ELECTRONIC FORMAT

The "electronic government" system, which is being developed in Azerbaijan, will make it much easier for the public to monitor the work of state bodies, will help prevent time-consuming bureaucracy and provide greater anti-corruption transparency. An inter-active e-government information system - a single "electronic government" website, a resource base and a number of services that are being rapidly increased - has been operating for two years now. The other day, the Azerbaijani Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Population (MLSPP) launched a new electronic service - "employment letter" - which has become a most important component of the electronic system of labour contracts.

A convenient system

The unified information portal of the "electronic government" system (www.e-gov.az) allows information to be presented in a non-contact form and offer a pre-set range of state services to the public, business and other branches of government. At the same time, in past years the coordinator of the project - the Ministry of Communications and High Technology (MCHT) - has carried out a vast amount of work to set up an effective infrastructure providing an exchange of information between various state structures and the unified electronic portal. Today, about 45 ministries, departments and other central power bodies offering over 400 electronic services through their official websites are connected to the portal. And about 387 services have already been integrated into the unified "electronic government" system.

As of the beginning of November this year, over 130,000 users had received the simplified password code to the portal. A statistic of the Computer Information Centre within the MCHT is testimony to the rapid growth in the population's interest in the potential of the unified "electronic government" portal. Specifically, since December 2012, when the unified "electronic government" system began operating, up to 1 November this year, about 6 million visits to the portal had been registered. In total, over a million users have now taken advantage of the e-services portal.

Everyday work

The Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Population is also among the state departments that are actively familiarizing themselves with the opportunities of the "electronic government" portal. In the spring of this year, the department completed the development of an electronic information system (EIS) for the accounting of labour contracts. "In line with President Ilham Aliyev's decree of 1 July this year, an electronic information system for the notification of labour contracts has been successfully introduced in the republic," Idris Isayev, Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Protection of the Population, pointed out. "The introduction of the EIS has become a most important reform in the sphere of labour relations in the country. Extensive information about market-involved or spare manpower, the conditions and appraisal of labour and the amount of wages, spheres of activity which attract the largest number of workers, change of locality, demands on manpower, age structure, and so on has been reflected in this system."

The Labour Ministry believes that this innovation is helping to combat illegal employment and will also impact on the increase in tax revenues and compulsory social security contributions. Since the application of the EIS there has been a drop in the need to complete paper work books, all labour contracts concluded in the country and their cancellations are recorded electronically and the information included in the Labour Ministry's digital data base. According to the new regulations, labour relations commence not from the time a labour contract is concluded, but from the day of its registration in the electronic system of notification of the labour contract and the referral of the corresponding information to employers in the course of a single working day. Thus, an effective electronic system of monitoring illegal activity which protects, above all, the interests of employees, has been created in the country. At the same time, employers who ignore the new regulations can expect very serious penalties and, in some cases, criminal prosecution.

The new electronic system of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Population has in a relatively short period of time acquired the status of one of the most popular instruments of the "electronic government" portal. More specifically, as of 20 November this year, over 1.6m notifications about labour contracts had been submitted to the Labour Ministry's information base. At this moment in time, over 51,000 employers, 43 per cent of whom are juridical persons, and the rest individuals, have been registered in the system.

A new service

In developing the potential of the EIC, experts of the Labour Ministry have added new service possibilities to the system. For example, at the beginning of December there was an innovation in the shape of a new electronic service - "information from the work place", which was accessible both on the ministry's official website and in the unified "electronic government" portal. "The public will now be able to obtain information from their place of work without having to approach their employer, thus saving time and effort. For example, when various organizations or banks require information from the public about their place of work and salary they will be able to do this on-line and at any time by using the "information from the work place" service," Isayev noted. In addition, persons working in two or more places of work on the basis of an active labour agreement have the opportunity to choose a job location which will be recorded when presenting the statement about the place of work. 

Among other things, vital information about an employer, his contact telephone number, personal details about an employee, the date of conclusion of the labour contract and its term of validity or indefinite duration are indicated in the electronic reference data, along with its period of validity. Where necessary, the Labour Ministry's electronic data base can provide the recipient of the statement with information about all subsequent changes in the labour contract, however this information may only be passed on with the consent of the individual and only during the period of validity of the data. At the same time, equipped with a bar-code and other encryption protection mechanisms, the data excludes the possibility of providing inaccurate information about individuals. This makes it utterly impossible to provide false information or present incorrect information about wages. Reliable information about a person's wages is an important condition for the normal activity of commercial organizations and banking structures because it reduces risks when allowing consumer credit.

"At the same time, the Labour Ministry is not yet planning to produce the electronic data from the place of work in foreign languages," Deputy Minister Isayev stressed. "When it is necessary to present such a statement in any foreign language, for example to embassies in order to obtain a visa, the individual will have to obtain a certified translation of the document."

The achievement of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection in developing an electronic information system and digitizing the data base is very indicative of the rapid advancement of the "electronic government" mechanism. This process is increasing, and by 2020 all services of Azerbaijani's state-run departments will be available in electronic format. "In the near future we are expecting confirmation of a new state programme for the development of the sphere of information-communications technology, one of the main objectives of which is the expansion of the number of electronic services being offered to the public," Azerbaijan's Minister of Communications and High Technology, Ali Abbasov, said. "We now have a number of most important state services and converting them to electronic format will be an onerous task, and a lot of effort will be required to achieve this objective. And in the process of forming an "electronic government" special attention must be focused on those sections of the population who most often encounter difficulties when applying to various state structures." In the minister's opinion, the new state programme for the development of ICT, and in particular the further broadening of the potential of the "electronic government" portal, will also help solve the problem of the "digital gap" between the capital and Azerbaijan's regions.