Digitalization of municipal services

Even though NALED has been supporting the modernization of municipal services since its establishment, the first initiatives that involved directly contributing to the digitization of services provided by local administrations to citizens, by the introduction and development of software solutions, started in 2019.

At the end of that year, NALED, in cooperation with GIZ, started the implementation of two regional projects in the area of digitalization of municipal services – “Improvement of municipal services in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina by introducing a Chatbot application” and “Digitization of municipal land management”

Initiatives in this area were implemented through the develoPPP program of Germany’s Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), in collaboration with the German Agency for International Development (GIZ), NALED members, and companies SAGA and Telegroup.

The key focus is the modernization of municipal services through the implementation of digital solutions, with the goal of making services more accessible to citizens, as well as more efficient. Modern and efficient local administration is an imperative in the process of joining the EU, and the implementation of new software solutions and digitization of existing services will not only be beneficial to citizens, but also to administrative employees.

The project „Improvement of municipal services in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina by introducing a Chatbot application“ is aimed at development and piloting of MIA chatbot, a virtual assistant who communicates with citizens and provides information regarding certain administrative procedures. The goal is to simplify procedures of municipal services, increase transparency and accessibility of services for citizens and make communication easier, through the implementation of the Chatbot application. On the other hand, the goal of the project “Digitization of municipal land management” is modernization and improvement of municipal management of agricultural land with the support of the software solution for sustainable management of agricultural production – AgroLIFE and the most modern weather stations for measurement of parameters relevant for agricultural production.

The Chatbot has been implemented into four pilot local self-governments in Serbia and BiH, while farmers from a total of ten local self-governments in Serbia, BiH and Montenegro have the convenience of using the AgroLIFE application free of charge.