Today, during the meeting on digitalization of the economy, under the chairmanship of the Head of State, Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan B. Sagintayev presented the Program of Innovative Development "Digital Kazakhstan" developed by the Government.

In his speech, Bakytzhan Sagintayev reported that during the development of the Program, the global challenges and opportunities that the digital era has been carrying for the economy of Kazakhstan were taken into account. In this regard, two areas are identified: building long-term institutions of innovation development and ensuring a pragmatic start of the Program, consisting of concrete projects in the real sector.

As a starting maneuver, the government has chosen a strategy for the accelerated digitization of nine industries. At the same time, special emphasis is focused on energy, agro-industrial complex, industry, logistics and information technology sector. Thus, it is planned to provide an additional impulse for technological modernization of the country's flagship industries and to create conditions for large-scale growth of labor productivity.

At the same time, it was noted that, in addition to the digitization of the economy, the Program is based on the development of the mobile state, the formation of a creative society and the development of a new infrastructure necessary for the digital transformation of the country. In all four segments of the ecosystem, "ice-breaker projects" have been identified, designed to "break into" whole sectors of the economy for the emergence of new types of digital business. To date, there are 23 such "ice-breakers" and their list will always be open.

The Prime Minister of Kazakhstan stressed that a strong digital country begins with a strong business fully integrated into the world of digital solutions. Therefore, the Program is aimed at the widespread adoption and use of digital technologies by businesses in all priority sectors. In this direction, a system of incentives for digitalization for entrepreneurs will be created.

The priorities of this work are - improving the regulatory framework and regulation, reducing costs for digital transformation of enterprises, creating special conditions for attracting investments in digital projects.

As an example, it was announced that scaling the "digital mine" model for the entire mining industry, translation of the "smart deposit" model and "electronic oil accounting" to the entire oil and gas sector would give a clustered effect on the whole country's scale for the growth of IT service businesses.

In addition, as part of the formation of the innovative agro-industrial complex as one of the pillars of the new model of economic growth, a model vision of the country's agro-industrial complex digitalization has been developed in accordance with the best world practices. It includes a system for collecting large data, a system of analytics and intellectual planning and an automated system for digital control over enterprise dynamics.

Another anchor of the Program will be the infrastructure base of the digital economy and, first of all, ubiquitous Internet access. Providing the whole country with wide access to the Network will create conditions for the outstripping development of many sectors of the digital economy that are oriented towards users. The most significant among them are distance education, telemedicine and e-commerce.

Also, the Program places a serious stake in the innovative development of the medical services market. In this direction, the widespread use of innovative solutions based on artificial intelligence technologies and the processing of large data will be expanded.

In addition, a major impetus for the domestic IT sector will be the task set in the Program for 80% digitization of public services by 2021. Domestic developers will be able to create independent large IT solutions, national brands of Kazakhstan in the IT sector. This applies to such areas as e-government, UrbanTech and State Cybersecurity.

At the end of his speech, the Prime Minister stressed that the ambitious goals of the digital transformation of Kazakhstan will require the involvement of the whole society.

"Kazakhstan will constantly, from year to year, adjust its policy of digital development, supplement the program with new projects, in accordance with current world trends. Under this serious management challenge, a model of program management is built on the basis of the best practices of public administration," B. Sagintayev said.

He noted that a corporate project office for the implementation of the program has been established along the entire vertical, the activities of which will be closed for the Interdepartmental Commission for Digitalization of Kazakhstan.