Today in Almaty the Prime Minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan Bakytzhan Sagintayev participated in the international forum Digital Agenda in the Era of Globalization initiated by the Head of State and taking place within the framework of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council meeting.

The forum is seen as an important joint step in implementing the digital agenda of the Eurasian Economic Union until 2025. The whole world has entered a special period of development, the essence of which is a global transition to a completely new model of development and a new technological order.

"We set ourselves an ambitious task — in the near future up to 80% of all public services will be transmitted electronically. A very important issue here is infrastructure. The territory of Kazakhstan is very large. We provide the infrastructure, i.e. the Internet in all cities. 43% of the rural population, almost 7 thousand rural settlements have a sufficient level of Internet speed, this is very important," said Bakytzhan Sagintayev.

At the same time, work in this direction continues. It was decided, until 2020, to provide all the rural settlements with broadband Internet and, fully complete the infrastructure.

B. Sagintayev also noted the role of education in the preparation of future literate personnel.

"Today we are talking about the involvement of the population in the digitalization. Today, the receipt of public services, generally the transfer to the digital services should be fashionable. Therefore, in order to realize this, education is needed, starting with the school bench, training of mathematicians, preparing university programmers.

We are now redirecting the curriculum to begin preparing enough specialists. If we say that we will move in all directions, then we need innovations. Without innovation, we will not go anywhere. For this it is necessary to create an appropriate ecosystem. Here we are very much in contact with our colleagues in Skolkovo, Innopolis, the Innovation Technologies Park in Minsk," he said.

It would be right to build a system of interaction and partnership of national innovation centers. We are talking about a mutually beneficial exchange of experience and innovation, the transfer of digital technologies, joint events of the Russian innovation centers Skolkovo and Innopolis, the Belarusian High-Tech Park, Kazakhstan's Nazarbayev University, the free economic zone Astana-Technopolis and the new International Technopark of IT start-ups being created on the basis of Expo-2017 and others.

The main goal is to build a unified innovation ecosystem of the EAEU countries, able to coordinate and promote the Union on the external contour to attract venture funds and start-ups from around the world.

According to Bakytzhan Sagintayev, it is necessary to create conditions for the development of technological entrepreneurship. Talent creates its own capital. Therefore, the development of technological entrepreneurship in the country is important. In this part, the country is doing a lot of work.

"In this regard, we created an IT hub on the basis of Expo. Now the offices are being prepared and in the near future, in six months, we will launch this IT hub. An unprecedented decision was made. The corresponding bill was adopted. We entered the Constitutional Law. In the Astana International Center, which has an absolute legislative base, English law, liberation from everything. And our IT hub has joined the AIFC and through this we want to attract talents from all over the world," Bakytzhan Sagintayev said.

Separately, B. Sagintayev pointed out the problem of cybersecurity. Integration issues will be discussed in a broader perspective within the framework of the current forum agenda.

During the plenary session, the Prime Ministers of the Republic of Armenia – Karen Karapetyan, the Republic of Belarus – Andrei Kobyakov, the Kyrgyz Republic – Sapar Isakov, the Russian Federation – Dmitry Medvedev, the Republic of Uzbekistan – Abdulla Aripov, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Tajikistan – Mahmadtoir Zoir Zokirzoda addressed the Forum participants.

International experts, including the World Bank Digital Strategy Advisor and World Bank Policy Analyst Randeep Sudan, the founder of Autodesk Innovation Genome Bill O'Connor, Deputy Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union Malcolm Johnson, Chief Technical Officer at Dell EMC Nigel Moulton, National Technology Adviser of the British government Liam Maxwell, Managing Vice President of Gartner Andrea Di Maio, CEO of Dynamic Parcel Distribution Boris Winkelmann, and others also actively participated in the discussion.

The Forum continues its work on thematic sessions: “Innovation and Technological Entrepreneurship,” “The Digital Agenda of the EAEU: Initiatives and Projects," "Digitalization of Industry (Industry 4.0),” "Digital Transformation of Agriculture in the Unified Energy System."

For an online broadcast of the Forum, see PrimeMinister.kz and in social networks Facebook, VKontakte, Twitter, Periscope and Odnoclassniki, on the official YouTube channel, as well as in mobile applications for Android and iPhone.