Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- On 8 June, President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev was provided with information on the progress of reforms in information technology and digital economy development.

On 28 April, the Head of the state signed a resolution “On measures for widespread introduction of the digital economy and e-government”. The post of Advisor to the Prime Minister on these issues has been introduced to ensure the quality and coordination of the execution of tasks defined by the document.

At today’s event, it was noted that the achievement of goals in the sphere can be accelerated by training a new generation of specialists.

The initial stage of the One Million Programmers project covered over 62 thousand students and 5.4 thousand of them have already received certificates of qualification.

The task was set to train 100 thousand people by the end of the year and another 150 thousand in the first half of 2021, to improve students’ skills in software development. The instruction has been given to improve Computer Science taught at the 5th grade in schools, include disciplines from the One Million Programmers project in its program.

Today, there is an increasing demand for the achievements of the digital economy, electronic services, including state ones. However, currently only 185 of the 780 public services are available in electronic form. And the process of digitalization of the activities of most organizations is reduced to the introduction of electronic document management.

In this regard, the need for accepting graduates of the e-Learning Program project to work in government and business institutions as IT specialists was noted. They will be engaged in the digital transformation of organizations.

For example, the decision to provide loans and subsidies to poor families should be taken automatically by a special electronic program based on specific criteria.

The Advisor to the Prime Minister was instructed to develop, with the assistance of international experts, a concept for digitalization of the process of issuing permits and decision-making in organizations.

Improvement of the infrastructure of information technology, increasing IT literacy of the population, especially youth is also required.

The Ministry for Development of Information Technologies and Communications has been tasked with opening at least 100 digital technology training centers in all regions. These institutions will offer short courses in programming, e-commerce and graphic design.

Attention is also paid to creating conditions for specialists of the sphere. Last year, an IT Park was opened in Mirzo Ulugbek district of Tashkent. Branches of this IT Park are organized in Andijan and Margilan. Another branch is being built on the territory of the School of Information Technologies named after Muhammad al-Khwarizmi in Tashkent.

By the end of this year, it is planned to create such branches in Gulistan, Bukhara, Namangan, Nukus, Samarkand, Urgench and Jizzakh.

At the presentation, responsible persons informed about the construction progress of these IT parks, ongoing work on expanding the network of fiber-optic lines, increasing the speed and quality of mobile Internet.