Azernews.Az

By Rashid Shirinov

More than 20,000 electronic signature certificates were issued in the first half of this year, the Information and Computing Center under the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies of Azerbaijan told Trend on July 9.

This figure is about two times higher than the same indicator last year.

“Along with the increase in the number of electronic signature certificates, there is an expansion of the scale of its use in Azerbaijan. Thus, the number of certificates issued by the National Certification Services Center has reached 20,454 in the six months of this year,” the Center noted.

The number of issued certificates amounted to 10,582 for the same period last year, while the total number of certificates from the beginning of their issuance until July 1, 2018 made 146,874.

In addition, the number of transactions carried out with the e-signature continues to grow. To date, the total number of authentication and electronic signature operations carried out by the state agencies has exceeded 28.8 million, by legal entities and individuals – more than 8.43 million. The total number of operations since the moment of start-up of the system has exceeded 37.3 million.

E-signature simplifies the access of citizens to electronic services of state institutions that are available on the “E-government” portal (e-gov.az). Currently, 335 e-services are integrated into the portal out of 436 approved electronic services. The total number of e-services posted on the websites of state institutions of Azerbaijan today reaches 494.

Presently, the cost of e-signature issued for Azerbaijani citizens for three years is 18 manats ($10.5). Moreover, individuals and legal entities engaged in entrepreneurial activities can get e-signature for 36 manats ($21) and 72 manats ($42) respectively, while employees of state institutions can obtain it for 58 manats ($34).

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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