Wednesday, 5 February 2020
Digitization Council Holds First Meeting in Government
On February 5, the first meeting of the Digitization Council was held, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Tigran Avinyan. Tigran Avinyan delivered a speech, in which he stated:
“Dear colleagues,
I welcome you to the first meeting of the Digitization Council.
As we stated during the election campaign, and as noted in the Government Program, we want to build a technologically developed and innovative country, create a state system that can live up to the emerging challenges and benefit as much as possible from the ongoing transformations. Digitization will play a key role in achieving these goals.
The government considers digitization, innovation and the latest technology as the most important tool for building an effective and representative system of government, creating a business-friendly environment, ensuring progressive economic growth, and providing high-quality public services to the population.
We have set specific goals in terms of management efficiency, technological development and digitization:
first of all, modernization, digitization and automation of public administration;
assessing the cost of functions and implementing reforms aimed at reducing costs, as well as curbing unnecessary bureaucratic procedures;
ensuring interaction and synchronization within the state information system;
modernization, automation and digitization of service provided by the state based on the “one-stop-shop” principle. Thanks to the exchange of information between government agencies, this will allow the citizen to ask for and get any piece of information only once;
digitization of the economy and providing an enabling environment for the development of the digital economy;
ensuring information security, cyber security and protection of personal data during digitization.
In general, the goals of digitization and technological development are quite ambitious and concern virtually all areas of government, local government and the economy. Achieving these calls for coordinated action, and the Digitization Council was established to coordinate the proposed activities.
Within the Council, we will provide:
discussion of strategic papers and concept notes concerning digitization,
harmonization of digitization policies,
coordination of cooperation with international organizations.
Many government agencies and local governments have done a great job in digitizing management services. Some government departments have applied the latest technology.
There are agencies that have used elements of artificial intelligence. Appreciating the importance of digitization, I believe that there should be a unified public policy, so that programs could be coordinated among each other and that the Digitization Council should be the coordinating authority.”
Minister of High-Tech Industry Hakob Arshakyan and Deputy Minister Armen Abroyan presented a report on Armenia’s digitization strategy, dwelling on the strategy’s objectives and indicators.
Deputy Chairman of the State Revenue Committee Mikael Pashayan presented a roadmap for digitizing the gaming sector in Armenia, namely: enforcement of the relevant standards applicable in the Republic of Armenia and establishment of the SRC Monitoring Center.
A question and answer session followed the reports.
