the United States. 

E-government through the use of modern information technologies creates conditions for providing information and e-services to all citizens residing in the territory of Azerbaijan, legal and physical persons, foreign citizens and stateless persons by government bodies.

The main objective of the created opportunities is to reduce the ‘distance’ between civil servants and citizens in provision of social services, as well as simplify and make these relations transparent.

The widespread use of electronic services by public authorities, increasing their number and improving their quality and enhancing citizens’ satisfaction with the services are means of achieving this goal. In accordance with the international practice, e-government portal, which is organized on the basis of “single window” principle where e-services are provided by government agencies, is applied to organize contacts between citizens and public authorities in a more appropriate way.

The Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies as the coordinator of the work done in this area is working closely with other government  agencies for the formation of e-government  and is performing  activities  for  the  creation of appropriate infrastructure. Today, the country has National Certification Services Center for the use of e-signatures, infrastructure providing information exchange between information systems of government agencies was built and e-government portal was developed and launched. Taking advantage of these, all government agencies are now able to provide electronic services to citizens.