Uzbekistan has studied the experience of Azerbaijan and several European countries while reforming its public service delivery system, Deputy Minister of Justice of Uzbekistan Numon Mukhammadiyev said at the UN Governance Innovation Summit in Baku, Report informs.
According to him, in 2017, responsibility for implementing unified state policy in the field of public services was assigned to the Ministry of Justice of Uzbekistan. He noted that the agency initiated fundamental reforms in this area because bureaucracy, complex procedures, and insufficient information exchange between government agencies created difficulties for citizens and heightened corruption risks.
"During this process, we studied the experience of Azerbaijan and also reviewed the practices of many European countries within the framework of the project 'Further Improvement of Public Service Delivery in Uzbekistan', implemented by the Ministry of Justice in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme with European Union support," he said.
Mukhammadiyev noted that one of the first steps was the digitization of civil status records archives, containing over 80 million birth, marriage, and death records dating back to 1940. This made it possible to introduce a unified identifier - the personal identification number of an individual.
According to him, birth registration in Uzbekistan is now carried out entirely online, more than 80% of public services are available in electronic format, and over 30 services are provided proactively without requiring an application.
"We abolished the requirement to provide 150 types of information and documents: government agencies now independently exchange data among themselves," he emphasized.