The digital revolution in the delivery of public services in Albania has introduced the most recent concoction. This time, it is the national postal service of Albania crowns one of the most important pathways on the map of the 2020 digital revolution, as part of the digital government concept aimed at improving public service delivery, from making data-driven decisions to enacting evidence-based policies, from ensuring greater accountability and transparency within government to building greater public trust.  E-wallet is the new electronic wallet of every citizen to access all postal services via mobile phone, without any need to waste time on long queues in front of service windows in a bid to receive the required service.

Prime Minister Edi Rama attended the launch of the e-wallet app in the central city of Elbasan, accompanied by the Director General of the Albanian Postal Service, Laert Duraj, and the Mayor of Elbasan, Gledian Llatja. “We hope that with the e-wallet that is being launched today, a part of the citizens who pay the utilities at the Albanian Post they will fill the wallet just once and the electronic application will then be able to carry out any payment transaction,” Duraj said in his remarks while presenting the innovative application.

The e-wallet app will provide citizens with services they used to receive at window centres. Another positive element of the application is that it incurs no additional cost and it just takes an initial registration process with the Albanian Postal Service. “The main concern in the case of the Post Office has been the face-to-face contact for everything and the subjectivity of the employee behind the counter in addition to queues. In fact, the transformation of infrastructure is very important to offer comfort in service, transparency, to create a normal relationship in decent conditions. The shift to this platform is a ground-breaking transformation that actually eliminates bribery and the stress triggered, if not due to bribery, due to delays, obstacles and procrastinations. Today, we cannot definitely claim that we have completely freed the citizen from the clutches of bureaucracy and administration, but one thing is for sure, today the service provision is incomparably better than yesterday, even without this service,” PM Rama said.

The government head described the newest app and other public service solutions as epochal transformations in the area of the digital services. “Let them criticize, let them throw insults, let them say whatever they wish to say, but it is impossible to draw any comparison. Most importantly, this represents the basis of an incredible transformation that will take some time for people to get used with it, because it is most possible that people are still unaware that they can receive public services via their mobile phones and they still keep reporting at the institutions tasked with public service delivery.”