Investing in digital infrastructure to reach an efficient and modern public administration

World Bank officials commended the speed at which the public administration reforms are being implemented by the Office for IT and eGovernment as well as the Project.

“The eGovernment Services Improvement Project, worth $55 million, enables the digitalization of a large number of services for citizens and businesses. By the end of the project, in the next 5 years, full digitalization of 30 services that are important for the everyday life of citizens and businesses is planned, by making them accessible via the Internet and mobile phones, as well as by building a complete eGovernment infrastructure ready to digitalize all services”, said Mihailo Jovanović (Associate Professor, PhD).

He added that an additional 120 services, which have a major impact on citizens' lives, will be thoroughly recorded and optimized, which will ensure the continuity of digitalization of services in the coming years.

One of the most important electronic systems, which will be among the first to be made available through the Improvement of eGovernment Services in Serbia Project, is the unique state eClerk. The complete communication of state bodies with each other, but also with citizens and businesses will be electronic, which will speed up the work of public administration by 90%, and most importantly will ensure information security of data.

Within the Improvement of eGovernment Services in Serbia Project, the Metaregister will be established - a system necessary for standardization of data processing and storage in formats suitable for the digitalization of new services for citizens and businesses. The Metaregister will provide a list of all electronic records and registers in the country.

 “For the first time, we will know who manages and who is in charge of which electronic record or data register, and therefore we will be introducing order in the digitalization of data of all state institutions. Our goal is that the change of data in one original register automatically reflects the change of data in another, so that citizens will not have to visit multiple counters when they wish to change their address or surname”, said Jovanović.

A particularly large and significant role of the World Bank is in equipping the ICT infrastructure of the State Data Centre in Kragujevac, whose construction has already begun, and which will store the data of the entire eGovernment in Serbia. The existing State Data Centre in Belgrade and the new one in Kragujevac will connect and exchange information in real time, which will provide additional reliability and security of data of citizens and eGovernment systems.

In order to protect the data of the citizens of Serbia in accordance with the global norms, within the Project of Improvement of eGovernment Services in Serbia, the Regulation on the manner and measures of personal data protection has already been drafted. This document regulates who is responsible for data protection, the manner in which data is handled, as well as the rights of persons whose data is processed.