Since 2013, Albania has been going through one of the most important transformation processes in the country related to the digitalisation of public services and public administration's work processes. Nowadays, e-Governance is a tangible reality in Albania, managed and coordinated by the National Agency of Information Society (NAIS).
The national e-Government portal, e-Albania, acts as a front-end point for government institutions to deliver their services, thus operating as a single access point to citizens. The portal is connected to the Government Interoperability Platform allowing the interaction between 55 electronic systems of public institutions in real-time.
As of January 1, 2020, 95% of the public service applications to citizens and businesses have been provided exclusively online, which makes a total number of 1,207 e-services offered in the portal. In this new paradigm, NAIS needs to create a High-Performance Computing Centre in order to analyse and process this huge amount of data and transactions administered in state databases.
In parallel with this, the Western Balkan economies have embarked upon joint initiatives on enhanced regional cooperation to support digital integration and exchange of information in an open, interoperable, secure, and reliable way. These actions will support governments in administrative simplification and enable citizens to have a borderless experience across the region with less bureaucracy, better access and security.
From the perspective of Albania, the technical upgrade of infrastructure, modernisation of the Government Interoperability Platform and enhancement of data security have been essential to ensure regional interoperability.
In order to support Albanian efforts for the establishment of a High-Performance Computing Centre and setting up of a secure information exchange network to enable regional interoperability in the Western Balkans, WBIF has allocated a technical assistance grant for a Feasibility Study and Cost Benefit Analysis to assess the viability of investments from a technical, financial, and economic perspective.
