The e-Government Agency of the Republic of Moldova (EGA) has won the Digital Service Design Special Prize in the contest organized by the International Telecommunication Unit and GovStack.   

The announcement was made on March 13, 2023 at the World Summit on the Information Society Forum (WSIS Forum 2023) held in Geneva, Switzerland. https://www.govstack.global/blog/wsis-special-prize-winner/

The prize was awarded for the Front-Office Digitization Platform (FOD), which is a solution for digitization of public services developed by the expert team of the e-Government Agency under the Modernization of Government Services Project implemented with the support of the World Bank Group.

Our country has won the grand prize in a competition with other 50 participants, including digitally advanced countries like Singapore, Germany, Portugal and others. The evaluation of the competing projects lasted almost three months and among the evaluation criteria was relevance to UN Sustainable Development Goals and promotion of inclusive and sustainable economic growth, creation of a solid infrastructure and stimulation of innovation.

The WSIS 2023 Award given by ITU and GovStack recognizes the value of and opportunities provided by FOD in digital delivery of public services”, said Olga Tumuruc, the director of EGA.

The Front-Office Digitization platform (FOD) is a framework that allows rapid design and development of front-offices for digital government services. FOD components are used to easily configure and develop individual systems for governmental service providers. Optionally, FOD can be integrated with any existing service provider back-office. The main beneficiaries of FOD-based services are citizens, businesses, and public service providers.

Building on a re-engineering methodology, FOD focuses on reusing data and other available electronic platforms and tools to simplify or eliminate public service requests, minimize the time needed to respond to requests and ensure efficient back-office operations. This approach creates a scalable and sustainable technical infrastructure on which beneficiaries can develop services. As a result, users do not have to physically go to the public service provider to request, pay or receive the service. In the case of electronic document requests, documents are delivered only through electronic channels.

In Moldova FOD is integrated with all the e-government systems such as the digital registers (MConnect), identity and verification (MPass), payments (MPay), notification (MNotify), as well as registration, workflow, analyses and many others and uses a multitude of open-source solutions. FOD is already being used for services like the Extract from the State Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs; Extract from the Real Estate Register and Extract from the Civil Status Register. Other FOD-based digital services are currently underway.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is the specialized United Nations agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs). The World Summit on the Information Society Forum (WSIS) represents the world's largest annual gathering of the ICT for Development community and a global platform facilitating the advancement of UN sustainable development goals. It provides an opportunity for information exchange, knowledge creation and sharing of best practices, while identifying emerging trends and fostering partnerships.