Turkmenistan, UN to work on e-gov project

The Turkmen government and the United Nations (UN) are collaborating on a project to reform government mechanisms on e-government in the country.

The project was discussed during the meeting between Turkmenistan President Gurbangulu Berdimuhammedov and UN Secretariat Economic and Social Affairs Department Adviser Alexei Tikhomirov early this month.

Among the topics discussed are reforming and strengthening of mechanisms for public administration including macroeconomic management, personnel training and advanced training.

The Turkmenistan government is planning to introduce an e-workflow and the e-government e-document handling system. Berdimuhammedov has set tasks to implement e-document management in the regions.

The project will reform government mechanisms on energy, chemical and processing, construction, transport, telecommunications, medicine, textiles and agricultural industries.

In 2004, efforts were made to formulate a national strategy on ICT, spearheaded by the Supreme Council on Science and Technology under the President.

In 2008, Turkmenistan was included for the first time in the UN e-Government Survey, after developing a national website, when it was ranked 128 out of 189 countries.

The UN assisted Turkmenistan government in its project ICT capability development programme where seminar on Basics of Website Design for senior managers and employees of the different ministries are conducted.

“We are currently working on specifications for website design in our organization. Now we can see that many of website design parameters are missing because we have had no such experience,” said A. Karliyeva, senior specialist of the international department of marketing and advertisement of the state committee of tourism and sport of Turkmenistan.

Last year, The Civil Service Academy of Turkmenistan with the assistance of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has developed an e-governance training module for public administrators.

“Curriculum development inspired by latest trends in public administration worldwide and specifically inclusion of the e-governance course as a core training module for the civil servants is a big step forward for the institution,” explained UNDP’s international consultant Munira Aminova.

In 2010, The Ministry of Economy and Development and the Ministry of Communications have been instructed to create a unified system to introduce ICT into public administration as well as create a fibre-optic communication system.

-futuregov.asia