**Clickbait Text:** "Shocking Statistics Revealed: Over 4.4 Million Citizens Reached Out to Authorities Last Year! Discover How a Revolutionary Digital System is Transforming Government...
– Sabit Nurlybaevich, could you share what the main tasks were for your agency last year?
– The key task of the committee is to form state legal statistics and maintain special records. Additionally, one of our priorities is handling citizens' appeals to various administrative bodies. Therefore, it would be more appropriate to start with these directions.
Regarding the appeals, I can provide specific figures: last year, a total of 4.4 million appeals were registered nationwide, which exceeded the 2023 figure by 33%. The significant increase in their number indicates that the concept of a "listening state," implemented at the direction of the Head of State, is working effectively, as citizens are eager to address their life issues with the authorized bodies.
It is also evident that the rise in the number of appeals was influenced by the promotion of the "e-Otinish" information system, which operates on the principle of a virtual "single window." All appeals are categorized into applications—making up 69%, or three million; inquiries—14%, or 617 thousand; complaints—6%, or 268 thousand; and there were also 113 thousand proposals.
At the central level, the highest number of appeals was directed to the Ministry of Internal Affairs—23%, which is about 658 thousand, followed by the Ministry of Finance—16%, and the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovations, and Aerospace Industry—9%. At the local level, the majority of citizens appealed to the akimats of the cities of Almaty—22%, or 347 thousand appeals; Astana—10%; and Almaty region—6%.
Last year, the work in this direction by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and akimats was already subject to our review, leading to a proposal for rectifying legal violations. The results of the akimats' review were discussed at a separate session of the General Prosecutor's Office, attended by responsible staff from the Presidential Administration, the Government Office, heads of relevant ministries, regional prosecutors, and akims of the regions.
– But isn't the committee's role limited to merely counting how many and what types of appeals were received?
– Of course not. We do not just observe the increase in appeals; we conduct supervisory activities, accompanied by inspections, of which 592 were carried out in 2024, along with 343 analyses, 1,653 monitoring sessions, and 24,336 verifications, during which over 200 thousand various violations were identified. These include, for example, non-registration of appeals, violations of deadlines for review and redirection, as well as manipulations with statistics. Based on the inspection results, 1,712 acts of prosecutorial oversight were issued, resulting in 3,260 officials being held accountable.
Under the directive of the Head of State, the committee, in coordination with the relevant department of the Presidential Administration and in collaboration with authorized bodies, is developing an analytical model for risk identification based on data from appeals in "e-Өtініш," utilizing artificial intelligence for recognition, generation, and processing of written speech. The goal of the project is to automatically detect relevant issues that citizens address and help identify risks associated with their inadequate handling.
The operational principle is straightforward: the system, through its built-in natural language processing function, identifies key words frequently appearing in citizens' appeals, such as those related to safety in schools. The system then creates a word cloud and categorizes them, for example, into "violence," "corruption," "bullying." This grouping allows for better oversight of the decisions made regarding such appeals. If effective measures are lacking from the authorized bodies, we will take coordination and prosecutorial oversight actions.
This technological approach will facilitate the quick and easy identification of problematic issues in regions and sectors, focusing government bodies on how subordinate departments address significant problems, enhancing accountability at the grassroots level on important and sensitive issues raised by citizens to government agencies, and refining practices to ensure targeted involvement of law enforcement and oversight bodies. For prosecutors, this functionality will ease prosecutorial oversight and strengthen coordination, thereby ensuring the implementation of the priority of public dialogue and prompt responses to people's needs.
Additionally, in collaboration with the bar community, to save time for lawyers and participants in criminal proceedings, a functionality has been implemented in the "Public Sector" of the "Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations" (ERDI) to grant access to electronic materials of criminal cases. A prerequisite is having the appropriate status of a participant in the criminal process in the ERDI with the use of an electronic digital signature (EDS).
The "Public Sector" allows lawyers and participants in criminal proceedings to submit applications online and view decisions made on the case, review materials, obtain copies of procedural documents for electronic cases, file motions, and receive responses in electronic format.
