Electronic Government In the Offing

On February 28, Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych received Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of the world- famous Microsoft Europe, Middle East, and Africa corporation. Ukraine is interested in this meeting because it is introducing the Electronic Government informational system designed to improve interrelations between public administration bodies, businesses, and individuals. Incidentally, the Ukrainian side announced that this country possesses a huge software production capacity — Ukraine is the world’s fourth largest supplier, after the US, India, and Russia, of certified programmers.

Microsoft needs no introduction. The American business journal Forbes the other day pronounced the corporation’s founder Bill Gates the world’s richest person for the sixth time in a row. The corporation invested $4.3 billion in new product R&D last fiscal year. An important factor that helped Microsoft raise its profits is cornering the markets of post-Soviet states. Especially impressive is a 327% growth of sales in Ukraine. The Ukrainian premier and the Microsoft regional president agreed that the US-based corporation, interested in the Ukrainian market, would assist this country in setting up an Electronic Government. A similar statement had been made earlier by Stacy J. Smith, Vice President of the Sales and Marketing Group and Co- General Manager of Intel Europe, Middle East, and Africa. He noted, among other things, that if Ukraine wanted to set up an “electronic government,” it should give the broadest strata of the population access to new technologies, create a ramified telecommunications infrastructure, and pass a special law which would set clearly the rights and duties of the individual in an “electronic society.”