GITI 2013 – The Digital Services as Future Tool for Public Sector

"Information Technologies for the Future" was the slogan presented the 6th regional conference- exhibition, IT innovations award and Georgian Cyber Security and Informational Technologies Event (GITI 2013) on November 28-29 at Sheraton Metekhi Palace, Tbilisi.

The National Agency of Public Register (NAPR) was named as the best IT agency and won the Grand Prize at GITI 2013.

Among the 50 IT projects, the jury picked out the best 17 nominations. More than 20 countries participated in the GITI Exhibition and Award that was supported by the Data Exchange Agency (Ministry of Justice) and the ICT Business Council. The participators were represented by both public and private sectors.

NAPR is a website of business and property registration in Georgia as one of the entities of the Public Service Hall, Ministry of Justice. According to the statistics, everyday more than 30,000 people are searching for information in the National Agency of Public Register website. That is twice the amount of those who visit NAPR daily.

"This fact that the National Agency of Public Register was awarded as the best IT Agency, emphasizes that our agency is focused on the development. During the last few years, the NAPR team fulfilled a lot IT projects to improve digital management. Nevertheless our major goal is to continue working on the projects and we are planning to produce very interesting and useful projects for our citizens. said the Head of the NAPR, Papuna Ugrekhelidze.

The National Agency of Public Register projects also won the Most Successful Infrastructural Solution, the Best Management, and the Best Management of Informational Security nominations.

Two other awards went to another legal entity of the Ministry of Justice, the Civil Service Development Agency, as the Most Widely Used E-services and the Best Future IT Project. The Service Development Agency purpose is the promotion of state service development and introduction of new innovation services.

The President of the ICT Business Council, Giga Shubitidze emphasized that the recent years were distinguished from previous ones with the projects variety. According to him, the representatives of public sectors, such as the legal entities of the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Finances, the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia have always presented the innovative ideas. Although the internet users amount have increased by more than by 5% in both the regions and the capital of Georgia, the digital services are not available in the municipalities.

"All the IT projects were very interesting; however, there are featured great players in this field, such as the ministries of Georgia, where the electrical services develop very rapidly and successfully, said Giga Shubitidze. "I want call attention to the National Agency of Public Register that invented a very interesting IT projects during the last year. Unfortunately, there was nothing offered by the municipalities of the other regions. In this regard, we are lagged compared to the East Europe. I wish to see just one IT project invented by the regional municipalities for the next year.

Except the Ministry of Justice, two nominations were won the Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Affairs of Georgia (MoH) among the public sector. The MoH was awarded for the Best Online Information Resource and the best IT project for Business Processes Simplification.

The major priority of the MoHs latest project is to simplify the search for health information about each patient. In addition, the medical archive is an important part of the project because it gives the ability to the Ministry of Health to collect statistics about various diseases spread in Georgia.

"The one project is about the electronic healthcare modules, but the second one, which was invented several months earlier, is actually the medical data archive, including doctors portal. That means information about patients. said the Head of IT Department of the MoH Mikheil Janiashvili. "This project also includes the residents portal. It gives ability to each citizen to find their health history, suggests medicines for them and shows the nearest drugstore according to their location. Now we are working to make a mobile application for this service.

One of the largest banks in Georgia The Bank of Georgia won prizes as the Best IT Solution of Business and the Best Complex Business Decision. And the silver sponsor of GITI 2013, company UGT, leading system integrator and provider of solutions in the field of information and communication technology, was awarded as the best Integrator Company.

This is the second year, when the Armenian IT company Instigate CJSC, which provides IT projects for Germany and Post-Soviet countries, won the award for the Best IT Provider and Education. And another Armenian company Technology and Science Dynamics Inc was awarded as the best Multimedia project inventor.

Last year, the Instigate CJSC established IT training center in Akhalkalaki, Samtske-Javakheti region of Southern Georgia, where more than 90% of the city's population are ethnic Armenians. The above mentioned company conducts training for future IT specialists.

According to the Caucasus Research Resource Centers newest survey, over 46% of Tbilisi residents have internet, 28% in the other cities and 7% in the villages. The same survey revealed that 61% among the internet users in Georgia are searching information on the internet. Over 50,000 are searching for information on government web-sites every day.