All villages with population over 250 residents to be provided with high-quality Internet until end of 2020 — Bagdat Mussin

At the government session chaired by Prime Minister Askar Mamin, First Vice Minister - Acting Minister of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry Bagdat Mussin reported on the work carried out to implement the Address of the Head of State dated Sep. 1, 2020, in terms of digitalization.

Thus, in his Address "Kazakhstan in a New Reality: Time for Action,’’ President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev drew particular attention to the need to eliminate digital inequality, ensure maximum access to the Internet and high-quality communication for all citizens.

Mussin noted that today two projects are being implemented to provide Kazakhstanis with high-quality Internet: the construction of fiber-optic communication lines in rural areas and mobile broadband Internet access, which will be completed by the end of this year. This will ensure the coverage of all villages with a population of more than 250 inhabitants with high-quality Internet. Also, to improve the quality of communication, the following measures will be taken:

  • parameters of the communication quality have been set;
  • instrument of the People's Control was introduced, which will allow recording and transmitting data;
  • number of legislative amendments have been worked out to increase the requirements for telecom operators.

At the same time, in his annual address, the Head of State instructed by the end of the year to cancel the most popular certificates and paper confirmations, to provide digital confirmation of information. It is noted that in order to simplify the interaction of the population with electronic services, biometrics should be widely used at the level of public services and in private business. 

According to Mussin, the ministry implements user registration on Egov in one step. This will allow the citizen to sign any service by going through biometric identification.

“As a result, more people will be able to use Egov's services. A trusted biometric tool will also be provided to businesses to develop online commercial services. After a citizen has become a user, he can use the digital document service along with paper documents,” said the first vice minister.

By the end of the year, it is planned to withdraw a driver's license, vehicle registration certificate, citizen's passport, higher education diploma, student card, insurance policy.

Also, by the end of the year, about 30 of the most popular certificates will be canceled. Authentication will be provided by scanning the QR code. 

Mussin spoke in more detail about the ongoing work with data, which, according to Tokayev, should reach a new level.

“We will develop a unified reference data architecture within a year. Smart Data Ukimet will be developed as an interdepartmental analytical system of government agencies. To ensure fault tolerance, we will continue to consolidate information systems on the infrastructure of the data operator represented by NIT JSC. For these purposes, the development of a state data center is proposed,” said Mussin.

The ministry’s analysis showed that domestic IT developments can replace international counterparts in state and quasi-government purchases in the amount of 56 billion tenge per year. For this, there is already a mechanism for registering trusted domestic software, from which purchases should be carried out on a priority basis. And in other private markets, the potential of domestic IT products is 142 billion tenge.

“To achieve these numbers, we need to develop off-take contracts, loan guarantees in order to get loans and other types of instruments. After achieving these results, we will strive to enter foreign markets,” said Mussin.

Kassym-Jomart Tokayev noted in his Address that within five years the volume of investments in the mining and data center industry should be increased to 500 billion tenge.

Today in Kazakhstan there are 13 mining farms (consuming 620 MW), and 4 farms are under construction (about 450 MW). Over 80 billion tenge has been invested in the industry. To date, there are preliminary agreements on attracting investments for 300 billion tenge, and by 2025 the volume of investments may amount to about 500 billion tenge. The ministry plans to intensively continue work in this direction.

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