Government Sector

Government sector digitization in Central Asia is moving fast at the strategy and portal level, but slowly at the real process level. The UPSE in Uzbekistan accepts applications online, but inside agencies they are often printed and processed on paper. eGov.kz in Kazakhstan is one of the best platforms in the CIS, but inter-agency integration is still built piecemeal, each time as a separate project. Citizens see a beautiful portal, and behind it — the same paper processes as 10 years ago.

The root problem isn’t a lack of systems but a lack of connections between them. Each agency has its own IS — sometimes several, built in different years on different technologies. Tax knows one thing, the cadastre another, civil registry a third. Citizens act as couriers between them, carrying certificates. Inter-agency gateways (Tunduk in Kyrgyzstan, MIBP in Uzbekistan) solve part of the problem, but data exchange standards aren’t unified, and every connection requires separate development.

I help government agencies design architecture that connects existing systems without replacing them. An inter-agency gateway with data normalization, a government portal that actually fulfills requests (not just accepts applications), management analytics, electronic document management with legally valid digital signatures. Every solution is designed with information security requirements in mind: ZRU-547, GTSIB standards, operation in a secure contour, no data transfer to public clouds.

The key principle: don’t replace agency systems — teach them to talk to each other. Standardize formats, build adapters for legacy systems, establish a unified API gateway — and a citizen submits an application once while data is pulled automatically.