President Shavkat Mirziyoyev was reported on measures to develop digital technologies in the country, expand specialized training for youth, and support projects in this field.

The Head of state gave the corresponding instructions during a visit to the Ministry of Digital Technologies on December 20 last year.

In recent years, this sector has shown high development dynamics. The number of specialists employed in it and the services provided are growing. In particular, in 2017, there were 147 IT companies in the country. Today, their number is approaching two thousand. These companies provide highly paid jobs for 30,000 people. More than 70,000 young people are engaged in IT independently.

Over the past four months of this year, the sector’s service volume increased by 20 percent, exports amounted to $200 million, and 5,000 jobs were created.

However, in terms of regions, the city of Tashkent has the leading share of IT services and exports, where 80 percent of specialists live.

In this regard, IT towns are planned to be created to develop the industry in remote regions.

According to the project, towns will be organized first in fifteen regions – Chimbay, Gijduvan, Zaamin, Sharaf Rashidov, Farish, Khatirchi, Pap, Shakhrisabz, Kushrabat, Sariasiya, Syrdarya, Parkent, Tashlak, Tuprakkala districts and the city of Khanabad. Every year, about ten thousand young people in the towns will study IT, foreign languages, and other modern professions for free.

The President emphasized that the towns should have a convenient location for young people and have teachers from among highly qualified specialists.

“In a rapidly changing era, all areas require personnel who know information technology. In this industry, qualified specialists are the main resource for services and exports. IT towns should become a system that will give young people wings and teach them modern professions”, Shavkat Mirziyoyev said.

In advanced countries, startups are widely supported for the development of the IT industry. Competitions for such projects are also held in Uzbekistan. At the same time, their transparency should be increased, and grants should be allocated based on project performance.

Therefore, it is proposed to hold a competition through the IT Park among startups offering IT education and software products, with a prize of up to 1 billion UZS.

The Head of state emphasized that the competition participants should be evaluated by prestigious international companies, as in the President Tech Award competition.

Work on creating and applying solutions based on artificial intelligence is progressing successfully. These technologies are being implemented in the My ID system for biometric identification. Today, 28 banks and five government organizations are connected to this system, and over 8 million 200 thousand users have registered.

A voice assistant in the Uzbek language “Muxlisa” is being developed. It is planned to introduce this development into various modern technical devices.

The task has been set to improve regulations in artificial intelligence and space activities, which would elevate digital technologies to a new level.

The Unified Platform for Utilities was also presented. The system will allow consumers to make payments for the services of eight utility organizations, collect data in one place, and automatically distribute it from more than 14 departments.