“Albanian Digital Solutions” (ADS), the new public company created to take Albania’s digital transformation and the modernisation of public services to a new stage, was presented today.
At the event, held with the participation of representatives of institutions and the technology sector, Prime Minister Edi Rama described the establishment of ADS as a strategic step in strengthening state capacities for the development, maintenance and innovation of digital systems, with the aim of turning the company into a centre of excellence for Albanian talents inside and outside the country.
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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you very much!
It is a marked day on the path of the digital revolution and the fundamental transformation of the country’s governance through technology, because today we are making public a new company, a new enterprise, which is being created as a necessity in this new stage of the development of electronic governance.
AKSHI, the National Agency for Information Society is an extraordinary success story, which has passed through a path that was not at all easy, a path that began with a few services and then culminated in over 1,200 online public services; a path that began with a few people who used the platform and then culminated in over 3 million users, also as a result of the dramatic moment of the pandemic, when in fact the “e Albania” platform became a lifesaver for the health of Albanians, who through it were able at the same time to comply with the necessary restrictive measures. It was a path where, certainly, the need for financing has continued to grow, since the systems built require financing both to be built and to be maintained, and a path where the need clearly arose to separate the leadership of electronic governance, the definition of standards, the orientation of the digital architecture, the coordination of the forces involved and the control of quality and compliance with the entire operational level. This separation is no longer between the public sector and the private sector, but first and foremost within the public sector itself, through the creation of a new company, “Albanian Digital Solutions”, which will develop systems without the state always having to turn to the private sector, but, on the contrary, with the ambition that the state create the most successful public company for the development of systems and their maintenance; the most successful company in the market, a company that has the capacity to become a space for all talents, a company that has the highest salaries in the digital services market, a company that has the capacity to offer talents, not only inside the country, but also outside the country, the opportunity to become part of it by combining both office work and remote work in function of its goals; a company that will be a guarantee for the country’s institutions, which can never remain hostage to private entities in the maintenance of their systems; a company that guarantees all technical continuity, but also offers the highest institutional and civic responsibility in relation to the public, while at the same time guaranteeing the measurability of the service.
This is the ambition, which also has a cost, a very meaningful, very significant cost, written based on a projection, precisely of the figures that change with the change in the approach of the government and electronic governance towards service recipients. This means that, if today we spend an X amount only on the maintenance of systems, a considerable amount which goes to private companies, within a three year period, we will save the state and electronic governance itself an amount equal to the amount that today goes to maintenance, which in fact will be able to turn into a new investment capacity by AKSHI, the National Agency for Information Society through ADS. It is that simple.
Meanwhile, by taking this path, the government will turn the eyes of companies towards the private sector, since ADS will certainly become a superpower in the market, but it will be a superpower focused on public services. It will not be a company, at least in the first phase, that will aim to enter the private sector as well, which today stands in dramatic contrast to the public sector in this field, where Albania shines in all international rankings for digital public services and electronic governance, while it darkens when it comes to how familiar and integrated enterprise and the private sector are with the new world of digital technology. Therefore, private companies will need to reimagine their position in the market and reconceptualize the path of their future, just as we reimagined and reconceptualized the path of the future of public services through the creation of this company.
Another important aspect that constitutes an advantage for this solution is also the capacity that the state will create in this way to have through this company solutions which can later turn into modules or prototypes that can be exported.
The Minister touched upon the solution on which intensive work is being done for the innovative model for public procurement with artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence has entered public procurement everywhere, but it has entered certain segments of the process, while ours is the first attempt that aims to cover the entire process with artificial intelligence. In this attempt, we are engaged, but also coordinated with many states, with the agencies or structures that deal with services and electronic governance in many states. It is an effort in which we strongly believe that we will succeed in turning it into a reality, and by turning it into a reality, this means having a product produced in our country which is exportable. This is the blessing of the age of technology. The age of technology gives everyone, everywhere, an opportunity.
I must also emphasize this: this company is in the same line with a new approach of the government, which is an approach that has come because of Albania itself and the Albanian state itself moving into an entirely new phase. I mean that the government has considered it appropriate, because it has seen that the conditions have been created, to place greater emphasis on the forces that the public sector can put into the terrain of the economy.
The Albanian Investment Corporation is today a reality that clearly speaks of the superiority of this approach in relation to the previous one, which was conditioned by the time and by the weak mechanisms we had at our disposal.
Today, the Albanian Investment Corporation has created a portfolio with a capacity of over half a billion euros, which will go in the interest of the Albanian state, doing nothing other than placing public properties at the service of development for the interests of the state as well. No longer everywhere and whenever giving away public property for nothing in the name of development, something that was done in the past and was rightly done because there were no other possibilities. Now it comes naturally to me to say this also about the great noise that has been raised over a fake piece of news, as if the state is supposedly giving away Zvërnec. The state is not giving away anything, because the state has nothing there. That is private property, private property from time immemorial, and the investors involved in that process are very serious investors who took that property from private owners, let us be very clear. Meanwhile, yes, the state has assets on the other side of the project, which is the island of Sazan, where negotiations have not yet been concluded, because the Albanian Investment Corporation is part of the project and the Albanian state will be there, and the land of the island will be there, belonging to the Albanian state.
