Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- On 15 June, an opening ceremony of the office of the Government Accelerator, one of the initiatives implemented jointly with Emirati partners under the Program to Improve the Effectiveness of Public Administration in Uzbekistan, was held in Tashkent.

The event was attended by the Minister of Government Affairs of the United Arab Emirates Mohammad al-Gergawi and Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Investments and Foreign Trade of the Republic of Uzbekistan Sardor Umurzakov, the leadership of the Ministry for the Development of Information Technologies and Communications, the Ministry of Construction, the Center for Economic Research and Reforms and other officials.

The main task of the Accelerator is to promptly and effectively solve urgent problems in the field of socio-economic development by attracting resources from government bodies and organizations. During every 100 days, Accelerator teams work with the participation of government agencies, the private sector and other stakeholders to develop and implement specific solutions.

As part of the event, the Accelerator management informed the participants about the results of the first 100-day cycle, during which work was carried out in four areas: simplifying the issuance of building permits, developing family entrepreneurship, developing master plans for cities and creating a unified billing system for utility bills.

So, as a result of the implementation of a set of measures with the participation of all responsible departments, it was possible to reduce the time for obtaining a construction permit from 246 to 84 days, and also to completely transfer the process to online mode. Currently, work continues on further optimization of the process and integration of the electronic system in the regions.

Significant success has been achieved in the development of family entrepreneurship. A pilot project to reduce poverty is being implemented in the Buka district of Tashkent region - the Accelerator’s team has formed a list of 55 women included in the Women’s Notebook register who are interested in the development of entrepreneurship. Professional courses were organized, as a result of which the project participants were assisted in developing business plans, registering their own enterprises and obtaining preferential loans.

Also, the Accelerator has developed proposals for making changes and additions to urban planning norms and rules, which will significantly simplify the process of interdepartmental approval of project documents, reduce the time for developing general construction plans and the cost of their development.

The data of more than 20 million consumers of utilities were processed, and the integration of consumer data between utilities was ensured on the basis of personal identification numbers of individuals (PINFL), which are used as a single identifier for consumers.

The Emirates side emphasized that the effectiveness of the Accelerator and the success of the program to improve the efficiency of public administration in Uzbekistan is an order of magnitude higher than the results achieved when testing a similar mechanism in other countries.

The ceremony participants were presented with the main directions of the Accelerator’s work within the new 100-day cycle: assessing the level of satisfaction of citizens with public services, generating statistics in the energy sector of Uzbekistan in accordance with UN standards, introducing a rating system for business organizations.

In general, the Program to improve the efficiency of public administration, implemented with the assistance of the UAE government, includes 25 areas, including the development of a National Development Strategy, improvement of public services, work to improve Uzbekistan’s position in the Doing Business rating, introduction of innovations, improvement of tax and customs administration, the practice of managing free economic zones, training of management personnel and the creation of a personnel reserve for government agencies and other areas. As part of the implementation of this program, 124 seminars and about 100 various joint events were organized both in Uzbekistan and in the UAE, in which more than 5 thousand people took part.