The Center for Analysis of Economic Reforms and Communication (CAERC) was established on April 20, 2016, by a Decree of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev. CAERC operates across three main functional areas: economic analysis; monitoring and evaluation; and communication of reforms and economic achievements. Based on the instructions of the President, CAERC conducts monitoring and evaluation of 12 strategic road maps, as well as strategies, state programs, and action plans in areas such as food security, employment, digital payments, and others. On this basis, a large database on the implementation of state documents, known as “Big Data,” is being formed at CAERC. In turn, processing this Big Data makes it possible to formulate proposals for new reforms.

It is worth noting that when the strategic road maps were prepared in 2016 on the instruction of the President, CAERC’s platform brought together 400 experts representing the public sector, private sector, academia, international organizations, and civil society. Thus, the interaction between monitoring and reforms elevates governance to a new level, enabling a data-driven decision-making mechanism. The Azranking.az and Monitoring.az platforms presented by CAERC are functionally integrated, digitally linking the workflows of reforms and monitoring: a new reform leads to new monitoring, and new monitoring leads to new reforms.

All stages of the “reform life cycle” at CAERC have been fully digitalized. This ensures efficiency, transparency, inclusiveness, and accountability of the process. Currently, nearly 40 internet resources under CAERC’s management serve as strong communication tools that support the coverage of reforms. Reform communication has two key objectives. The first is to deliver messages accurately to the public, businesses, international organizations, civil society, and other stakeholders. The second objective is to establish feedback mechanisms so that opinions and suggestions arising during the implementation of reforms can be used in shaping a renewed “reform agenda.”

As a result, a governance tripod has been formed at CAERC: Reform – Monitoring – Communication. The institutions presented by CAERC play a vital role in enhancing the functionality of this tripod. These include Azexport.az, the Digital Trade Hub, the “One-Stop” Export Support Center, Azranking.az, Monitoring.az, Enterpriseazerbaijan.com, and Azerp.az.