Kazakhstani Digital Minister Wants to Change Work of the Public Service Centers
Minister of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry Bagdat Musin inspected one public service center (PSC) in Nur-Sultan and said that some changes are needed.
«At the end of last week, I went to the PSC as a ghost client. Not everything in these centers works as it is supposed to. Once again I realized that when you visit these centers unexpectedly you have a chance to see how the real situation looks,» Musin wrote on Facebook on November 30.
As he noted, the decision to close self-service areas in public service centers was wrong because now all those services – even the e-signature issuing – are provided by unofficial brokers for a fee. Moreover, people are still crowding – not in self-service areas but in those outside stalls where the risk of infection is high enough. On top of that, people are forced to pay for services they used to receive for free.
«We have decided to restore all self-service areas this week. We will pay better attention to sanitary conditions rather than just pretend that we are helping to fight the pandemic by closing self-service areas,» he said.
The minister also criticized toilets in the public service centers, which are not so clean after all.
«To change this, we will allocate some money to repair these toilets. Secondly, we will introduce the new practice of photographing toilets. Those who are responsible for this task should send these photos to PSC’s managers and the situation center every hour. I also instructed regional and district leaders of the Government for Citizens to abandon luxurious offices with separate personal toilets. The manager and the client should go to the same bathroom; then the situation will be different, I guess» Bagdat Musin said.
According to the minister, all information kiosks where people can scan and print out their documents and certificates will be returned to the public service centers. SMS-notification of clients will be also restored in a very short time, Musin promised.
«I am sorry that I didn’t go to the public service centers earlier. Of course, I was there many times but not incognito. Then my priority was eGov. Previously, I had been thinking about making all government services online, so that there was no need to go to the PSC at all. However, I admit that for the senior generation it is more natural to visit PSC on their own, so we will continue to work to make the process of getting our services more comfortable,» Musin stated.
