In order to support the digital development of Azerbaijan by the World Bank, a digital development strategy for Azerbaijan is being prepared. For this purpose, the representatives of the World Bank and the Roland Berger company, which supported them in this process, visited Azerbaijan several times. During the first mission from February 13 to 17, representatives held meetings with the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport, the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Population, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Science and Education, the State Customs Committee, and a number of private organizations. The mentioned mission has prepared the first two modules of the Digital strategy document based on the information gathered on the basis of the meetings and the detailed research. In general, the document is supposed to consist of the following modules:
- 1. As-is assessment - Assess current digital maturity and conduct as-is analysis across stakeholders and assets along "Pillars": Digital Infrastructure, Digital Government Platforms, Digital Financial Services, Digital Businesses, Digital Skills, and Trust Ecosystem, analyze the enabling environment (institutional, legal, and regulatory frameworks) for each pillar to pinpoint opportunities and challenges, baseline current governance framework and policy related to data ecosystems.
- 2. Benchmarking and developing the rationale for Digital transformation - identify global trends on the impact of digital development, highlight relevant international examples (At least 4 examples) on economy-wide digital transformation with best practices, benchmark trends and best practices against Azerbaijan as-is digital states, research of rationales for clear pursuit of digital development and milestone based digital transformation strategy
- 3. To be digital vision, gap analysis, and recommendation and iterations - Azerbaijan digital to-be vision (utilize information in module 1 and 2 to develop overall digital to-be vision, identify key data governance framework needed, align all to-be states with "National SocioEconomic Development Priorities", "Azerbaijan 2030", and monitoring frameworks), Gap analysis (compare as-is and to-be to pinpoint gaps and improvement areas needed to achieve to-be vision), recommendation and iterations ( finalize to-be vision and improvement areas, prepare key objectives for the strategy, vision, measurable targets, and their contribution towards targets established in Azerbaijan 2030, create theory of change/ logical framework highlighting constraints, themes of action, outcomes, and alignment with objectives and targets)
- 4. Implementation roadmap - Define implementation principles, develop prioritization of initiatives and key successes required in the short to medium term, create overall implementation roadmap and detailed milestone based action plans, develop KPIs and identify relevant owners needed, provide relevant implementation artifacts (e.g. tools, templates, playbooks) and governance
The strategy is expected to be finalized in the upcoming months and sent to state institutions for approval.