The Minister summed up the interim results of work on providing communications and improving its quality, improving the quality of public services, the work of the Ashyq application and other implemented projects of the ministry. During his speech, Bagdat Musin answered all the questions received from citizens.

Highlights of the Minister's speech:

At the moment, about 12 million e-government users have been registered. The ministry plans to transfer 90% of public services to digital format, to cancel paper confirmations and certificates.
By 2021, 5332 settlements are covered by the Internet.
The lower thresholds for Internet quality in settlements for 4G networks - from 5 MB/s, for 3G - from 1 MB/s have been approved.
A reengineering center has been created, which aims to reformat all business processes of government agencies and reduce the time for creating digital platforms from 3 months to 2 weeks.
Negotiations are underway with SpaceX, namely with Starlink, Oneweb, which will help ensure the availability of high-quality Internet throughout the country. A pilot project is being prepared for release.
For the development of the IT industry, the goal is to train 10 thousand high-quality IT specialists by 2025. For this purpose, it is planned to open 5 regional schools on programming and robotics.
Innovative grants for 5 projects were presented: Smart Refueling, Green Technology Center, 10TECH, Kaumas Kazakhstan, Faceplate. In two weeks, more than 600 applications for participation in the grant were received, but only 118 projects passed the examination.

The Minister also noted the work of the Astana Hub Technopark, sharing the current results: 405 registered participants-IT companies, $12.5 million of attracted investments, 14.3 billion tenge of exported IT services and 600 million tenge of fees from IT companies receiving tax benefits on the basis of Astana Hub. 

When asked about "what needs to be done to create your own startup" and whether it is worth going to Silicon Valley for this, the minister replied:

"My personal recommendation is to find a problem faced by millions of people on the planet and try to solve it. But in order to solve it, of course, you will have to work hard: interview citizens why they are facing this problem and whether they consider this case to be a problem, then try to make a minimal product that can be tested and shown to the same citizens so that they try it out."

The Minister said that there is an ecosystem for startups, noting the tools of Astana Hub: physical infrastructure, tax preferences, mentors and community support. 

"There are conditions in our country, and they are competitive with our neighbors, including Ukraine, Belarus, and the Russian Federation. The fact is that we, after all, were not engaged in international branding, we were busy with the system building of processes here. Now we need to do international branding so that not only ours are cooked in their juice, but (there is interest) from abroad," Bagdat Musin said. 

Recall that all participants of the international technopark of IT startups Astana Hub receive tax preferences. Preferences exempt participants from paying taxes such as CPN, VAT, VAT on imports of goods, royalty tax, IPN and social tax for non-residents. Such a measure of state support allows IT companies to reinvest the saved funds in the development of their projects.