World Monitor Mag, Digitalisation WM_June 2019 web | Page 10

DESTINATION KAZAKHSTAN innovation activity of Kazakhstani IT specialists and companies has attracted investments of almost 29 billion tenge. You see, the domestic startup ecosystem has been formed relatively recently, but we have already managed to achieve significant results in this direction. For example, changes in legislation were initiated, conditions were created to simplify the visa and employment regimes for foreign participants of the international technology park of IT startups ‘Astana Hub’, while tax preferences were introduced for participants, and 150 incubation projects were selected with about 50 startups released. Additionally, basic research is being conducted in areas such as the Smart city, Industry 4.0, Big Data, Blockchain, Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence. To date, most of the projects have already passed the activation stage and it is very important for us that startups continue to develop even further. The ‘Astana Hub’, in terms of further innovative development of the country is of great importance. Given its potential and successful start, we assume that it will become one of the key elements in the development of the country's innovation ecosystem. For this, we will develop the innovation ecosystem in five key areas. First of all, we are positioning 8 world monitor the technology park as a ‘single window’ for participants in the startup ecosystem of the entire country. Secondly, it is important to create our own financial instruments for Astana Hub and to provide grants for the IT start-ups. The third important element is the development of corporate innovation in the private sector. The work being carried out should lead to an increase in the importance of Kazakhstan in international ratings and the development of the ‘Future Cities’ concept, as well as the development of the investor base. In other words, Astana Hub should become a kind of umbrella for the entire innovation ecosystem of Kazakhstan, uniting development institutions, start- up projects, investors, domestic IT companies and other players in the venture capital market. You have now talked about plans for further development in various sectors of the economy, but what about the prospects for digital development of the government itself? Here we are also implementing a very important project, which in the near future, I hope, will radically change the very paradigm of government. I'm talking about the project ‘Smart Data Ukimet’, which, by the way, was presented at the opening of ‘Astana Hub’. This unique system aims at forming a single space of big data from various sources, in order to analyze large volumes of information using the elements of artificial intelligence and promptly predict scenarios for events for our country’s government. The fact is that a large amount of useful information has now been accumulated in the databases of information systems within state bodies. These data are valuable both for intellectual analysis within each state body and at the level of the government as a whole. Thus, a significant amount of Big Data has already been created, which are suitable for analysis with specialized tools. Without creating a single space and implementing specialized tools for analyzing big data this information loses its value by at least half. I believe that Smart Data Ukimet should be considered as the basic basis for the digital transformation of state management for economic sectors. Therefore, we are now engaged in the implementation of digital prediction tools based on artificial intelligence and Big Data. At the first stage, case studies were already modeled by connecting the systems of the healthcare, education, finance, and labor spheres.