Leveraging E-Government for better Public Service Delivery in Albania

The workshop "Leveraging E-Government for better Public Service Delivery in Albania” was held in Tirana, Albania, June 19 - 20, 2008. This event was organized in cooperation with the recently established National Agency of Information Society (NAIS). The workshop brought together 70 Information Technology experts from the Public Administration, representatives from Government of Albania, as well as participants from other governmental institutions.

The main objective of the Workshop was  to provide participants with several aspects of implementing ICT initiatives in Government and to help prepare the participants to play a leadership role in the planning and implementation of ICT projects in the public sector in Albania.

The program served the following specific objectives:

• Help the participants visualize the various components of an e-Government strategy for deploying ICTs for socio-economic development of a country and the role that different Government agencies need to play in the process of design and implementation of the strategy.  

• Help the participants acquire a holistic view of an IT application - to enable them to consider a government information system from the point of view of various stakeholders including the citizens, the government, and the technology vendors, so that while dealing with such applications both the technical aspects and socio-economic aspects are taken into consideration.

• Develop an appreciation among the participants for information technology and its role in operational and strategic decision making, and to expose them to current trends in hardware, software, communications and networks, so that they can assess the implications of the new technologies for offering new and improved services, choose cost-effective technology in planning and upgrading their systems, and to acquire a variety of skills for handling techno-commercial decisions.

This workshop is part of the continuous efforts of the World Bank and the Government of Albania to support the e-government agenda of the country. This was an important event in raising capacities of the public administration IT experts.