The goal is to make the bulk of government documents and agencies accessible to citizens via the internet, said Transport and Communications Ministry Communications Department official Sardor Faridzoda.
The idea surfaced in 2007, but serious discussion began only this year, and President Emomali Rakhmon assigned Faridzoda’s ministry to lead programme implementation.
“E-government will serve as a new form of executive branch activity involving the use of IT and will raise increase local administrations’ co-operation with residents,” Faridzoda said.
He added that programme implementation will include three stages: creating active websites for the ministries and committees, training computer specialists, and teaching citizens the basics of modern technology.
E-government implementation will help Tajikistan develop and democratise, said Mukhammadi Ibodulloyev, head of the Civil Initiatives and Internet Policy Foundation, which is helping develop the project.
“The introduction of e-government and provision of government services … will be a relief for those ordinary people who are compelled to wait in long lines … or to carry written complaints ... from one ministry to another,” he said “I hope this web-based service system will make life easier ... for people wishing to receive passports, pay community service bills, etc.”
Some government services can already be accessed online, including the “one-window” tax system, where taxpayers submit all necessary tax forms in one location, Ibodulloyev said. Eventually, they will be able to pay taxes online.
The Customs Committee and Finance Ministry are among the agencies that plan on eventually creating internet-based services, he said. The e-government system will simplify interactions between the state and its citizens and between public and private organisations, as well as carrying intra-government communications.
The first step toward a more extensive e-government system will be the provision of information services for citizens via agency and ministry websites. After that, a system will be developed to provide various routine services like filling out and sending documents via the internet.
The full-scale implementation of the e-government programme will bring the government and civic organisations closer, said Parvina Ibodova, president of the Association of Internet Service Providers. The new system will also help fight corruption and increase the transparency of some government agencies, she added.
“E-government will help attract foreign investment and develop trade,” Ibodova said. “As soon as (potential) investors learn about the system of e-government being in place, enabling them to monitor documentation, taxes, and existing problems and achievements from their home countries, their fears of losing their investments will disappear.”
Farzona Abdulloyeva, 20, of Dushanbe, expects e-government to ensure attention to her complaints.
“You get so tired of going from one government agency to another that you sometimes have to drop any hope of having your problem solved,” she said.
The introduction of online tax and utility bill payments is a major advantage of e-government, Madina Khursandkulova, an assistant programme manager at the IT Communications Centre, said.
“If you look at other countries, you will see that nowhere in Europe, for example, do people waste time standing in line to pay taxes or utility bills,” she said. “They can easily complete those operations with the help of the relevant agencies’ websites. It’s good that such a system will gradually be adopted in Tajikistan, too.”
But in order to create this online service system, the government must ensure network security, Faridzoda noted.
The government will need highly qualified specialists to make the new system run, said Firuz Shokirov, a technical staffer at the CISCO Networking Academy in Tajikistan.
“I’ve noticed that the majority of government agencies lack competent specialists who are capable of working on a computer on the internet,” he said. “If there were more of them, those specialists would adjust the operation of websites and different web servers, thus adding to our achievements.”
Personnel training is one of the top e-government priorities, Faridzoda said. Some courses for civil servants already have been organised. For example, a group of specialists from Estonia — which already has instituted e-government — came to Dushanbe in February to share experiences with Tajik colleagues.
E-government should make its debut in Dushanbe as a pilot project and then spread nationwide, Abdufattokh Khotamov, director of the Tajikistan-Russia Internet Academy, said. The programme can help uproot corruption, he said.
“Implementation will start as soon as the relevant laws are passed, which will happen soon,” Faridzoda said.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Olamafruz Faromarzi
Quelle/Source: Central Asia Online, 05.03.2011
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