Azerbaijan achieves significant progress in building e-government

Azerbaijan has achieved significant progress in building e-government. The proof of this is the fact that our country scored high in the UN E-Government Development Rating, which is published by the United Nations every two years.

Thus, according to the UN E-Government Survey 2016, Azerbaijan has advanced by 12 points and occupied the 56^th place among 193 countries in the E-Government Development Index (EGDI). In 2014, the country held the 68^th place in EGDI. At the same time, Azerbaijan improved its position by 30 points in the E-Participation Index, having advanced from the 77^th to 47^th place.

The main criteria of the E-Government Development Index are convenience and simplicity of the interface of electronic services that are being rendered to citizens through the E-government portal and the user-oriented functionality of these e-services.

Coordinator of the E-government portal of the Data Processing Centre of the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies of Azerbaijan Jamshid Nakhchivanski said that Azerbaijan has achieved considerable success in this area.

According to him, electronic services that are being provided to the population of the country through the E-government portal were used more than 8 million times during the first half of 2016. “And this figure makes up approximately 30% of the total number of appeals that have been made by citizens to the portal since its launch.

MCHT, as an operator of the portal, cooperates closely with the public and private institutions of the country. At the same time, it plays an important role in the creation of citizen-oriented services.

The electronic services of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population, which are currently in great demand in Azerbaijan, can be sited as an example. There is also a great demand for the ‘Obtaining information about the Electronic Customs Declaration’ e-service of the State Customs Committee. These e-services have been used about 1 million times over the last few months. So far, 423 electronic services of 41 state agencies have been integrated into the E-government portal. Improvements are being introduced to the portal on a daily basis to provide the population with fully automated electronic services. As a result of these measures, the number of users of the portal has significantly increased in the recent period,” Jamshid Nakhchivanski said.

Note that by using the opportunities offered by the virtual space, modern technologies, high level of informatization of state bodies, the E-government portal provides citizens with a qualitatively new form of services and plays the role of a key instrument for coordinating activities carried out by citizens and enterprises of both state and private sectors.

At the same time, the portal serves as a mechanism for reducing the number of documents requested by citizens and eliminating bureaucratic obstacles. All these achievements have been attained as a result of the policy which is being implemented in the country with the aim of improving social well-being of citizens and creating favourable conditions.