YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 2, ARMENPRESS. Armenian Prime Minister Karen Karapetyan on February 2 delivered a speech at the Digital Agenda in the Era of Globalization forum in Almaty, Kazakshtan, the government told Armenpress.

Presenting Armenia’s digital agenda the PM said “we believe that the digital transformation is not only a step to technological progress, but also is the only opportunity to become a country with effective governance and economy in a short period of time, and here there are no alternatives for us”.

“The field of information technologies is actively developing in Armenia. In the recent years we have an annually nearly 25% growth in this sphere. We have not summarized the results of the previous year yet, but we expect nearly 28-30% growth”, the PM said.

In his remarks he also touched upon the education sector, stating that chess is taught in all schools of Armenia, including in schools of remote regions, as well as robotics and IT are also taught, and starting from this year children will also study business and finances in schools. Karen Karapetyan talked about the TUMO Center for Creative Technologies stating that it was recognized as the world’s best innovative school in 2016, and at present the Center expands not only within the country, but also abroad. Recently the Paris Municipality announced opening a similar center in the city.

Coming to Armenia’s digital agenda, the PM said at the moment the rapid digital progress is being implemented by 6 main directions of digital transformation:

-digital governance

-digital skills

-infrastructure

-cyber-security

-private sector

-institutional basis

"In order to effectively coordinate the progress of the national digital agenda, the Armenian government established Digital Armenia fund in 2017, Armenia’s digital transformation agenda 2018-2030 development program has been prepared. According to the digital agenda, we plan to reach 100% figure on “state-business” services until 2030 and 80% digital partnership on “state-business” services”, the PM said.

The forum was attended by the heads of government of the EAEU states, IT international experts and specialists.