Such was announced by State Administration Minister Nikolai Vassilev at an April 26 meeting with the Bulgarian Business Leaders Forum (BBLF) held in Sofia.
The second step he sees is the accumulation of a “critical mass” of people in state administration and in business that uses e-signatures, and the third step is the creation of software solutions for building the e-government’s environment.
Changing the mentality of the people employed in the administration is another important move, according to Vassilev.
BBLF Chair Maxim Behar said there were three myths floating around the country.
“The first is that Bulgaria is a very corrupt state. This is not true because corruption here is no more than in any other country,” Behar said.
In his view, the second myth is that corruption in Bulgaria will be hard to eradicate, which is also untrue because it will cease to exist when the representatives of business and the government unite in the fight against the existing corruption practices.
And the third myth, according to Behar, is that it will take a long time to eradicate corruption.
“This can happen fast, as soon as the state and businesses provide transparency of their operation,” Behar said.
The State Administration Ministry is preparing an E-Government Bill. Its basic principal would be that once individuals and companies have submitted certain information to the state administration, the latter would not be allowed to ask for this information again, Vassilev said.
In terms of e-readiness – technological, economic, political and social assets and their growing influence on the respective information economies – Bulgaria ranks 44th among 68 countries in the world in 2006. This is pointed out in a report by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), quoted by IBM Bulgaria on April 27.
The EIU has published such rankings since 2000. This year Bulgaria scored 4.86 points, 0.18 points up from 2005, when it ranked 42nd.
The EIU found that in early 2006, e-readiness had increased worldwide and IT had progressed in almost all countries.
Many developed countries take advantage of opportunities for IT outsourcing to countries including Bulgaria, Vietnam and India. In Central and Eastern Europe, Bulgaria ranks ninth. In the world ranking, Romania is 49th in 2006, down from 47th last year. Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan rank between Bulgaria and Romania.
The outsourcing market, especially for software development and call centres, tends to be moving from Central to Eastern Europe, with Bulgaria being eyed by the major companies in the sector.
Bulgaria’s investments in electronics, engineering and computer science are paying off: the World Bank ranks Bulgaria fifth in the exact sciences and 11th in mathematics education in the world. As a result, this country has numerous experienced IT professionals, many of them speaking more than two foreign languages.
With such assets, Bulgaria, like Romania, is positioned as a more attractive country for outsourcing by US and European companies. Such firms tend to look for IT development opportunities in lower cost regions closer to head offices. This is precisely what companies such as SAP, BMW, Siemens, Boeing and GM are doing, the EIU report said.
Autor/Author: Ivan Vatahov
Quelle/Source: The Sofia Echo, 08.05.2006
