Kazakhstan has pursued an ambitious digitalization agenda. It prides itself on successful development of the e-government system, ranked 29th in the world in the 2020 UN report. This September the government signed a memorandum with Russian Sberbank, a bank transformed into a tech company, on digital transformation cooperation including the transfer of Kazakhstan’s e-government systems onto Sberbank’s “Platform V.” The document mentions the possibility of further expansion of platform solutions to other countries of Central Asia, as well as to Mongolia, and Turkey. The seriousness and importance of this choice of partner in digitalization made by the Kazakh government is hard to overestimate. The roundtable will discuss technical, economic and political implications of the cooperation plan. It will also outline considerations that need to be taken into account by the governments in the region in their decision-making on e-government systems. EVENT SPEAKERS Anna Gussarova, Director, Central Asia Institute for Strategic Studies Wolfgang Drechsler, Professor of Governance, Ragnar Nurkse Department, Tallinn University of Technology Oleg Shakirov, Senior Expert, Center for Advanced Governance (Russia) Yahiya Tuleshov, Digitalization Expert MODERATOR Nargis Kassenova, Senior Fellow, Program on Central Asia, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies