Official ceremony for launch of e-probation platform was held - the programme will allow digitising the activities performed with the probation beneficiary

Deputy Minister of Justice Arpine Sargsyan participated in the official ceremony for launch of the e-probation electronic management system digitising the activities of the Probation Service. In her opening speech, Deputy Minister Sargsyan stated that development of the probation institution is a key strategic priority for the Government, and, in this context, digitisation of the activities of the Service is aimed at minimising document circulation ensuring a transparent and accountable working style of the Service, ensuring interoperability with other systems and saving time on the one hand, and neutralising various corruption risks on the other hand.

Arpine Sargsyan emphasised that the e-probation platform is a key tool for the Ministry of Justice as a sector-specific policy developer for leading an evidence-based policy in the probation sector, as the system allows having a digital image of the work of the Probation Service, conduct analyses and release reports with various indicators. Deputy Minister Sargsyan and Deputy Head of the Council of Europe Office in Yerevan Leila Zhdanova exchanged words of gratitude, stating that a project in line with the modern achievements in the IT sector was developed as a result of the joint activities that were carried out for almost two years. Within the framework of the official ceremony, Executive Director of VXSoft Company Vahagn Mkhitaryan, who had developed the project, and Project Manager of the Company Hasmik Avetisyan described the e-probation system by analysing the operation of the system based on the example of a personal case of a probation beneficiary.

It was shown that the e-probation system has a wide range of interoperability with other electronic systems of state bodies, which will allow generating automatically the necessary data related to the probation beneficiary.

The system permits the approval of various documents by the probation beneficiary and the probation officer via the system, ensuring the digital signatures of both parties, locating the place of execution of the action, and this will allow avoiding various corruption risks.

Necessary equipment has been acquired for the system to operate, including for digital signature, fingerprint and the process of locating. Head of the Probation Service Gevorg Simonyan, representatives of the Council of Europe Office in Yerevan and "EKENG" Closed Joint-Stock Company were also present at the meeting. The
e-probation system was developed within the framework of the "Support the scaling-up of the probation service in Armenia" project supported by the Council of Europe (funding: Council of Europe Action Plan for Armenia 2019-2022).