Public service to be fully digitalized to eradicate corruption and bureaucracy www.montsame.mn
Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Corruption and bureaucracy in government services will cease to exist in Mongolia with a digital transformation, officials noted at the ‘E-Mongolia’ discussion organized by the Offices of the President and Parliament of Mongolia, Government of Mongolia, and the 'e-Governance Academy' non-profit think tank and consultancy organization, a joint initiative of the Government of Estonia, Open Society Institute (OSI) and the United Nations Development Programme, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on December 4.
At the discussion, Estonia’s experience of completely digitizing its government services was shared. As a result of the country’s digital transformation over the past 17 years, corruption and bureaucracy in the delivery of its government services vanished.
In his address, President of Mongolia Kh.Battulga noted that Mongolia was placed 62nd in the World Digital Competitiveness Ranking calculated on the basis of 51 ranking criteria.
Even though foundation for digital services has been laid we are failing to use information technology. For instance, only 24 thousand of the total 400 thousand drivers used the newly digitized vehicle tax payment system and this requires additional legal regulations. However, the role of private sector, universities, research institutes, and international organizations is crucial to achieving complete digitalization as only government organizations’ efforts for this would be futile, the President noted.
There are some 10 countries in the world that combined government and private sector services in digitalization. From their experience, the most suitable one for Mongolia is that of Estonia’s, said Head of the Cabinet Secretariat L.Oyun-Erdene. “Thus, we intend to establish a memorandum of cooperation with the country’s government to launch a five-year program to digitize Mongolia. After five years, we will be at the same level with Estonia. Specifically, around 90 percent of the government services will be rid of bureaucracy and provided 150 times faster then,” he added.
To establish new company, for example, now it takes 1-2 days for permissions, however it would take 3-5 minutes through mobile phone when public service is digitized.
The Head of the Cabinet Secretariat also emphasized that digital transformation of government services will put an end to corruption and bureaucracy as no government official will be able to take advantage of their power with that.
Published Date:2019-12-04