Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijan, the leading country of the region in terms of the ICT, continues improving its position in the world-wide ICT ranking.

The country moved up by 12 positions in the United Nations report "E-Government Survey 2016", traditionally published every two years. Azerbaijan improved its position from 68 to 56 among 193 UN member states.

In the report on "E-Government Development Index", the countries are divided into four groups, depending on the scores such as very high, high, average, poor. Azerbaijan is included in the group of countries with high index, as it was in the previous report.

At the same time Azerbaijan rose from 7th to 4th place in the ranking among the CIS countries.

On the "E-Participation index", in turn, Azerbaijan is on the 47th place. Two years ago, the country ranked 77. Among the CIS countries Azerbaijan occupies second place on this indicator, whereas two years ago the country was on the 7th place.

UN leads on the "E-Government Development Index". In the previous report, Korea ranked the first place, which is dropped to third place this year. Australia ranked second this year.

In 2014 Development Ranking Azerbaijan ranked the 68th place in the global rating leaving behind the countries such as China, Turkey and Serbia, and moved up 28 positions as compared with the previous ranking.

Today, Azerbaijan is among the dynamically developing countries in the field of information and communication technologies.

The milestone events in the ICT sector of Azerbaijan was creating and developing the Electronic government, expanding the broadband internet services, launching the telecommunication and low-orbit satellites, etc.

The E-Government portal, launched in 2012, brings together more than 80 state organizations. Currently, 45 institutions render citizens more than 650 e-services. Moreover, 35 non-state actors were also connected to this portal and use these services. Over the past two years, the number of users of the portal increased 10 times to 2.5 million people. Since last year, electronic certificates has been issued as well.

The UN E-Government Survey 2016 on “E-Government in Support of Sustainable Development” offers a snapshot of trends in the development of e-government in countries across the globe. According to the Survey more governments are embracing information and communication technologies (ICTs) to deliver services and to engage people in decision-making processes in all regions of the world.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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