In Eurasian region technology has the potential to boost government efficiency, transparency, responsiveness, and citizen trust. What steps should be taken by local authorities, international institutions, local and global IT industry to embody the full potential? These issues were discussed on StrategEast Live session “GovTech industry in Eurasia”.
According to Mr. Rashad Azizov, Head of Innovations and Digital Development Department, Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies of Azerbaijan, the country is in the Digital Government development process. And one of the most important projects in the framework of this process is the creation of a unified state database of G-Cloud, brought to uniform standards. “We have many offers from different vendors who want to be part of this process. But the government does not want to depend on one vendor, so we divide the project into modules that are made by different organizations “- explained Mr. Azizov -” one of the largest projects – Smart City, which needs large proven ready-made solutions, we are developing with the world giant – Cisco … But when we do projects with large companies, we must consider our ecosystem as well. Our own innovators and young entrepreneurs can also contribute. Yes, they are young; they are startups with great risks. But we’d like big companies that implement projects for us, give some smaller modules to local startups to develop the local ecosystem. But the guarantors of the successful implementation of the project are all the same large international companies. ”
Edmunds Belskis, Chairman of the Board, Latvia State Radio and Television Center, raised the issue of legislation. For the first time in history, a policy maker hackathon dedicated to 5G was held in Latvia. And during the hackathon, they came to the conclusion that the speed with which various laws and regulations are being adopted today must be doubled in order to keep pace with technological development. Today, when technology advances faster than legislation, this carries risks in the field of cybersecurity and others.
“According to recent studies, Kazakhstan is ranked 29th in the world in terms of e-government,” says Baizhan Kanafin, CEO, Documentolog; Leader, GovTech working group for Digital Kazakhstan State Program. The national state program “Digital Kazakhstan” defines the priorities of our development for the next 10 years. Infrastructure is named as the main priority in it – we must extend optical cables throughout our vast country. And the second priority is govtech. Starting from linking existing services with each other and then transferring new government services to digital. But the main thing is to try create most solutions by the local IT industry. For this, an IT ecosystem with English Law and low taxes is being created in Kazakhstan.
Answering the question by the panel moderator Anatoly Motkin, President, StrategEast on the importance of digital literacy, Mr. Kanafin noted: “Without digital literacy, even the best govtech solutions lose their meaning”. According to Mr. Kanafin, it was the time of the Covid-19 crisis that showed how much people want to learn how to use the digital services of the state. First, these are families with children – it turned out that everyone needs their own computer and one is no longer enough. In addition, in Kazakhstan, about half of the population lives in rural areas, where digital literacy is still not at the highest level. And the Ministry of Education is making efforts to address this problem. A separate budget has been allocated specifically for basic digital skills training. New special programs have been developed for schoolchildren who are taught IT skills from the first grades.
