Digital Leaders Spotlight: Kazakhstan

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 approach 

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.  

On 28-29 March 2024, Kazakhstan hosted a GovStack Regional Forum “Accelerating the Digital Transformation of Social Services in the Central Asia and Caucasus Region using GovStack Approach.” 

The forum brought together over 70 participants, representing ten countries and contributed to fostering knowledge exchange, enhancing technical capacity, and strengthening regional communities of practice in digital public transformation.  

Senior representatives from national digital development teams convened to delve into discussions on digital public infrastructure, exploring key components such as data governance, proactive services, digital ID, digital wallet, information mediator, and consent. The forum was built around a series of sessions that thoroughly examined the ‘Building Blocks’ of digital infrastructure. These sessions helped uncover many valuable insights into design and implementation strategies, drawing on countries’ experiences. 

The Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry of Kazakhstan and the National Information Technologies JSC (NITEC) have also 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.   

In particular, Kazakhstan is sharing its expertise in developing and implementing digital public infrastructure Building Blocks, such as the Smart Data Ukimet (SDU). SDU is a national big data analytics solution that collects and processes information from nearly 100 institutional databases to support real-time decision-making and situation monitoring. The government uses it to enable proactive social services, including social security payments to vulnerable families identified using a Digital Family Card. 

Solutions like SDU can serve as a foundation for many digitally-enabled services and initiatives, making them a valuable component of digital public infrastructure. To share technical insights on building such solutions, Kazakhstan is working with GovStack to document the specifications of digital Building Blocks that enable SDU, using the GovStack template. 

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 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.   

Documentation and draft specifications for additional DPI Building Blocks will also be developed in collaboration with the GovStack team, guided by specific priority needs from the region and globally. 

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.