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ENP EAST high-level event
“Building citizen-centric services for a digital future”
Launch of the SIGMA Paper on ‘Service design and delivery in the ENP East region - a
comparative report on designing and delivering administrative services in Armenia, Azerbaijan,
Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine’
21 October 2022
9.00 – 11.00 CET (+1 Kyiv, +2 others) – online event
Background
Good public administration is an essential component in promoting sustainable and green economic
growth, creating jobs and attracting investors. Administrative simplification leads to a less burdensome
environment for businesses, while modern service delivery methods, such as e-government solutions and
one-stop shops, increase the accessibility of services.
Developing good public administration requires political commitment, vision, strategy, the definition of
priorities and the right sequencing of actions. This commitment needs to be translated into practice, with
public services designed, delivered and constantly re-designed around the evolving needs of the user,
rather than for the convenience of the administration. Building on this, the aim of The Principles of Public
Administration1 is to focus on service delivery by the public administration, its added value, efficiency and
improvement in the context of limited and scarce financial resources.
The growing importance of digital technologies cannot be neglected in these reform trends. Digital
government by contrast is not simply about converting what was on paper into electronic form. It is about
embedding a culture throughout the public administration of meeting the needs of users by re-engineering
processes and services, with technology as an enabler rather than a driver of transformation.
This is no less true in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood, where each country is demonstrating its willingness
and ability to embrace change. The European Commission has emphasised the importance of good public
service design and delivery in its priorities for the Eastern Partnership beyond 2020, including the ambition
that at least 80% of public services are available online through interoperable platforms, and at least four
countries should have digital signatures that are recognised mutually with each other and with the EU, with
30% of documents transferred cross-border signed digitally2. This ambition of “accelerating the digital
transformation including investments in digital infrastructure and e-governance” was reiterated in the 2021
Eastern Partnership Summit.3
With this online event, SIGMA aims to contribute to the reforms in the ENP East region and in this context
launch the SIGMA Paper on “Service design and delivery in the ENP East region - a comparative report
on designing and delivering administrative services in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and
Ukraine’.
1
OECD (2016), The Principles of Public Administration: A Framework for ENP Countries, OECD, Paris,
http://www.sigmaweb.org/publications/Principles-ENP-Eng.pdf.
2
Commission Joint Staff Working Document, SWD(2021)186 final, Recovery, Resilience and Reform: post-2020
Eastern Partnership priorities, https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/european-neighbourhood-
policy/eastern-partnership_en
3
Joint Declaration of the Eastern Partnership Summit (Brussels, 15 December 2021), p.9 20211215-eap-joint-
declaration-en.pdf (europa.eu)

2. 2 |
Agenda
09:00 – 09:05 Opening and welcome
Mr. Gregor VIRANT – SIGMA Head of Programme
09:05 – 09:20 Introductory remarks on building citizen-centric services for a digital future
- Ms. Natalia ARISTIMUÑO PÉREZ - Director of Digital Services, DGDIGIT, European
Commission
09:20 – 09.35 Service design and delivery in the ENP East region. A presentation of the SIGMA regional study
Mr. Nick THIJS - senior advisor SIGMA
09:35 – 09.50 Keynote on the future trends and place of the public service delivery and digital government
Ms. Anne-Sophie MILGRAM, Director at the inter-ministerial directorate for government transformation
(France)
09:50 – 10:40 Panel on service design and delivery in the ENP EAST Region
 Ms. Aneta BABAYAN - Adviser to the Deputy Prime Minster (Armenia)
 Mr. Soltan BAYRAMOV - Deputy Director of the eGov Development Centre at the State Agency
for Public Service and Social Innovations (Azerbaijan)
 Ms. Ekaterine MRULISHVILI, Head of Research & Projects Development, Public Service
Development Agency (Georgia)
 Mr. Mircea ESANU - Director Public Services Agency (Moldova)
 Ms. Gulsanna MAMEDIIEVA, Director General of the Directorate for European Integration,
Ministry of Digital Transformation (Ukraine)
Moderated by Mr. Martins KRIEVINS – senior advisor and regional manager of the ENP EAST region
SIGMA
10:40 – 10:50 Questions from the audience
10:50 – 11:00 Closing remarks
- Mr. Florian HAUSER - Team Leader Thematic support - Rule of Law, Governance and Security. DG
NEAR, European Commission
- Mr. Gregor VIRANT – SIGMA Head of Programme
11.00 End of the event
About SIGMA
SIGMA (Support for Improvement in Governance and Management) is a joint initiative of the OECD and
the European Union, principally financed by the EU. Its key objective is to strengthen the foundations for
improved public governance, and hence support socio-economic development through building the
capacities of the public sector, enhancing horizontal governance and improving the design and
implementation of public administration reforms, including proper prioritisation, sequencing and budgeting.
SIGMA has been working with its partners on strengthening their public governance systems and public
administration capacities since 1992.