The E-government portal was launched in Azerbaijan several years ago with the aim of enhancing the social welfare of the country’s population through the optimization of the official – citizen relationship. 423 electronic services rendered by 41 central executive bodies have been integrated into the portal so far. The portal is improved on a daily basis to provide the population with fully automated electronic services, which in turn, causes an increase in the number of portal users.
Thus, during the period from January 1 to July 1, 2016, citizens used the electronic services provided to them by various state bodies through the E-government portal 8,155,155 times.
Top ten government agencies whose services were used most often in the stated period were Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population, State Students Admission Commission, Ministry of Communications and High Technologies, State Customs Committee, Reference Documents, Ministry of Internal Affairs, State Committee for Property Issues, Azersu OJSC, Ministry of Education, and Central Election Commission.
The half-yearly statistics show that citizens used services on the portal more than one million times a month and that the “Provision of information on numbers moved to another network through Mobile Number Portability (MNP) service” of the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies was used most often during 6 months. The e-service was used 1,007,705 times during the reporting period. The “Registration of labour contracts notifications and providing information to employer about it” e-service of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population took the second place in the top 5 most often used e-services. This e-service was used 957,255 times in the first half of current year. They are followed by the “Providing information on test results to applicants and participants of test exam via the internet or SMS” and the “Online submission of applications by candidates (applicants, bachelors, candidates (applying for residency)) e-services of the State Students Admission Commission. During the stated period, these e-services were used 873,970 and 806,387 times respectively. The “Apply for targeted social assistance” the e-service of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Population was used 711,159 times, and “Search by phone numbers” the e-service of the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies was used 396,641 times in the same period.
According to the statistics on the portal provided by Google Analytics, the number of users of the portal amounted to 1,098,633 people during the first 6 months of this year. These people visited the portal 4,358,015 times and accessed different pages 14,567,831 times. The same people used e- services 8,155,155 times and spent on average 5 minutes 8 seconds on the portal.
In general, citizens’ interest in the portal has increased, at the same time the number of returning users of the E- government portal is growing. Thus, 23.9% of the people who accessed the portal in the reporting period were new users, and 76.1% - returning users.
Besides that, each user needs an electronic signature for shifting business relations to digital format, signing documents, etc. The growth of service use dynamics is due to the increase in the demand for e-signature certificates. Thus, a total of 15,790 e-signature certificates were issued by National Certification Services Centre of the Data Processing Centre (DPC) of the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies during the first 6 months of 2016. 13,492 of them were issued to state structures, 374 – to physical persons and 1924 – to legal entities. In general, over 93,000 e-signature certificates have been issued by National Certification Services Centre of the Data Processing Centre of the Ministry of Communications and High Technologies so far.
It should also be noted that the number of users who received a simple passcode for accessing the portal has exceeded 425,000 people. Any person residing in the Republic of Azerbaijan and having an identity card can obtain a passcode without paying state due.