Thus, during the period from January 1 to July 1, 2016, citizens used the electronic services that were being provided to them by various state organizations through the E-government portal 8,155,155 times. The Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population, the State Students Admission Commission, the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies, the State Customs Committee, Electronic Certificates, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the State Committee for Property Issues, Azersu OJSC, the Ministry of Education and the Central Election Commission were the top ten organisations whose services were used most often in the stated period.
The half-yearly statistics show that citizens used services on the portal more than one million times a month and that the "Provision of information on mobile phone numbers shifted to another network with the use of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) service" of the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies was used most often during 6 months. The e-service was used 1,007,705 times during the reporting period. The "Registration of notifications of labour contract and provision of information to employer about it" e-service of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population took the second place in the top 5 most often used e-services. This e-service was used 957,255 times in the first half of this year. They are followed by the "Informing applicants, participants of test examinations of the results of exams via the Internet or short messages (SMS)" and the "Online acceptance of applications from applicants (students, bachelors, candidates (who have submitted documents to the residency)) e–services of the State Students Admission Commission. During the stated period, these e-services were used 873,970 and 806,387 times, respectively. The "Application for targeted social assistance" e-service of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population was used 711,159 times, and the "Search by phone numbers" e-service of the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies was used 396,641 times in the same period.
According to the statistics on the portal provided by Google Analytics, the number of the users of the portal totalled 1,098,633 people during the first 6 months of this year. These people entered the portal 4,358,015 times and accessed different pages 14,567,831 times. The same people used electronic services 8,155,155 times and spent on average 5 minutes 8 seconds on the portal. In general, citizens’ interest in the portal increased, along with the growing number of repeated users of the E- government portal. Thus, 23.9% of the people who accessed the portal in the reporting period were new users, and 76.1% - repeated users.
Besides that, each user needs an electronic signature for shifting business relations to digital format, signing documents, etc. The growth of service use dynamics depends on the increase in the demand for electronic signature certificates. Thus, a total of 15,790 e-signature certificates were issued by the National Certification Services Centre of the Data Processing Centre of the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies during the first 6 months of 2016. 13,492 of them were issued to state structures, 374 – to physical persons and 1924 – to legal entities. In general, more than 93 thousand e-signature certificates have been issued by the National Certification Services Centre of the Data Processing Centre of the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies so far.
It should also be noted that the number of users who received a simple passcode for accessing the portal has exceeded 425 thousand people. Any person who resides in the Republic of Azerbaijan and has an identity card can obtain a passcode without having to pay a state duty.
