Serbia at the Digital Summit of the Western Balkans in Skopje

Mihailo Jovanovic, Director of the Office for IT and eGovernment of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, participated in the first Digital Summit of the Western Balkans, held in Skopje from April 18-19, organized by the Ministry of Information Society and Administration of the Republic of Macedonia. Thanks to electronic identification and cross-border connectivity, Serbian citizens will be able to use eGovernment services in the Western Balkans.

“With the adoption of the Law on Electronic Commerce and the Law on eGovernment, Serbia eliminated all obstacles for the faster development of eGovernment and fully provided legal regulations for complete digital transformation of state administration and local self-government. The implementation of electronic identification of eGovernment users is in progress, as one of the priority projects of the Office, which will provide citizens and the economy with a simple use of eGovernment services on the Internet without the need to use qualified electronic certificates on smart cards, but by using electronic signatures in the cloud”, Mihailo Jovanovic said.

He added that mutual recognition of electronic identification of citizens and economy in the Western Balkans environment is the basis for cross-border use of eGovernment services and that regional cooperation and improvement of relations with the neighbors is one of the priorities of Serbia's foreign policy.

Jovanovic participated in the Digital Economy and Society panel, Digital Transformation Opportunities and presented the plans of the Office in this area, after which he took the responsibility of organizing this meeting next year in Belgrade on behalf of the Government of the Republic of Serbia and emphasized “I expect that by the next summit in Belgrade, mutual recognition of electronic identification of citizens and the economy of the Western Balkans will be established”.

The summit gathered international and regional regulations creators, representatives of the Western Balkan governments, as well as academic and business experts who shared the best practices of digital transformation of state administration in their countries and made suggestions for closer cooperation of all participants in the summit.