Yuriy Alkalay: Next cabinet must preserve the political will that electronic government is prior for administrative reformThe Bulgarian government made a step forward in its readiness to implement the electronic government. Soon, we will have electronic payment through the Internet as a type of administrative service.
Yuriy Alkalay, head of the Electronic Government Department at the Ministry of State Administration and Administrative Reform (MSAAR), comments on issues connected to the e-government and related services, in interview to the FOCUS News Agency.

Focus: Mr. Alkalay, would you tell us something more about the project of the Ministry of State Administration and Administrative Reform (MSAAR) for establishment of an environment offering electronic payment?
Yuriy Alkalay: This is one of the first projects funded under the European Social Fund through the Operational Program for Administrative Capacity, directly focused on the electronic government and more precisely on the improvement and optimization of the electronic administrative service. The project was started a year ago, when my colleagues and I developed the idea. The idea was approved by the council of directors at the ministry and after that we worked out the project itself. In fact, we started working on the project in December last year.
In the beginning we made a profound analysis on the payment systems in Bulgaria, the standards, the data exchange methods among the payment systems that have been adopted in the real life. We announced a public procurement on the grounds of this analysis for the execution of about 80% of the work on this project. In March, 2008, we officially announced the public procurement and the competition for the executor.
Datamax company won the competition and undertook the engagement to do very serious legal-technical work connected to the workout of rules for the environment and to create the environment in a six-month deadline, i.e. by October 1, 2008.
The project itself is worth about BGN 1.5 million, while the cost of the activities related to the public procurement are estimated at about BGN 1.3 million. The rest of the expenses are connected to information campaigns and training of state officers over system’s characteristics.
The system was realized on time. It was presented to us, passed all tests and now it is in a stage of test exploitation.
I believe the system will be launched in real exploitation in about a month.

Focus: How will be the payments made?
Yuriy Alkalay: First of all, I’d like to explain what the environment is like. The environment is not a new payment system – it is not some kind of a new bank, it is not a new connection among the banks and new payment method. The environment is something, which creates a bridge between the systems of the administration and the financial world. Before this system was created, if any of the administrations desired to make electronic payment, it had to sign an agreement with all commercial banks, which offer this service, plus the two electronic payment systems, plus some SMS operator, and so on. The environment is among the administrations, on the one hand, and the financial world, on the other and each administration has only one connection to this environment and each representative of the financial world has one sole connection to this environment.
In fact, this environment builds a bridge among many, more than thousands of administrative systems, and respectively, I guess about 500-600 financial systems in Bulgaria.
Our experts made a calculation and stated that in case each administration wants to make a connection with each of the systems in the financial world, i.e. the banks, operators and so on, the administration will have to make about 14,000 connections.
This comes to prove that we are following the right way.

Focus: This sounds really complicated. Can you give us an example?
Yuriy Alkalay: On the one hand, it is complex, on the other however – it isn’t. In the system, the environment for electronic payments makes it possible to use standard methods for transfer of information, which is generated in the process of administrative service about the number and kids of bills a physical person or a corporate body has. The banks receive this information. In fact, the financial operators, payment systems operators, get this information, make verification about whether the person in front of the computer is the person who holds the account and make the payment, after which they notify the environment over the payment made. The environment, on its part, confirms the information to the administration, which is the real executor of the services. The new thing is that the confirmation on the information about the payments is made in real time. Thus, since the service is rendered in real time, without having the money in its account yet, the administration has a 100% guarantee that the payment has been made.
Let’s examine an example. A person wants a certificate of conviction. He/she fills in an electronic application, sings it with electronic signature, pays certain sum through the environment, and the administration on the other side (in this case the administration of the court), which could provide the certificate in real time, in case it has the technical possibility to do it, because the person has completed the whole procedure.

