GovStack High-Level Panel at Digital Bridge Forum Catalyzes Regional Collaboration for Digital Government Transformation

Kazakhstan has been a vocal advocate and a champion of digital transformation in central Asia. Kazakhstan is ranked 28th globally on the UN E-Government index. More than 1,000 different public services are available online and more than 90% of Kazakhstan’s economically active population is using the country’s electronic government platform – e.Gov. Exchange of knowledge, experience, and best practices between countries and across institutions is crucial for accelerating the design and implementation of human-centric and cost-efficient digital services. The Republic of Kazakhstan is keen to both learn from international partners and contribute its rich national expertise to promote co-development and promotion of effective digital public infrastructure solutions for digital public services.    

GovStack is cooperating with the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry of Kazakhstan and the National Information Technologies JSC (NITEC) to promote knowledge exchange and cooperation in accelerating the digital transformation in Central Asia and Caucasus countries. A Regional Cooperation on Digital Government will collaborate with different stakeholders in the region (governments and institutions) in building capacity and designing and implementing digital services using the GovStack approach, tools, and resources, to leverage the expertise and experience of the local and international partners.  

As part of the Regional Cooperation, participating agencies will: 

• Organize a regional forum to serve as a platform to share best practices, promote collaboration and partnerships, as well as to support stakeholder engagement in Central Asia and Caucasus countries; 
• Organize technical workshops to exchange knowledge, build capacity, promote recommended technical specifications; 
• Jointly identify, review, and contribute open-source software, tools, and/or content as a digital public good that could be used by the international community for digitalization of public services; 
• Provide tailored assistance to selected countries to design and pilot needs-based digital services enabled with solutions that comply with GovStack specifications and guidelines.

Where we stand

The launch of the Regional Cooperation on Digital Government was announced on 12 October 2023 at the Astana Digital Bridge Forum. The Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry of Kazakhstan and the National Information Technologies JSC (NITEC) have expressed their intention to contribute several solutions from Kazakhstan’s national stack as Digital Public Goods to facilitate regional capacity development and to engage with regional and international partners to foster dialogue, share lessons, and co-design and promote technical specifications.  

Next Steps

In the coming months, the Regional Cooperation on Digital Government will bring together a broad range of institutions, development partners, and private sector stakeholders in the region to foster knowledge sharing and capacity development. 

• A GovStack Regional Forum will be organized in early 2024 (date to be announced soon) 
• A series of workshops and thematic deep-dive events will be organized to explore GovStack building blocks as well as to learn more about the digital government ecosystem in Central Asia and Caucasus countries.  

As the Regional Cooperation develops, partners envisage providing tailored collaboration with interested countries to design and pilot needs-based digital services enabled with solutions that comply with GovStack specifications and guidelines.