The Digitalization Council met today in the Office of Government, chaired by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. The draft of Armenia’s 2020-2025 digitalization strategy was discussed during the meeting.

Deputy Minister of High-Tech Industry Stepan Tsaturyan presented the goals of the strategy and the roadmap for their implementation. He noted that Armenia holds leading positions in the development of e-government, digital technologies, and the successful initiatives implemented so far provide a good basis for digital transformation.

According to Stepan Tsaturyan, the digitalization strategy envisages digital transformation of state institutions, individual economic sectors and society through the development of innovative technologies, cyber security, and data processing policy in the system of public administration to ensure interoperability of systems, introduction of common standards, implementation of educational programs and various digital tools. It is expected to provide high-quality public services, achieve increased governance efficiency, institutional digitization, infrastructure development, data-driven decision-making, and develop highly-skilled workforce.

The strategy will be implemented in 2 stages: 2020-2021 and 2022-2025. The strategy was discussed with the professional associations of the agencies concerned, based on stakeholders’ proposals.

Issues relevant to common standards of digitalization, the coverage and scope of per-sector services, interdepartmental cooperation, development of cyber security infrastructure, interoperability of data systems and harmonization of the efforts underway in the field of digitalization were discussed during the exchange of views that followed. A number of organizational issues were raised in this context.

The Premier underscored that digitalization is a revolutionary process: “we should work to develop both content and the technical aspects.” In addition to technical standards, the digitalization strategy should set clear-cut political goals, visible benchmarks, so that the public at large could have an accurate idea of the proposed goals and results.

In this context, Nikol Pashinyan prioritized the need for active public communication, broader awareness of digital transition processes, and gave relevant instructions to those responsible. In conclusion, the Head of Government told the stakeholders to amend the draft strategy and proceed with further work.