The other company that we have created, which is likewise a public company with private partnership, is AlbTrace. AlbTrace has today taken over all those things which until yesterday were done through failed concessions. The fuel marking concession, the fiscal stamp concession, were failed concessions. Today they are no longer concessions, but law enforcement activities carried out by a public company with the involvement of another state partner, the United Arab Emirates, and with the excellence that then comes from the private sector, making it possible for fuel marking, the tracking of all excise goods, digital identity, securities, all these to be part of a state holding, and naturally here the state also receives the revenues. Today, in fact, we are no longer in the conditions of the concession for passports and identity cards either. Today the identity card costs less and the Albanian state, through the company IdentiTek, benefits from money which until yesterday all went into the pocket of a private entity.
The companies we are creating in the field of defence are all companies born from a very simple definition. We do not want foreigners to come to Albania, take land, take warehouses, take structures and produce. We want whoever comes to Albania to co-produce with us, to co-produce with the Albanian state, with the Ministry of Defense and with the company that we have created, “Kayo”, which is another public company that is part of private investments made in the field of defence, and in this way the state, the Ministry of Defense, the defense sector and the Albanian army earn money from this activity.
Only the company “Timak Defense”, which was born from cooperation with the state by an Albanian start up created by a girl who used to produce cars in an artisanal way, today has an order portfolio to export from Albania, cars, ambulances, police cars, fire engines, army vehicles, worth over half a billion. And naturally, by being part of it, the state receives revenues.
The other company created, which will soon begin to deliver its first products, is the company “Guna”, which will produce all the uniforms of the Albanian state, starting with all the uniforms of the Albanian army. Uniforms for the Swedish army are produced in Albania. The Swedish army produces its own uniforms in Albania, in a rural area of Albania, in a modest manufacturing workshop.
Today we have this joint company, which will produce uniforms for us, for the Albanian state, for the Albanian army, for the Albanian Police, for the firefighters, for the Municipal Police, and it will also produce uniforms for other NATO armies. Contacts have already begun, because we have created a tradition in the history of sewing. We used to unstitch when we dealt with the state and sew when we dealt privately. Now we are in another phase, and not to go any further, because this is a topic that I am very passionate about and there are many things to say, I want to say that the first phase of our governance was the transition from the age of stone and wood, because it was both stone and wood when we took office, to the digital age with the creation of the platforms.
The second phase was the digitalisation of services.
Now we are in the third phase, which is the phase of intelligent administration, and I did not speak about what artificial intelligence components the companies I mentioned above have. I did not speak about what technological components the companies I mentioned above have, but I want to say that today we have started not only the major project of the revolutionary transformation of the procurement process, but we have also started the project of introducing artificial intelligence agents at the first level of governance. We have begun with the ministries and with the finance and legal service sectors of the ministries, by engaging a special structure to move towards the use of artificial intelligence agents to give speed, to give high professional integrity and to give indisputable quality to all acts related to finances and legal services. We are using artificial intelligence widely in the approximation of our legislation with the legislation of the European Union. We are using artificial intelligence increasingly every day in taxes. One of the reasons why revenues increase without raising taxes, apart from the administration, is also the artificial intelligence platform, which greatly helps the tax and customs administration to identify where the problems are without the need to be sent out on the roads to attack the doors of all businesses in order to find something.
In closing, I also want to say what the Minister briefly touched upon. All of this is what has to do with electronic governance, what has to do with a state that functions in technology and which, by functioning on technology, becomes a state many times closer and many times more efficient for the citizen. But on the other hand, for us to continue to shine, the whole innovation ecosystem must be raised to another level and, to tell the truth, the leadership and work of the Minister and the Ministry of Economy and Innovation are producing meaningful results.
We have an opening, if I may call it that, of the first flowers of the startup field, and I want to tell all those who deal with startups that in a few weeks we will disburse another fund, because the significant increase this year in the number of applications to “Startup Albania” has considerably exceeded the planned fund in relation to applications of value, and we do not want to leave applications of evident value waiting until next year to receive funding. Therefore, based on the applications, we will decide to disburse the fund, and we will increase the fund for start ups significantly, continuing next year, and the year after, and the year after. This is so that we can give all talents, not only in Tirana, but throughout Albania, the opportunity, by initially having financial assistance, to transform their lives, but also to influence the transformation of the life of the country.
Thank you very much, and all those who deal with electronics, from today, if they believe they are a special talent, have the path open to apply and become part of Albanian Digital Solutions. I repeat, a company that was born today, but that will become the superpower of the public digital services market and will be able to pay its employees better than any other company in the market today.
Thank you very much!
