Recent reform package worth 5B manats covers 4 million people in Azerbaijan

The recent package of reforms in the amount of five billion manats alone covers four million people in Azerbaijan, head of the strategic research and planning department of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration Saadat Yusifova said.

Yusifova made the remarks in Baku at the conference entitled "Social and Personnel Reforms of the President in Public Opinion” and the presentation of the www.stm.az website in the Azerbaijani Social Research Center, Trend reports on Sept. 24.

She said that the result of institutional and social transformation is that the ASAN Service, which is the president’s biggest social and innovative project, was able to win people's sympathy in a short period of time, began to be associated with the concepts of effective public administration, satisfaction, accountability, transparency and turned Azerbaijan into an internationally recognized innovator in public administration.

"The implementation of another project of this "DOST” category has been already launched,” Yusifova added. "These reforms generally change the society’s system of values, bring new qualities to the relationship, the joint social responsibility of the state, society and citizen, strengthen the "triangle” - citizen-society-state. The Azerbaijani statehood is built specifically on this connection, its synchronism. The establishment of the Social Research Center is an integral part, demonstration of these reforms."

She stressed that the logo of the Center symbolizes these internal public relations.

"Social research allows exploring the socio-political processes, factors influencing them, assessing the expectations of society, finding solutions,” Yusifova said. "Modern public administration is impossible without exploration of public opinion. The public opinion, along with the use of classical methods, must be explored by using advanced methods and innovative technologies.”

"But social research must not be limited to the exploration of public opinion, the determination of issues and proposals of concern to the society for their solution, analysis, evaluation of the results generated as a result of the reforms,” she added. "In other words, by voicing the classic position, the Social Research Center shouldn't be limited to exploration of public opinion but also to actively inform the public about the state policy."

Yusifova said that the more important the results of the research are for the state, the more useful and informative they must be for the citizen and society.

"In turn, people must respond to the taken measures,” she said. "A citizen must actively voice own position. A citizen must become a participant in a positive transformation, be aware of own social responsibility. From this point of view, communication must be of a mutual nature. As the state is close to the citizen, the citizen must be also close to the state.”

"People must contribute to the implementation of these reforms and changes by their positive initiatives,” Yusifova said. "The Social Research Center must work closely with the civil society institutions and other research centers. It must become a reliable source for reporting. The mentioned organizations must support the Center.”

"Such cooperation is extremely important in terms of public interest because the citizen-society-state communication allows flexibly responding to the processes, determining the future of social dynamics," she added.