Any citizen can also use this system to file a report of a criminal offense with the option to attach supporting documents. After a decision is made on the application, one can see the date it was issued and the initials of the responsible employee from the prosecuting authority. If a decision is made to consider the application within the framework of administrative proceedings, such information is sent to the administrative practice authorities. For each decision made by the authority, the citizen receives a notification via SMS.
All these measures—implementing the "listening state" concept and institutionalizing the "e-Otinish" information system—positively impact the establishment of functional communication between the government apparatus and society, and our agency actively participates in this work.
– What about the rights of entrepreneurs?
– Regarding business, its protection is also a priority for the prosecutorial authorities. Back in 2018, we developed a monitoring and control system for inspections—the Unified Register of Subjects and Objects of Inspections. Through the ERSOP, the mechanism for scheduling inspections for business entities has been automated.
The system allows for planning inspections electronically by selecting unscrupulous entrepreneurs without human intervention. The entrepreneur is informed in advance about scheduled inspections and can appeal them through the "Qamqor" mobile application. As a result of supervisory activities in 2024, the committee precluded 570 inspections against businesses at the scheduling stage and identified over a thousand already unlawfully conducted inspections.
Following the Head of State's directive, within the framework of the "prosecutorial filter" for investor protection, mechanisms for mandatory electronic approval of inspection scheduling and legality checks for initiating administrative offense cases have been implemented in the ERSOP and ERAP (Unified Register of Administrative Proceedings). Now, the prosecutor examines the justification and legality of scheduling inspections and initiating administrative proceedings against investors.
– Considering the diverse activities, how open is the agency to new technologies that help solve the assigned tasks?
– Modern solutions and digitalization have been emphasized in recent years, with a mandatory focus on implementing digital projects incorporating elements of artificial intelligence, which will provide new opportunities for preventing crime and improving the work of law enforcement agencies. To date, more than one and a half thousand "Intelligent Controls" have been developed and implemented in the ERDI, aimed at preventing violations of the sequence and deadlines for procedural decisions, reflecting information about the methods and locations of crimes, and improving the processes of collecting, processing, and analyzing data on criminal offenses and the individuals who committed them. For example, an "Intelligent Control" has been activated for crimes against the sexual integrity of minors: the ERDI simply will not allow an investigator to record a decision to terminate a criminal case due to reconciliation of parties in violation of the requirements of the Criminal Procedure Code.
Other work is also planned to incorporate elements of artificial intelligence into the pre-trial stage of criminal proceedings. As part of enhancing the ERDI, we have developed a prototype that transcribes audio and video materials, including interrogations, into machine-readable text. This not only reduces the time required to draft protocols to mere minutes but also allows for document analysis, identifying relevant cases, discovering related individuals, detecting errors, and providing suggestions and recommendations on the case.
Under the committee's coordination, the pace of digitalization of government agencies' activities in the field of administrative offense proceedings has significantly increased in recent years. As a result, using ERAP, the share of cases in electronic format for administrative offenses reached 96%. The entire procedure for administrative proceedings has been automated through ERAP, starting from the initiation of a case to the enforcement of administrative penalties.
The system allows for drafting administrative protocols in online mode using mobile tablets. Thanks to the integration of ERAP with the information systems of other government agencies and second-tier banks, the time for proceedings has been significantly reduced, penalties are imposed promptly, and payments of fines are made quickly, including through banking applications or terminals. However, few people currently know that these tablets were initiated by our committee, which developed and implemented the corresponding software.
– Recently, citizens have increasingly complained about the rising number of fines. What is the reason behind this increase?
– Indeed, the number and amounts of fines have been rising year after year. In 2024, 12.7 million fines were imposed. In comparison, in 2023, 8.9 million fines were issued.
If we categorize the offenses, the lion's share of fines comes from violations of traffic rules recorded by photo and video monitoring systems. This includes the well-known "Sergik"