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Innovation development on stake in Azerbaijan

6 January 2016 10:00 (UTC+04:00)
Innovation development on stake in Azerbaijan

By Nigar Orujova

The intense economic situation around the world shows the need to diversify economy especially for the oil producing countries. In Azerbaijan is keento switch to other spheres of economy and makes investments to develop such promising spheres as transportation and agriculture. One of such high potential areas of economy is information technologies, that has been on the agenda in the country for the recent decade.

Azerbaijan's ICT market showed stable growth in 2015. The year was marked with influx of new start-up projects by young entrepreneurs, who formed their own business, mainly connected with software, which is characterized by stability, flexibility and good adaptation to the changing market conditions.

It is needless to say we live in the information era, which decides the future of any country. During transformation period, that changes decision-making model and doing business, technological solutions play an important role. Companies and enterprises should think about cost-effective solutions, efficiency and impact of investments.

The state also aims to grow, develop and evolve involving the technological solutions. Many government agencies are moving online, which is key to their sustainable development.

One of such advances of the recent years was ASAN service – a network of simplified access to government services that expanded its activity in 2015. Today, citizens can escape red tape and solve their problems fast by means of this service, which is also fighting with corruption and bribery.

It is possible that the service will further migrate to the online platform, and the number of its services will increase significantly. Thus, the citizens will not need to visit the service center at all.

Rendering e-services by the state structures is becoming more convenient and flexible, which is a major element to promote the use of IT-tools by both state agencies and population.

However, to promote flexible e-services the population should be promoted with sustainable Internet connection.

Development of the Internet in Azerbaijan was going at a moderate pace covering more communities in rural and remote areas in 2015. Another challenge of this sphere at present is to achieve better quality that can be reached by applying optical connections. This type of connection requires cooperation of the public sector to private enterprise.

In addition, the recent steps to facilitate activity of SMEs can help the internet providers to develop around the country. However, they still need the state support.

The developing information technology also requires expansion of production, and today Azerbaijan is launching more and more intellectually oriented and high-tech products. The country has already deployed production of ATMs, payment terminals, digital decoders, computers, etc.

The big future belongs to the development of intellectual-oriented products and software. For this purpose, Azerbaijan is developing high-tech parks around the country and also supports education especially in the IT sphere.

Whether or not the oil prices will stabilize in the near future, Azerbaijan needs to develop the high technology to occupy the rightful place in the region.

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Nigar Orujova is AzerNews’ staff journalist. Follow her on Twitter: @o_nigar

Follow us on Twitter: @AzerNewsAz

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