Business-investment portal eKapija conducted a research in April on Internet presentations of local self-governments in Serbia and analyzed how interesting those websites were to domestic and foreign investors and how much they facilitated the operations of businessmen. Therefore, the task of the research was to determine the extent of use of contemporary information-communication technologies (ICT) in the presentation of municipalities as investment destinations.
The research included 162 websites of the units of local self-government (138 municipal and 24 city website). Among all these websites, we selected 15 best municipal Internet presentations and 5 top websites of the cities in Serbia. It should be pointed out that, unfortunately, there are several municipalities that still do not have their official Internet presentations or have no contents on them – Aranđelovac, Crna Trava, Preševo, Brus, Lebane, Priboj,
Rekovac, Tutin, Varvarin, Žabari, Rakovica.
The criteria of this analysis were as follows: visibility of web presentation, existence of the version in Latin letter and languages other than Serbian,
presentation of the "frontman" of the administration, interaction with potential investors, updating of economic news and information from the area of economy,
presentation of investment potentials, list of strategic plans and projects, offer of locations, list of existing investors, as well as announcement of tenders and ads.
Based on the results of the analysis, we selected five cities and 15 municipalities whose websites meet all aforementioned criteria. In this report, due to nuances in the evaluation, top Internet presentations are not ranked, but only listed in alphabetical order.
Based on ten aforementioned criteria, it is determined that, in addition to the City of Belgrade, the cities with the best Internet presentations, used as the means for attracting investors and successful business, are the cities of Valjevo,
Zrenjanin, Niš, Novi
Sad and Subotica.
In addition to them, the cities whose web presentations should also be complimented are Jagodina,
Kragujevac, Leskovac,
Smederevo, Užice and Čačak.
The municipalities whose websites met the criteria and made it to the top 15 are: Ada, Alibunar, Bačka Palanka, Bačka Topola, Inđija, Knjaževac, Kula, Lazarevac,
Pećinci, Kovačica, Kikinda, Vršac, Ćuprija, Pirot and Paraćin.
The research done by web portal eKapija shows that the quality of web presentations and the use of ICT in local self-government do not necessarily depend on the level of economic development and the standard of population in certain regions and areas. The quality of municipal websites is quite uneven – starting from design, size and organization of contents, to the availability of information, as well as the degree of its usability. Majority of Internet presentations contain out-of-date information and lack new contents, while "For Investors" columns in most cases include the information from 2007 and 2008.
Flaws and Recommendations
Flaws noticed in the majority of Internet presentations are: disrespect of adopted standards during creation of visual identity, absence of the versions in English language and Latin letter, poor organization of contents without browser, sections without contents ("under construction"), lack of document entry date, much too general information without separated columns, complicated procedure for downloading contents,
low level of interaction, mandatory use of paper documents in almost every procedure, absence of strategic documents.
Recommendation for enhancement of the quality of Internet presentations is the inclusion of the following contents: development strategy, GIS, municipal/city
land-utilization plans and detailed regulatory plans that investors find attractive, municipal/city official bulletin,
municipal bulletin, current budget and budget realization, brochures for investors/investment guides, tender documentations, location and building permits, as well as electronic forms.
An Internet presentation should also contain electronic and economic maps of municipalities and regions, the offer of locations for greenfield and brownfield investments and industrial and free zones, legal advice and, particularly, information on financial privileges for businessmen.
It is also desirable that the website includes the information on the procedures for founding a company, business costs, as well as on the existing business and vocational associations. The guidelines for formation of a company and later operations, reports on relevant and finished privatizations and, of course, information on the level of development of infrastructure and natural and human resources are of great significance to investors as well.
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