Global giant Amazon visits NALED
Representatives of the company Amazon Web Services, part of one of the largest global companies Amazon, visited NALED and presented plans for the development of services based on cloud technology in our country to members of the Alliance for eGovernment.
The meeting took place as part of their two-day visit to Serbia, during which, in the presence of Prime Minister Ana Brnabić, they signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications and Minister Mihailo Jovanović, visited the Office for IT and eGovernment, the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the State Data Center in Kragujevac.
The managers of AWS assessed that in Serbia they do not expect to encounter major challenges compared to other countries of Central and Eastern Europe when it comes to the application and development of IT solutions based on the use of the cloud, but that it is necessary to work on establishing a good infrastructure and regulations.
They assessed that Serbia's regulations are currently not "cloud friendly" and that therefore one of the most important points of the Memorandum of Understanding will be bringing our country closer to the "cloud first" policy. "Cloud first policy" implies an approach that includes the application of cloud technologies for all new applications, platforms and infrastructure.
Also, AWS plans to provide a wide range of training for the application of the cloud, starting from the public sector, businesses, the academic community and all the way to the unemployed, which is also one of the points of the Memorandum. The third step in the implementation of this document will be enabling greater cloud availability for businesses, both for startups and large companies. And finally, the memorandum will include the presentation of the services offered by AWS. The company's representatives cited examples from Greece where, with the local authorities, they implemented solutions for traffic improvement, delivery of medicines by drones, ship tracking systems, etc.
The representatives of AWS answered numerous questions of the Alliance members, and they pointed out, among other things, that their goal is to show what they have been doing, what can be realized in Serbia, and the experiences of other countries. AWS is a company founded 17 years ago and was the first to develop cloud-based solutions. Today, it provides more than 200 services for different technologies, industries and needs. It has the most developed cloud infrastructure, deployed in 31 regions, eight of which are in Europe.
Key objectives of the recently adopted eGovernment Development Program 2023-2025 and the accompanying Action Plan were also presented at the meeting, along with priority areas in the field of eGovernment development that the Alliance can contribute to - improving infrastructure, improving legal security, increasing the availability of electronic services to citizens and businesses, and opening up data in public administration.
Dragana Ilić, President of the Alliance and Corporate Affairs Director at the Cetin company, recalled the activities that were carried out in the past period, such as the establishment of the eGovernment Index (LEI), support to the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications in the adoption of the Law on Electronic Communications, as well as the current work on amendments and additions of the Law on Information Security.
- The eGovernment Alliance is the most numerous alliance within NALED, which currently gathers 85 members and includes three working groups - the group for electronic services, for data and for digital infrastructure and information security. The moment of adoption of the eGovernment Development Program is a good reason to revise the Alliance's Action Plan, to redefine it and make it a two-year plan, and harmonize it with the mandate of the presidency - emphasized Ilić.
Svetlana Jovanović, Senior Advisor in the Cabinet of the Prime Minister, spoke about the novelties in the field of electronic services on which the Government and the Office for ITE are working intensively and pointed out the areas in which additional help and support from NALED members is needed in order for the digitization process in Serbia to keep up with the current trends.
- The eGovernment infrastructure is expanding, and the state data center will soon get a third building. In less than a month, the eOffice will start operating - a centralized system that enables the exchange of data and documents between state authorities during the conduct of proceedings. Authorities will now have to receive documents from citizens and businesses in electronic form and conduct procedures electronically, and that's why I invite you to insist on electronic submission of documents and to tell whoever asks you for something in paper format - No, I don't have to bring it on paper - Jovanović explained.
Ilija Gavrilović, Policy Officer at NALED, presented the results of the latest survey of the views of citizens and businesses on the use of eGovernment portal, conducted under the auspices of the Swedish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (SIDA).
- According to the research findings, the degree of citizens' satisfaction with eGovernment is 74%, where they rate the quality of eServices with 3.89 out of a maximum of 5, while this percentage is higher for businesses and amounts to 84% (rating 3.94). Two-thirds of citizens and businesses agree that a greater number of counters for assistance in registering on the portal would contribute to greater use of electronic services - Gavrilović said and announced that the plan is to open 40 new counters by 2024, as well as at least 4 new services.
