The Front-Office Digitization platform (FOD), an advanced digital solution developed by the e-Governance Agency (EGA) that won the WSIS Digital Service Design Special Prize at the World Summit on the Information Society Forum (WSIS Forum 2023), was presented today, March 21, 2023, in a press conference held by the director of EGA, Olga Tumuruc, and the FOD design team.

According to EGA experts, FOD is a project with a nation-wide impact which accelerates digital transformation in the Republic of Moldova and provides multiple opportunities supporting the efforts towards the modernization of services and automation of business processes and interactions.

The major benefits of FOD are:

-       FOD is a standardized tool that allows for the digitalization of services at national level;

-       connected to the national data backbone;

-       integrated and connected with all the electronic platform services (payments, notification, authorization, logging, delivery);

-       FOD is a unique system that allows companies and institutions to develop new services independently;

-       a single interface for users of online public services;

-      due to its integration with MCabinet, citizens can receive fully online services with no need to go to the service delivery points.

Starting tomorrow, March 22, 2023, citizens will be able to apply for and receive online 20 civil status services, which have been developed on the FOD platform. The life events they refer to are birth, death, marriage and divorce.

During the press conference, the FOD implementation team announced that over 50 electronic public services, available to citizens on the Public Services Portal (servicii.gov.md), have been developed on the FOD platform over the past year and other systems and services, like e-APL (electronic local government), e-Consulat (electronic consulate), e-Apostila (electronic apostille), e-Cazier (electronic criminal record) and many other included on the digital transformation agenda of the Government of the Republic of Moldova for the coming years, are to be developed.

According to Mrs. Tumuruc, the director of EGA, FOD is the digital future for the development of electronic services and its major objective is to accelerate digital transformation. “This is a high-performance system that is scalable, extensible and adaptable to a variety of new information systems allowing easier, faster and more uniform digitalization”, she said.

During the press conference, FOD was presented by Igor Bercu, the head of EGA’s Digital Platform Department, who mentioned that “the idea of FOD emerged during the pandemic when restrictions made the access to the public services difficult and this kind of solution necessary. FOD is a system made of components or blocks, which can be used to develop an unlimited number of new online services”, Mr. Bercu stressed.

Artur Reaboi, chief IT architect at EGA, described FOD as a car factory, associating the new automated IT systems with cars. “Instead of creating separate services, we created a factory for making new services”, he added.  

Sergiu Bedros, the head of EGA’s Project Implementation Department, spoke about the services that are planned to be developed on the FOD platform, adding that „the digital transformation process will be faster and more efficient due to FOD. It will help facilitate the interaction between citizens and businesses by providing online access to services required to start a business and all the kinds of interactions between government and businesses, but also between citizens and local governments”.

The Front-Office Digitization solution, awarded the WSIS Digital Service Design Special Prize by the International Telecommunication Unit (ITU) and GovStack, has been designed by EGA experts under the Modernization of Government Services Project, implemented with the support of the World Bank Group - the strategic partner of e-government. FOD beneficiaries are the citizens applying for public services and the service providers - Public Services Agency, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration and other entities the services of which have been digitized with the help of FOD.