Azernews.Az

Qabil Ashirov

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The world is now rapidly embracing technological advancement, and technologies that were once only beginning to be explored are increasingly being adopted by countries across the globe to drive economic development. Azerbaijan is among these nations, making determined efforts to accelerate digitalisation and striving to achieve even greater progress in this field.

Under the strategic vision of President Ilham Aliyev, the nation has laid down a definitive roadmap designed to position it as a leading technological hub in the region. A cornerstone of this forward-looking paradigm is the "Action Plan for the Acceleration of Digital Development in the Republic of Azerbaijan for 2026–2028," approved by presidential decree on February 27, 2026. This foundational document establishes a coordinated, nation-wide effort across three crucial years to systematically upgrade the country's technological capabilities, optimize governance, and significantly elevate Azerbaijan's standing in international indices. By aligning this initiative with broader national strategies, including the Strategy for Information Security and Cybersecurity, the Digital Development Concept, and the National Artificial Intelligence Strategy, Azerbaijan has unified its strategic vision, priorities, and execution mechanisms into a singular, highly efficient governance model.

A key turning point in the execution of this national strategy occurred on June 29, 2026, with the inaugural meeting of the newly established Digital Development Council, chaired by the First Vice-President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Mehriban Aliyev. The council serves as the supreme coordinating body, ensuring that state policies regarding digital growth are executed in harmony and that cooperation between disparate state entities is maximally reinforced. During this landmark session, First Vice-President Mehriban Aliyeva emphasized that the successful implementation of the Action Plan remains the core operational priority of the council, underlining that all digital initiatives, artificial intelligence deployments, and cybersecurity frameworks must strictly align with Azerbaijan’s supreme national interests. To guarantee institutional accountability, the heads of all government entities have appointed dedicated officials at the deputy chairperson level to directly oversee and spearhead the digitalization initiatives within their respective organizations. This structured approach bridges the gap between high-level policy and grassroots implementation, creating an environment where digital transformation is treated as an urgent national mandate.

The tangible fruits of these reforms are most visible in the rapid evolution of public services. Azerbaijan's strategy revolves around eliminating the fragmentation of public portals and mobile applications, shifting instead to a unified, centralized ecosystem. For citizens, this ecosystem is anchored by the "mygov" platform, while entrepreneurs and enterprises are served by the specialized "mygov Biznes" platform. The primary goal is to bring public administration closer to the people, minimize direct citizen-bureaucrat contact, maximize procedural transparency, and achieve unprecedented levels of public satisfaction. The consolidation process is already well underway; comprehensive public service applications such as "e-Sosial," "e-Təbib," and "e-Su" have been fully integrated into the platform. Concurrently, major modules of "e-Polis," "Mobil Notariat," "Azərişıq," "Reseptim," "e-Səhiyyə," "MigAz," and "ASAN Müraciət" have been onboarded, with plans to finalize their total integration by the conclusion of the current year. This seamless integration has triggered an explosion in public adoption, with the "mygov" user base expanding by an extraordinary thirty percent in a mere three-month window, rising rapidly from 2.7 million to 3.5 million citizens.

Beyond simple integration, Azerbaijan is fundamentally re-engineering the philosophy of state service delivery by introducing proactive governance. The nation has set an ambitious target to ensure that fifty percent of all public services are delivered proactively. Under this innovative model, the state leverages synchronized databases to provide services automatically, eliminating the need for citizens to file formal requests. For example, age-based labor pensions are now calculated and assigned proactively based on existing digital records. Similarly, the disbursement of one-time birth allowances is being automated; the moment a birth is recorded within the state registry, the corresponding financial support is initiated without requiring any paperwork or physical visits from the parents. This is complemented by the strict enforcement of the "Once-Only" principle, which mandates that the state cannot request a document from a citizen if that data already exists in any government database. Furthermore, automatic digital alerts notify citizens well in advance regarding the expiration of identity cards, passports, and driver's licenses, while military medical examination call-ups have also been fully digitalized to ensure transparency and operational speed.

To power these advanced capabilities, Azerbaijan is building a centralized Data Lake that guarantees the accuracy, integrity, and absolute completeness of state-owned data. By applying advanced analytics and artificial intelligence to these consolidated datasets, the government can anticipate public needs and tailor individualized services. Simultaneously, the legislative horizon is undergoing one of the most comprehensive overhauls in the nation's history. A massive legal reform package, encompassing modifications to thirty-four separate laws, nine presidential decrees, and three Cabinet of Ministers resolutions, has been introduced to establish an ironclad legal foundation for the modern tech economy. For the first time, precise legal definitions have been codified for critical concepts including digital technologies, artificial intelligence, innovation products, cybersecurity, technology transfer, and freelance activities.

To catalyze the domestic innovation ecosystem and attract global capital, this legislative package introduces an incredibly competitive fiscal environment. Technology, AI, and cybersecurity enterprises will benefit from an unprecedented twenty-year tax exemption period, while high-level technology specialists enjoy a zero-percent income tax rate. To lower entry barriers, the import of specialized technological equipment is completely exempted from customs duties and value-added tax. Furthermore, the state has fully legalized modern investment mechanisms that are widely utilized in international venture capital markets, such as Simple Agreements for Future Equity (SAFE), Convertible Notes, and Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOP). This enables local startups to attract elite talent and secure early-stage funding through flexible, equity-based instruments. To encourage corporate investment in research and development, a generous 2.5 multiplier is applied to R&D expenditures, allowing businesses to significantly reduce their taxable profits while eliminating fiscal risks associated with unsuccessful but necessary scientific experimentation.

The strategic integration of artificial intelligence into public administration is backed by heavy investments in state-of-the-art computational infrastructure. To create a robust national computing core, the procurement of sixty-four high-performance Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) has been finalized, with installation slated for completion by the end of the year. To foster safe, rapid innovation, a Regulatory Sandbox has been established, allowing cutting-edge AI models to be rigorously tested in a controlled legal environment before full-scale national deployment. On the cybersecurity front, the creation of the National Cybersecurity Agency under the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport marks a massive institutional upgrade. This agency unifies the National Security Operations Center (SOC), the National Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), and a dedicated Digital Research Center under a single command structure. Critical sectors such as banking, insurance, energy, and transportation are now legally mandated to establish internal CERT and SOC functions, ensuring that threat intelligence is shared with the National CERT in real-time, all while the phased migration of state databases to the secure Government Cloud (G-Cloud) guarantees maximum data resilience.

Ultimately, Azerbaijan recognizes that the ultimate guarantor of long-term digital sustainability is human capital. Over the past decade, admissions to information technology programs in higher education institutions have grown fivefold. In the primary and secondary education sectors, the student-to-computer ratio has been remarkably reduced from thirty-two students per computer down to an efficient six-to-one, backed by the distribution of over 235,000 computers and a nearly fivefold increase in school internet traffic. Initiatives like "Digital Skills," reaching over half a million students, and "STEAM Azerbaijan," engaging over 300,000 pupils, are cultivating a new generation of tech-literate citizens. The "Digital School" platform already connects nearly a million users, including students, teachers, and parents, and is actively expanding into the regions. By blending infrastructure, forward-thinking legislation, computational power, and educational excellence, Azerbaijan is successfully transitioning into a modern, dynamic, and fully digitized knowledge economy, carving out a proud and prosperous position on the global technological map.