Interoperability, electronic seal & signature, open data: Albania case

Event report

[Read more session reports and live updates from the 2nd Western Balkan Digital Summit]

Ms Romina Kostani (Director of the Innovation and e-Gov IPA Sectorial Department at the National Agency of Information Society) opened her presentation by highlighting the Government of Albania’s Governmental Interoperability Platform, which is the core architecture that allows the interaction among 34 electronic systems of Albania’s public institutions. The role of the platform is to help citizens interact with the Albanian government institutions’ digital systems in an easier and more transparent way. It also enables the elimination of administrative documents, which allows government agencies to no longer request them from citizens, as well as offers real-time verification of documentation and other citizen requests. The platform offers 600 electronic services (e-services), up from 14 when it was first launched, and 52 million transitions were registered in 2018, while 2.3 million electronic documents have been requested since 2017.

Kostani also spoke about Albania’s e-Seal and e-Signature services, which facilitate faster service for citizens and also no longer require citizens to travel to public institutors in order to obtain relevant documents. She stressed that more than €1 million has been saved due to the e-Seal and e-Signature programme for civic status certificates, while saving over 20 years of collective waiting time in queues for business documents to be serviced, as well as 4.5 million pages eliminated for construction permit applications. Additionally, Kostani spoke about their e-Prescription service, which saves citizens time and money while freeing up additional resources within their health system.

She closed her presentation by sharing information about their open data platform, OpenData.gov.al, which is meant to provide citizens with access to government information in line with government commitments to the Open Government Partnership (OGP). She also invited everyone to visit their new technology incubator and co-working space, #TechSpace, in Tirana.

By Michael j. Oghia