Digital identity represents another milestone in Albania’s digital transformation, introduced today as a significant step forward on the country’s path toward technological modernization of social and economic life.

With these new developments, identity—an essential element connecting citizens with the state—will evolve from a physical form into a digital one, enabling citizens to sign, make payments, and carry out secure transactions from their phones, anywhere and anytime.

At the event held on this occasion, a live demonstration showcased how the Digital Identity works, with the Ministry of Internal Affairs playing a central role in ensuring standards and accessibility for all Albanian citizens.

Prime Minister Rama emphasized that Albania has already become a regional leader in public services and innovation.
“We have great faith in the power of innovation, which is why we are fully committed to it—becoming, in fact, a regional leader in public services and innovation, while laying a solid foundation to envision transformations across every sector, thanks to innovation and now also thanks to AI,” Prime Minister Rama said.

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Greetings to everyone!

This is another long-awaited and well-received moment, because for some time now we have been engaged with great enthusiasm—but also with our usual ambition—to create the digital identity, which represents the foundation for yet another major leap forward and a projection into the future, thanks to technology. To the best of my knowledge, what is being demonstrated today will be available to the public, serving the relationship between citizens and the state, as well as our economy, at the beginning of next year.

Meanwhile, the European Union is also preparing for the launch of its digital identity, with the declared objective that by 2027 EU citizens will be able to obtain their own digital identity. We will be one year ahead, and I underline this not to imply or claim any superiority on our part, but to once again highlight the extraordinary advantage that technology provides to any country that embraces it, an advantage that enables overcoming obstacles which, at times, are even historical. Personally, I consider this an immense blessing of our era, because through digital technology and, most recently, thanks to AI, nations can envision surpassing entire eras that would otherwise be impossible to overcome at the pace of linear progress that preceded the technological age.

This is why we place great trust in the power of innovation, and why we have dedicated ourselves fully to it—becoming, in fact, a regional leader in both public services and innovation, while building a solid foundation to envision transformations in every sector, thanks to innovation and now also thanks to AI.

We are now engaged in daily work on building a very powerful accelerator that will support our AI-created minister—an accelerator that will penetrate every sector and provide the government with solutions and options wherever there is a need to overcome long-standing obstacles, or where we must take much bigger steps than we have managed so far.

And without taking up your time by going sector by sector, I want to focus on today’s moment: the digital identity. This is an essential instrument for implementing our plan to move from cash to digital transactions. This means much greater security for consumers; it means far more transparency for businesses; and it means significantly higher revenues from the portion that rightfully belongs to the consumer but largely remains out of reach due to informality and various tricks—practices that will be drastically reduced, if not entirely eliminated, thanks to digital transactions. At the core of this is the Value Added Tax.

On the other hand, we firmly believe that through technology and artificial intelligence we will be able to create entirely new conditions and opportunities for healthcare—ensuring that everyone, regardless of where they live, can have access to quality monitoring and treatment. The same goes, without question, for our education system. We are also working on the digitalization of our transport system, among other areas, though as I said, I will not go into each of them today.

To conclude, since the protagonist of the day is the Ministry of Internal Affairs, I want to emphasize that we are moving swiftly with the launch of the major “Smart City” project. This project will help us digitize, through intelligent cameras, the entire traffic monitoring system in our cities, starting with Tirana.

It will enable us to have a much more comprehensive picture regarding law enforcement, public order, and the fight against crime. At the same time, it will also give us real-time insight into daily life in schools. Thanks to this program, security will increase exponentially, as will the ability of parents to follow their children’s overall behavior at school—not only in critical moments, but in its entirety. This, in turn, will have a major positive impact on school attendance, on reducing the troubling phenomenon of bullying, and, naturally, on strengthening the engagement and accountability of teachers themselves.

I strongly believe that with these projects, and with the Digital Identity program—which is far more complex than it may appear in the meaningful presentation we witnessed today—we will be able to take Albania 2030 to a completely different level from where we stand today. We will be able to empower citizens in ways that are almost unimaginable, to make their daily lives incomparably easier, and to enable interactions that currently require more time, more energy, and inevitably more stress, to instead be carried out with far less effort, far less time, and with far less stress.

I want to sincerely thank the IdentiTek team, its leadership, and all of IdentiTek’s partners who are present here today. Your significant presence is both an encouraging sign of partnership and a mark of respect for this new institution, which is proving every day how a public company can successfully take the place of a private one that until yesterday provided identity card services—replacing it with lower costs, greater efficiency in service quality, and above all, with much more innovation in the service of the public and in the service of our country’s future.

So to all those from the IdentiTek team here today, I want to extend my special greetings—and through you, to the rest of the team not present here. I want to emphasize that we have great confidence in the potential of this company and high ambitions for its future, just as we do for another newly established company, created in cooperation with highly diligent international partners: the public company AlbTrace. This company will allow us to achieve real-time traceability of all products, to enhance product control and safety in unprecedented ways, and to significantly reduce informality and the negative consequences it brings both to the quality of life and, very directly, to people’s health.

With these two public companies, we are truly confident that we will bring about meaningful changes in our society and significantly modernize the way it functions.

Thank you all once again!