During the past years after gaining independence Uzbekistan has managed to establish basis for national state system. However public administration, including economy, to high extent has preserved numerous elements of administrative command system. This situation is incompatible with the course for further economy liberalization and ensuring sustainable economic growth. In this regard, implementation of administrative reform is priority driven assuming realization of programme aimed at optimization of functions, structure and mechanisms of executive power.

The President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, in his statement during the meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers1 defined 5 directions of administrative reform implementation in the country. One of them assumes fulfilling measures towards gradual modernization and raising efficiency of work carried out by public administration system based on introduction of advanced information and communication technologies, reduction of useless accounting and paper document circulation. Hence, the President set the objective to synchronize administrative reform and implementation of e-government elements.

Therefore the Government realizes that e-government implementation is one of the components of administrative reform implemented in the country.

Under current conditions e-government in Uzbekistan means reconstruction of interrelation mechanisms between citizens and the state, private sector and the state with an aim to broaden public access to information and documentation of government authorities, ensuring transparency and accountability of power to population.

The main factors hindering ICT application in activity carried out by public administration bodies and creation of e-government in Uzbekistan are the following:

1. Unreadiness of existing public administration bodies to perform their duties under conditions of information openness, accessibility and transparency for citizens and private sector;
2. Lack of effective mechanisms promoting ICT introduction in all areas of social life;
3. Lack of open dialogue between the state, civil society and private sector on priorities as well as e-government formation mechanisms.

The break-through in the area of e-government is extremely important for Uzbekistan. In this regard it is not casual that the Government makes substantial efforts aimed at strategy formulation assuming broad introduction and application of modern ICT means. During the last two years the following acts were adopted in the country: the Decree of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan “On further computerization and introduction of information-communication technologies” of May 30, 2002, that defines the most urgent objectives in this area and “Programme on computerization and information-communication technologies development for 2002-2010” (June 6, 2002), endorsed by the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers (the Programme is currently under revision).

The main goal of the research paper lies in definition of the main directions of e-government implementation in Uzbekistan through interrelations with administrative reform.

Objectives of the research paper: (1) analysis of best practices in the area of e-government implementation in developed countries; (2) analysis of problems related to e-government implementation in activity carried out by public administration bodies for the previous years; (3) analysis of legislative basis for e-government implementation and development of recommendations on introducing law amendments regulating e-government implementation; (4) based on analysis conducted definition of the main direction and stages of e-government implementation in activity carried out by public administration bodies.

• Structure of the report 2004/0612 Kb
• Summary of the report 2004/06 (Russian only)64 Kb