Electronic Government or e-Government is digital interaction between government institutions and citizens. Interaction is achieved through new means of communication and advanced communication technologies to enable real-time communication. There are several dimensions of the electronic government, facilitating relations between the Government and citizens, the Government and businesses and between various government institutions.

Interaction of government institutions with citizens, by electronic means, facilitates optimal transfer of information from authorities to citizens and vice versa. By accessing online means of communication, citizens can get quickly informed about the legislative news, can express their views on administrative activity, can pay their taxes or can lodge complaints and petitions online. Basically, taxpayers have at their disposal all the means to exercise their fundamental civil rights.

Electronic services are public services provided by the government institutions to citizens by electronic technologies. These can be either free of charge or paid, depending on the type of service. The main advantages in the use of this method of obtaining services are quickness and accessibility. If to get certain electronic services citizens had to wait hours and even days, e-services allow accessing information almost immediately. Another advantage is their availability, the fact that they are available to any person that can access a computer at any time, not working within the limits of a new fixed working program. Examples of public services which will be accessed online are: release of criminal records, licenses and permits, declarations.

E-Governance Agency, founded State Chancellery, is a non-commercial organization which aims to bring the benefits of electronic services to the citiziens by applying Information and Communication Technologies to enhance the competitiveness of the country worldwide, as well as to improve citizens’ quality of life. 

E-Governance Agency is the main promoter of e-Governance and sector transformation initiatives, functioning as a catalyst of interaction between Government and citizens through intelligent electronic platforms and technologies.

The e-Transformation agenda is the e-Transformation process of governance, which aims to modernize public services and streamline government activity trough information technology. According to the Strategic Program for Governance Technological Modernization (e-Transformation), by 2020, the Government will become more transparent, more efficient and more responsive, due to intelligent investments in information technologies and their massive use in public sector.

Open data is information of general interest that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone – either free or for a marginal cost.

Projects and applications based on use of open data may have very broad applicability. Any citizen can find useful data in daily activity. For example, data on the incidence of fraud in a district or local government development projects can help a person in choosing a new home. Analysis of budget expenditures may show companies the priority areas of development at the level of central administration. Data about criminality in an area or another as well as records about performance of an educational institution may represent a solid basis for an informed choice of an education form for a child. “Open data will stimulate an industry which will transform the raw data into the material on which depend hundreds of millions of ICT users, for example apps (applications) for smart phones: maps, online traffic information, weather information, price comparison tools, etc. The journalists and academic people are among other important beneficiaries”.

Broad implementation of communication technologies is a phase of a country’s administrative system development. The main benefits of implementation of various electronic systems are related to transparency in current activity and decisions taken at high level, anti-corruption, and interactivity. New technologies enable establishing communication with a government agency and expressing opinions and recommendations directly. In countries where technological modernization and implementation of digital technologies in providing public services began many years ago the perception of government was reconstructed. Citizens can get actively involved in the administration process.

Cloud computing is a modern concept in the field of computing and informatics, representing a distributed set of computing services, applications, access to information and data storage, without the user needing to know the physical location and configuration of the systems providing these services. Cloud computing offers a model for advanced use of digital technologies and programming that can be used by institutions and companies as a basis for development of applications and services. The main concept in building a cloud computing architecture is access to some applications, services or databases without storing them on an own system. Information and databases that build these applications are stored on a server or a unified server system located in another place or even in another country. The functioning method of this technology is similar to internet.

Implementation of a cloud computing infrastructure can lead both to streamlining the activity of governmental agencies and making resource savings in administration and development of applications customized for every agency separately. In addition, citizens no longer have to send the same data several times, data will be stored on the common server and will be accessed by different institutions in the long run. Another advantage is related to data security, data unification in a single center, with advanced protection systems and enables enhancing data security.

Implementation of the program for governance technological modernization will have an impact also on the business environment through the implementation of better public services for doing business, such as obtaining licenses, permits. A step towards implementation of electronic services dedicated to companies is the decision that starting with January 1, 2012, the subjects of VAT taxation from the municipality of Chisinau, Balti and Comrat shall mandatorily submit fiscal reports using the automated electronic reporting methods.

As a result of the reengineering process, the digitization of public services consists in automating the process of submitting service requests, identifying and authorizing applicants, completing and digitally signing service requests, online payment of service fees, delivery of service results, exchange of data -institutional, secure hosting of electronic services, etc.

Interoperability Platform it is a technological solution that facilitates the exchange of data between information systems managed by public entities, increasing the efficiency and quality of public service provision, without requesting data from citizens and the business environment in the form of certificates, reports, etc.

Thanks to the MConnect platform, the role of citizens as postmen in transporting data from one authority to another will be eliminated.