Full-scale digital government for Belarusians by late 2014

Full-scale digital government services will be made available to natural persons in Belarus by the end of 2014, BelTA learned from Vladimir Lebedev, Director of the Informatization Department of the Belarusian Information Technologies and Communications Ministry.

The subprogram Digital Government is a set of projects, which are being implemented as part of the national program for the accelerated development of services in the spheres of information and communication technologies in 2011-2015. According to Vladimir Lebedev, all the conditions for the operation of the digital government are available now. “The infrastructure is well-developed. A common center for the nationwide computerized information system has been set up. The system will have to integrate the resources that will enable natural persons to use digital government services later on,” he added.

At present digital government services are available to government agencies and corporations that have digital signatures. A system for the digital identification of persons is needed to allow all the Belarus citizens to use these services. “The work to create the system has begun and we plan to get it off the ground by late 2014. Then we will be able to talk about full-scale digital services for natural persons. It is yet unknown what the access instrument will look like. It may be a digital signature key or a chip card with personal data,” Vladimir Lebedev said.

A small number of services will be available soon after the digital government goes online. “A government resolution specifies these basic services, in other words the services that the population needs most. The number includes services of the Justice Ministry, the State Property Committee, and the Tax and Duties Ministry,” explained the representative of the Information Technologies and Communications Ministry. In his words, the system of information mediators will start working in spring 2014. The mediators will be able to provide digital services to those, who will be unable to use them due to some reasons. Outlets of the national mail service provider Belpochta and the national telecommunication services provider Beltelecom will be the mediators initially. It will be a kind of an intermediate stage before citizens get full-value access to the digital government system.

At present work is in progress on 13 measures outlined by the Digital Government program. Six of them are supposed to be completed by the end of the year. They envisage the creation of computerized information systems and resources to automate the operation of government agencies and organizations and implement new digital government services.