The State shall not concentrate exclusively on creating the most extensive e-gov applications to enable the citizens to receive all possible services; instead, they shall engineer platforms helping private companies to develop services using those platforms. Doing so makes the reach of e-gov much broader, with significantly less direct investment from public funds and a higher satisfaction level of citizens. Aram Orbelyan, the managing partner of Concern Dialog law firm, joined the panel discussions on e-Government risks and opportunities of the final event of the CaseKey 2022 business case competition on November 18.

Aram Orbelyan, as a Deputy Minister of Justice (2011-2014), was responsible for creating and developing several e-gov services, he emphasized that Armenia is in a leading position in e-Government implementation, but there is still a lot to be done.

Speaking about the problems related to the e-gov implementation, he mentioned three significant ones. The first is the need to constantly update and improve the developed application/service rather than being satisfied with immediate results: the so-called low-hanging fruit problem. The second is to avoid duplicating the work done on paper in the electronic media; instead, there is a need to find fundamentally new solutions and reengineer the processes: the so-called pen and ink problem. And the third one is mostly an unconscious desire to regulate technologies by the government instead of concentrating the human interactions: the so-called overregulation problem.

“Technologies are not possible to be regulated within the legislative field, but it is possible to regulate public relations concerning thereto and the risks arising from the application of new technologies. One of the biggest risks of the last decade is the personal data protection in electronic platforms and databases, but, at the same time, those platforms speed up processes and make human interactions easier and much faster,” stated Aram Orbelyan.

Notice.

CaseKey Business Case Competition is being held in the framework of the “Future Today: Empowering women, youth and children for deepening democracy in Armenia” UNDP Kolba Lab project funded by the European Union.

Student teams participated in training throughout the year and learned how to solve real business cases. During the last six months, the competition attracted more than 500 students, 15 lecturers, 30 coaches, 15 higher educational institutions and educational centres, and a number of enterprises from different sectors. Until the final event this year, the participants had already solved three problems of public importance. During the final event, teams presented their options for solving the public problem of e-citizen.am platform introduced by E-Governance Infrastructure Implementation Agency (EKENG).

A team is planned to be formed from the best participants of the competition, which will go to the USA in 2023 and represent Armenia in a prestigious competition for solving business cases.