For the tenth month, Astana has been unable to restore the electronic queue for free children’s clubs and activities. A failure in the DamuВala digital platform led to the cancellation of the queue, loss of vouchers and data on registered participants. As a result, many children did not gain access to free classes, and service providers suffered multimillion-dollar losses.
According to Informburo.kz, the director of the Kinder Education Centre, Aelita Bapishcheva, reported that the failure had effectively paralysed the programme. In her words, similar difficulties arise with the launch of the new Qosymsha website.
“With each new transition between platforms, children fall out of the queue, and we incur losses. We insist on an audit of the transition from Artsport to DamuВala, as well as an investigation into the data transfer process and the legality of the actions of the bodies responsible for implementing the programme,” said Bapishcheva.
Providers stress that the per-capita funding initiative for extracurricular education, launched in 2021 on the instructions of the President, should ensure equal access for all children. However, after the failure, the transparency of the mechanism was lost: the distribution of vouchers in Astana is being done manually, without a clear queue order.
According to the Department of Culture, 1,058 vouchers had been issued by 25 June, but business owners point to the absence of approved criteria and an officially confirmed list of those in the queue.
The monitoring department manager of the Directorate for the Implementation of the State Creative Order of the Akimat of Astana, Svetlana Dyusetayeva, confirmed that serious technical failures occurred when the electronic queue was launched. Many parents were unable to register their children due to the portal freezing. She noted that during that period, there were suggestions of a possible bot attack.
“When the failure occurred, the queue was cancelled by the DamuВala system itself. As operators, we did not have access to data on who had managed to register. This information could only be provided by the platform’s developer. So, we accepted applications from parents and forwarded them to the developer, but we never received a response. Subsequently, all the collected materials were sent to the prosecutor’s office for further review,” explained Dyusetayeva.
According to her, the transition to new digital platforms is regularly accompanied by difficulties within public procurement processes, which also affects the system’s stability.
The Chamber of Entrepreneurs has proposed consolidating the providers’ demands and forwarding them to the competent authorities to restore transparency to the programme.