The assessment mapped 108 official digital platforms for public service delivery. These were launched by 19 state administrative bodies, including 10 ministries, the Tourism Committee, the Migration and Citizenship Service, bodies subordinate to the government, the Prime Minister’s Office, and bodies under its authority.

For this comprehensive assessment, three platforms were selected: hartak.am, e-draft.am and e-request.am as the most well-known, participatory and widely used digital tools for state-citizen digital interaction in Armenia. They cover key government services, from official requests for information to citizen participation in legislative activities and best reflect both the advantages of digital governance and existing challenges, systemic issues such as medium-level assurance of data security, inclusivity and accessibility, incomplete feedback mechanisms and others.

The assessment aims to analyze and reveal systemic issues in digital platforms that hinder their full and participatory use by citizens, while evaluating their compliance with digital service design standards, public administration transparency principles, and user needs.

The objectives of assessing these platforms are:

1. To assess the overall effectiveness of platforms such as G2C (Government to Citizen) digital services,
2. To assess platform compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1),
3. To assess the practical value of services and the level of digitalization, to determine how fully they solve citizens’ problems in a complete digital format,
4. To study the technical reliability, speed, and uninterrupted operation of platforms,
5. To assess the level of personal data protection, security, and privacy assurance,
6. To analyze the effectiveness of feedback, engagement, and support mechanisms with users,
7. To assess platform transparency from the perspective of accessibility of responsible bodies, legal bases, and statistical data,
8. To study navigation solutions and compliance with Armenia’s Digital Service Design Standard,
9. To develop and present practical recommendations aimed at addressing identified systemic problems and improving the effectiveness of service delivery platforms.

The assessment employed 45 criteria across 7 main categories, based on national legislation, international best practices, Armenian Digital Service Design Standards, Digital Architecture Principles and WCAG 2.1 guidelines.

Preliminary and final assessment results were presented to platform operating/servicing state bodies -Ministry of High-Tech Industry, Ministry of Justice, EKENG, Armenian Agency of Information Systems, Prime Minister’s Office Department of Participatory and Open Governance Issues, civil society, Open Government Partnership Armenia Working Group members, as well as international partners to serve as a basis for reforms aimed at improving the accessibility, applicability, and public trust of electronic participation digital tools.

We hope this assessment can lay the groundwork for forming a unified model and tools for assessing online service delivery platforms (Measuring Performance). Making regular assessments of official digital platforms a standard process will create opportunities for comprehensive reform of these resources. It will also serve as a foundation for developing a unified development strategy for official platforms and creating innovative tools, making official information management and digital service delivery more efficient and useful for both citizens and the government.

This Assessment Report has been developed as part of the “Digital Democracy in Action” project, implemented by the Freedom of Information Center NGO in partnership with the Internet Society NGO. The project is supported by the GIZ Armenia as part of the “Digital Democracy for All” initiative. The content of the Report is solely the responsibility of the FOICA and does not necessarily reflect the views of the GIZ.

DOWNLOAD. ASSESSMENT REPORT OF THE KEY E-PARTICIPATION PLATFORMS