On September 28th 2019, the Ministry of Regional Development and Infrastructure of Georgia, in partnership with the World Bank and the Swiss Agency for Development Cooperation unveiled the new Unified Municipal Online Platform, which will transition over 15 different municipal services into the virtual space, giving immediate access to citizens in 63 municipalities of Georgia. The presentation was held at Tbilisi Marriott Hotel, with the-opening remarks from Maya Tskitishvili, the Vice-Prime Minister, Minister of Regional Development and Infrastructure of Georgia, Sebastian Molineus, the World Bank Regional Director for the South Caucasus and Danielle Meuwly, the Regional Director of the Swiss Cooperation Office for the South Caucasus.
The development and implementation of the online platform is undertaken by the Government of Georgia, with the support from the World Bank and the SDC under the Second Regional and Municipal Infrastructure Development Project. The wide range of online services offered by this platform includes asset and capital management, online applications and requests for various permits and services, such as cleaning and waste management, and participation in social and health protection programs. Among other features, the platform will host an up to date database of municipal information and a calendar of local events.
The Government of Georgia is committed to fostering and improving public services, strengthening transparent and open governance and increasing the availability and accessibility of e-services across the country. For this purpose, the government declared the development of universal digital municipal services system as one of its main priorities. The initiative fully echoes the objectives of the government’s Public Administration Reform, which aims to improve public service delivery in the municipalities at the local level. The project is also pursuant to one of the focus areas of Switzerland’s Cooperation Strategy 2017-2020, which supports the local self-governance reform and decentralization.
