NALED: Only 10% of municipalities and cities in Serbia have fully digitized services, most still use counters

The development of the eGovernment Portal and the COVID pandemic have greatly popularized the "one-click" administrative procedures, however, the full picture of the state of electronic services in Serbia is available by looking into local data. Cities and municipalities have so far managed to digitize 20% of procedures within their jurisdiction, but when we exclude a small number of particularly successful local authorities from the calculation, the average drops to only 5%. That is why it is not surprising that 95% of requests by citizens and businesses have been submitted on paper or at the counter, according to the NALED newsletter.

A new NALED survey, conducted with the support of the European Union, within the Local eGovernment Index (LEI) project, confirmed that there is a great need for stronger support to cities and municipalities in the development of electronic services and protection of personal data, improvement of personnel capacities and infrastructure for electronic business.

- Only 14% of cities and municipalities think strategically about the development of electronic services, which is proven by the fact that for the development of eGovernment municipalities allocate only EUR 40,000 annually on average, and if we exclude the most successful ones, the average budget drops to EUR 8,500. When these basic prerequisites for development are absent as well, it becomes clear why we are in a situation where only 10% of cities and municipalities in Serbia have more than 90% of digitized procedures. The data from the research will help us to rank local governments by the level of development of eGovernment by the end of the summer, and the LEI index thus obtained will serve to promote good examples from the top of the list, but also to support those municipalities that recorded weaker results, through training and the creation of a Best Practices Guide - says Zeljko Tomic, president of the Alliance for eGovernment in NALED and director of OSA computer engineering.

According to him, the state of the infrastructure is such that the majority of the computers used for conducting procedures are between five and eight years old, whereas only a fifth of the municipalities have newer hardware. The security of the data stored in their databases is also questionable, since only half of the cities and municipalities have licenses for all programs, and it is interesting that 14% do not have a license for any of the programs they use.

- Through research, we have identified security flaws in computer networks, which make them additionally vulnerable to hacker attacks. Only a dozen cities and municipalities have web presentations on the .gov domain, while slightly less than half employ only one IT expert, and 11% don't have any. When it comes to their ability to establish and maintain system security, two-thirds point out that none of their IT experts have received training on that topic in the past few years - says Tomic.

The availability of trained personnel is not satisfactory even when it comes to the officials who provide services. On average, 46 officials are authorized to conduct procedures either on paper or electronically, but only one in four has undergone any type of training for electronic business.

There is room for improvement when it comes to encouraging the use of e-services and involving citizens in decision-making. First of all, not one municipality stimulates citizens to use electronic procedures more by reducing the accompanying fees or charges. Also, 78% of cities and municipalities have not developed a special application for easier communication with citizens, but on the other hand, almost two-thirds have made it possible to electronically ask questions to the mayor or the president of the municipality and submit requests to obtain information of public importance, according to NALED.

- Unfortunately, most municipalities do not use data from electronic procedures for better decision-making, and 94% did not involve citizens in designing services, and the result is procedures that are not adapted to their needs and habits. That is why one of the goals of the project is to empower civil society organizations for active involvement in the development of eGovernment in their communities - concludes Tomic.

The LEI index, the development of which was supported by the European Union, will be presented in the form of an interactive map of Serbia on the website www.lei.rs, and this innovative tool will enable citizens to monitor the level of development of eGovernment in their local self-government at any time based on objective indicators, and decision makers to see where they are in relation to other cities and municipalities in the digitization process and what they need to improve.

The development of the LEI index has been supported by the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, and the Republic Bureau of Statistics, the Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Postal Services (RATEL), the Office for IT and eGovernment and the Republic Geodetic Institute participated in the research.

NALED Beograd

Ministarstvo državne uprave i lokalne samouprave Republike Srbije

Republički zavod za statistiku

Kancelarija za informacione tehnologije i elektronsku upravu Beograd

RATEL Beograd

NALED

Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government

RGZ

Office for IT and eGovernment

RATEL

Zeljko Tomic

eGovernment portal

e-services

digitization

eGovernment Local Index

LEI