The National Centre for Electronic Services and the National Cadastral Agency of the State Property Committee have signed a cooperation agreement aimed at developing the electronic economy, e-government, and e-society in Belarus, a BELTA correspondent reports.
The National Centre for Electronic Services and the National Cadastral Agency of the State Property Committee have signed a cooperation agreement aimed at developing the electronic economy, e-government, and e-society in Belarus, a BELTA correspondent reports.
The document was signed by Andrey Ilyin, Director of the National Centre for Electronic Services (NCES), and Andrey Filipenko, Director General of the National Cadastral Agency (NCA) of the State Property Committee. They agreed to promote the optimisation of business processes in public administration and the implementation of administrative procedures in electronic form. Furthermore, joint work is planned on the creation of information resources, and the development and provision of electronic, information, and other services based on them.
As Andrey Filipenko noted, the agreement should lead to an intensification of the development and provision of electronic services. "Automated information systems in Belarus within various departments have been created and function quite effectively," Andrey Filipenko explained. "One of the criteria in the World Bank's ranking includes the number of electronic services and the speed of their provision. For example, last year, there were about 12 million requests to the real estate registry database – that's 1.5 million more requests than in the previous year. The growth continues. This means the demand for electronic services is increasing."
The Director General of the NCA also emphasised that the goal of the cooperation is to provide electronic services based on several automated information resources and systems. "Sometimes, a person needs to obtain comprehensive information, or a business representative needs a synthesis of data from different information systems, possibly after preliminary analytical processing, to make decisions. The development and implementation of information technologies should serve to improve people's quality of life, facilitate business operations in the country, and enhance the efficiency of public administration," he said.
Andrei Ilyin expressed confidence that the signing of the agreement is an important step towards establishing a market for IT consumption and the provision of electronic services in Belarus. "To become an IT country in the full sense of the word, it is not enough to develop software; we need a platform, a strong domestic market. Software must be tested and be of practical interest not only within the country but also abroad," he said.
Among the criteria for the effectiveness of the agreement, the parties identified an improvement in the quality of public administration, the accessibility of administrative procedures, and an increase in the number of electronic and information services. The National Centre for Electronic Services and the National Cadastre Agency plan to exchange work experience, provide methodological assistance in the creation and operation of new information systems and electronic services, and also to research problems related to the creation and operation of information systems. The agreement is open for accession by other parties.