Central Asia and Caucasus: Regional Cooperation on Digital Government
- Shukla, Ayush
- Chestnov, Roman
The Central Asia and Caucasus countries, despite comparatively developed ICT infrastructure, continue to face obstacles related to the lack of interagency coordination, limited funding of digital government systems, and slow uptake of these services by citizens and businesses, the latter often being a consequence of a technology-centric implementation of these services rather than human-centric approach.
The above barriers weighs down on the ability of Central Asia and Caucasus countries to unlock the full potential of digital technology to improve the provision of SDG-related services to the population. While most of the Central Asia and Caucasus countries score comparatively high on the UN E-Government Development Index, the average Online Service Index score across Central Asia and Caucasus countries is lower than the average in the European Region (Figure 1)
The two lowest scoring components of the Online Service Index across the Central Asia and Caucasus countries are e-participation index and service provision index, which indicates the need for improved design and deployment of digital services.
The General Assembly declaration on the 75th Anniversary of the United Nations emphasizes the importance of enhanced digital cooperation to fully unleash the transformative potential of digital technology in accelerating the achievement of the 2030 Agenda's goals.
To promote cooperation on accelerating the digital transformation of social services in the Central Asia and Caucasus region, the ITU, the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry (MDDIAI) and the National Information Technologies JSC (NITEC) of Kazakhstan seek to launch a regional cooperation that would serve as a regional hub and a platform for collaboration, knowledge exchange, and the sharing of best practices and digital public goods. The regional cooperation shall run under the umbrella of GovStack, to provide governments and public institutions in Central Asia and Caucasus countries with access to better knowledge, resources, and tools to achieve digital transformation to improve the coverage, quality, and accessibility of SDG-related social services in the region.