Limon.KG - "You need not only to leave and get an education abroad, but also to return and work for the benefit of society and the state," says Nuria Kutnaeva, who returned to Kyrgyzstan after studying in the United States and Germany. read an interview with the director of the "center for electronic interaction "tunduk".
l. tell us about yourself.

I was born and raised in Bishkek. I'm the eldest in the family. She studied at School No. 6, then entered the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University on the specialty "International Relations", specialization "Political Science". In her third year, she won a one-year UGRAD scholarship to Hartwick College, USA, where she gained not only academic knowledge, but also practical experience. She completed two internships in political organizations in Washington. A year later, she returned and graduated from the Slavic University with a red diploma. Subsequently, I and three other students were sent by the Slavic University for Inter-university Relations to Bavaria for a master's degree in the scholarship program. I studied in Germany for 4 years, including 3 years in the master's program and a year at the University of Munich, where I have already independently enrolled for the degree of Candidate of Sciences (Promotion).

L. How did you go abroad?

At the university, I studied English and German, thanks to this and excellent grades, I passed the competitive selection to Germany. Academic performance and knowledge of the language of the host country is the entrance ticket to the university, but then everything depends on your hard work and diligence. Foreign universities will always be on the side of successful students.

L. What differences do you see in the education systems of Kyrgyzstan and other countries?

in america, i really liked the subjects "research methods" and "management", where we conducted real research in practice and acted as "managers" of large companies. In the large library of the college, you could study all night. We still maintain friendly relations with several friends from the American college.

I liked my education in Germany not only because of the interesting lectures and seminars, but also from the point of view of order and discipline at the university: the master's student is given a lot of freedom, good libraries, free Internet at the university, the willingness of teachers to help students. At the same time, the responsibility is great – if you do not finish the research work on time at the end of any course, the course is not counted. There, students are very independent and decide for themselves what subjects to take. But at the same time, both in America and in Germany, there is an absolute zero tolerance for plagiarism, that is, if when checking a study or defending a project, it is found that a student has copied even a small part from the Internet or a book, he may even be expelled from the university. With plagiarism there jokes are bad.
L. what difficulties did you face?

At the very beginning, it was difficult for me in Germany for personal reasons, because six months before I left, I just got married. And for about a year we had to live in different countries, it is very difficult when the family is divided. I guess that's why I always spent a lot of time in the library, and tried to finish my program faster and get back to my husband. But later, my husband also received a scholarship to the same university, and then we studied together with him.

l. where and what are you working on now?

While still in Munich, I saw an announcement about studying for a master's degree at the OSCE Academy in Bishkek and decided to return to my homeland. in 2005, she graduated with honors from the osce academy. Subsequently, there were several opportunities to go first to study, and then to work abroad, but my husband and I decided that we would stay in Kyrgyzstan. after defending my phd thesis at the kyrgyz-russian slavic university on the topic of security, i was invited to work in the secretariat of the security council of the kyrgyz republic in the direction of preventing corruption in government agencies.

I had an opportunity to study more deeply the reasons for which there are corruption manifestations. It turned out that they are based not only on small salaries of civil servants, but also on the fact that many corruption risks are already laid down in the legislation. And because of the lack of automation, it is easy to forge paper documents, signing everything retroactively. Or another example: in order to receive any help, citizens are forced for weeks to go to the Agency, where everything depends on the goodwill of any officer he will issue a certificate and make it quickly, won't – will not give. It is painful to look at how our citizens – pensioners, the poor, entrepreneurs-are constantly forced to face this problem of certificates!

And when I was invited to help implement the electronic interaction system "Tunduk", which connects the information systems of state agencies with each other, I did not hesitate for a moment, I agreed. Now I work as the director of the state enterprise "Center for Electronic Interaction "Tunduk" under the State Committee of Information Technologies and Communications. We are introducing new electronic technologies to improve the efficiency of public administration in Kyrgyzstan.
L. Tell me in simple words, how does it work?

The "Tunduk" system appeared, first of all, to counteract corruption, which our citizens have been talking about for many years: old people who are forced to go through all the circles of hell, obtaining certificates, to receive pensions and social benefits, young mothers who previously had to come several tens of kilometers to get a child's birth allowance, bringing one or the second certificate.

For 3 years - since 2018-the team of our state-owned enterprise has implemented the "Tunduk" system, which was transferred to us by Estonia in 2016. Now this project works in all state bodies. Over the past 2 years, state agencies have excluded 13 certificates – that is, citizens no longer need to bring them, because state agencies request them from each other on the "Tunduk". In 2019-2020, data was exchanged between government agencies on these 13 certificates 6 million times, i.e. 6 million paper certificates in 13 directions were not provided to citizens, they did not go anywhere, and state agencies themselves requested this information from each other. and in general, in 2020, more than 45 million data exchanges between government agencies took place through the tunduk system. isn't that great?!

In 2020, we upgraded the state portal of electronic services (portal.tunduk.kg). Now every citizen can go to this portal (having previously received a cloud electronic signature in the PSC), pass identification and receive 82 services or services on the service portal. There are a lot of ideas and plans that we hope to implement in the near future. We have a young and ambitious team of IT specialists, the guys ' eyes are burning. Many guys graduated from universities abroad, some managed to work there for large companies, but they returned and work for the country.
L. Do you have any difficulties with government agencies when implementing e-governance?

The state policy is based on the need to support e-government, but there are officials who, under various pretexts, delay the processes we need, because they are not very interested in introducing electronic forms of interaction with citizens. But now the data economy is already developing by leaps and bounds all over the world. Thanks to the analysis of "big data", a forecast is made which direction is best to develop. Electronic platforms abroad are already working hard with the use of artificial intelligence technologies. Therefore, we can not lag behind – who of the states does not have time now, he will lose not only the future of children, but also grandchildren. I think that a lot depends on the heads of the state agency: some quickly and enthusiastically solve problems, others want to continue working as before and introduce digitalization only for formality, visibility, and someone frankly does not understand what we want from them. But I think most officials have already realized that it will not work in the old way.
L. How do you change the system? And how can we change?

You know, the motto of our team is " Who if not us?» Of course, we can't change the system on our own. But we have a clear vision of what we should come to and how to do it. I think it doesn't matter where a person is, in what position or at what geographical point, you just need to do your job efficiently, 100 percent. It is very difficult to promote such large-scale initiatives, but we are confident that step by step we will achieve full-scale implementation of e-governance in our country. we hope that the system will continue to change slowly. And we have allies-society and the media, which demand transparency from the state. recently, there was an interesting case-a state-owned company approached us: "we want to join the "tunduk", because dissatisfied citizens began to come to us and ask questions, they say, why do you force us to bring supporting certificates, if there is already a "tunduk"?". this is the support of e-government by ordinary citizens.
l. what should be done to ensure that our young people return to their homeland?

I want to emphasize that those who have gone abroad also do a great job promoting Kyrgyzstan, even when they are abroad, talking about our country, or doing good deeds. This is called people's diplomacy, because they become a kind of people's ambassadors of our country.

At work, I meet a lot of people who have studied abroad and returned to the country and work in the civil service, but they do not always advertise it. I know a lot of honest, competent civil servants who have studied abroad and returned to work in government agencies.