This Monday, May 11, the state of emergency, which lasted 2 months, has ended. The President of the Republic of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Zhomart Tokayev, in his speech spoke about the successful experience of the remote work of civil servants, which gives reason to create an effective and compact state apparatus.

Recall that on March 15, 2020, the President announced the start of the state of emergency in the country. Quarantine and movement restrictions were introduced. The issue of organizing work for employees of government agencies has become an acute issue. It was necessary to ensure their safety, without stopping the work of the state. The next day, March 16, the Government signed a protocol for the implementation of urgent emergency measures, in which it instructs the ICRIAP to organize the remote work of government officials as soon as possible.

At the time the emergency began, the situation was as follows.

In Kazakhstan, there are only 38 main central civil defense organizations, consisting of about 1,200 territorial bodies with a total number of more than 80,000 employees. Together with the IOI (Akimats), the number of employees is about 130,000 people. All civil organizations work in the Unified Electronic Document Management System (ESEDO), implemented on the IBM Lotus Notes platform. Over the past 10 years, more than 14 billion tenge has been spent only on the purchase of ESEDO licenses, and about 3-4 billion tenge is spent on the annual maintenance of the system.

In 2013, IBM discontinued support and further releases of this product. The LotusNotes platform turned out to be technologically obsolete by the time, for working with which it was necessary to make complex configuration of a thick client on a computer. But with the thick LotusNotes client, it was not possible to provide remote work for government employees.

Therefore, in order to organize remote work, it was necessary to transfer all central and territorial state bodies to a new platform that would allow working with documents using an Internet browser. In other words, re-introduce the new EDMS.

On March 16, 2020, all the resources of Documentolog and JSC NIT were mobilized for the implementation of this project. And on March 21, 2020, just 5 days after the introduction of the emergency, the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Ministry of Trade and Integration of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Ministry of Ecology, Geology were the first to transfer from the EDMS to Cloud Document Management (ODL) on the Documentolog platform and natural resources of the Republic of Kazakhstan. For employees of these organizations, together with the RSE GTS, remote work from home was organized. After the translation of the first Ministries, work was done to scan the source code of Documentolog EDMS and go through information security procedures.

By April 1, 2020, another 14 ministries of the Republic of Kazakhstan were transferred and provided with remote work from home. Today, 53 central and 29 territorial state bodies are already working in the ODL on the Documentolog platform. Our company continues the transfer of new government agencies and provides their own support with our own efforts.

At the beginning of 2017, the NIKH Zerde JSC initiated the project of the Cloud Software Document Service Service Product. The design assignment (RFP) for NGN was published on the Zerde website. This project caused a great stir among IT companies in Kazakhstan. All comments on the RFP were officially sent to Zerda. As a result, the approval and approval of the project was delayed for 1.5 years and the final version was published only on September 19, 2018.

Documentolog on a common basis took part in the competition. She went through all the mandatory procedures and, following the results of the meeting of the tender commission, on January 28, 2019, she was allowed to pilot connection of state bodies. Within 3 months, the company carried out work on the transfer of ICRIAP and Akimat of Astana to Documentolog EDMS, having done a huge amount of work to study current processes in the EDMS and integration with other information systems. The Office of the Prime Minister took the draft ODL into control. But in April 2019. Documentolog received a notice that due to budget sequestration, the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan canceled the issuance of funds provided for by the draft ODL, and the project was suspended.

And only with the introduction of the emergency mode and the need to quickly make a decision on transferring all government agencies to the Cloud Document Management to ensure remote work, the project was launched again. Documentolog became the supplier of the system, since at that time it already had 1.5 years of experience in implementing ODL in two state bodies.

Thus, in 2-3 weeks a complex project was implemented, the analogues of which have never been. This project is unique and will rightfully go down in the history of digitalization of our state. And we hope it will serve as a good case study for other countries.