Focus: What kind of services will be available in the nearest future?
Yuriy Alkalay: The environments is not a means for offering new services, it adds an extra function to the general service process. It only secures the payment in real time. What is important is that we want to make it possible for this environment to be able to operate under two scenarios. The first scenario is aimed for the future – the consumer enters the portal of the administration, chooses a services, files application, gets information about the price of the service, chooses a bank or electronic operator, pays, and this application, together with the payment confirmation, is sent to the administration that renders the chosen service. We are close to this scenario only in terms of several services, which will be launched in a month or two. This scenario could be applied for the National Revenue Agency, where we have already integrated the environment.
The second scenario will seriously increase the payment rate and ease people, who have properties in other towns, for instance. The system allows every single local administration – to put it roughly – to upload files containing information about the local fees and taxes. Then, a person who lives in Sofia, who has a property in the town of Shabla, will have to simply submit his/her personal identity number, put an electronic signature to assure his real identity, and get all the due payments to the administration.

Focus: How many participants are engaged with this project?
Yuriy Alkalay: There are three kinds of participants in the project. These are the MSAAR, of course, and its e-government systems; the financial organizations – banks, electronic payments operators, SMS operators; and the administration.
The good thing is that many administrations declared interest in the project and we signed partnership memorandum. I believe that the number of the municipalities, which will join the project by the end of the year, will increase to 50-60.

Focus: How many municipalities have joined the project so far?
Yuriy Alkalay: 20 but many other have shown real interest.

Focus: When will be the project completely finalized?
Yuriy Alkalay: In fact, it has been already finalized in terms of the technical part. The project itself will be finalized in January next year, when the final reports will be introduced.

Focus: What other administrations, apart form the municipalities, have declared interest to make electronic payments?
Yuriy Alkalay: We have signed memorandum with the National Revenue Agency

Focus: Is the Traffic Police interested in the electronic payment?
Yuriy Alkalay: Yes, it is. We introduced the system to the Traffic Police but it is not ready with the services yet. There are extremely good professionals at the Interior Ministry but they are divided between two highly important things. On the one hand, we have the need to provide easy and fast service on issues related to the Traffic Police – fines, forms, and etc. On the other hand, there is the Interior Ministry Act, which neither of the internal systems of the Interior Ministry is allowed to have contact with the external system.

Focus: It is because of the security.
Yuriy Alkalay: Yes, it is a matter of reaching certain level of security.

Focus: How will be the service offered by the environment commanded?
Yuriy Alkalay: The service will be commanded through the portal of the e-government. The portal will list the services, which the administrations have decided to offer on the Internet. In several years, the electronic environment will dispose of its own portal.

Focus: Is the Bulgarian administration lagged behind in terms of electronic payments?
Yuriy Alkalay: It is a very relative issue. The situation here is similar to the sports. We cannot say that we are very backward at sports as there many excellent athletes. On the other hand we cannot say that we are the best because it is not true, which we witnessed at the Olympic Games.
The situation is the same with the electronic payments – in some things we are good, as I can say that we are ranked in the Top 10, in terms of the legal framework. Our Electronic Movement Act is approved a really good practice. Anyway, Bulgaria is ranked 43rd in terms of preparedness of countries to implement e-government – with some underestimation. I say underestimation, as the European Commission (EC) and the agency that worked out the chart do not dispose of all projects, which are in a process of execution up to the present moment.
We do our best to inform the EC about what we are doing here and I believe that Bulgaria’s position in the chart for the preparedness of countries to implement e-governments is de facto among the first 30.
There are several things that allow the e-government to operate well – the presence of systems, in which Bulgaria is rather lagged behind; the presence of legal framework – in which we are very good; the presence of political will – in this case we are somewhere in the middle; and something that is very important – the thinking of the people working in the administration – most of these people are trained in computer technologies but they still lack the capacity needed and are not prepared to think with the terms of the e-government.

Focus: Is it necessary of this project to be developed after the end of this government’s term of office?
Yuriy Alkalay: The environment that we have developed is something very important in the whole machine of the e-gvernment. The next cabinet must do two things – to preserve the political will that the e-government is prior for the administrative reform and second – to “push” the administration with all means possible to implement the Electronic Government Act.

Focus: Would you comment on the development of the project for integrated administrative service?
Yuriy Alkalay: On December 15, the first year of the contract for execution of the project for integrated administrative service will end up. On this date, the three executors - HP, Siemens, and Storma Consortium, will report the tasks of the first year of the e-government. These tasks include the centralized systems for e-government, the portal and the registers for operational compatibility. Another thing they will report is the three new services developed under the Electronic Government Act and then to demonstrate how they work.


Galina DIMOVA