Municipal capacity building

Efficient provision of electronic services to citizens and businesses and the transition to electronic office operations is the key in the development of local self-governments and the improvement of their business. They are also the first contact of citizens with the state administration, which is why it is important for local officials to be trained to provide services and to have developed digital skills.

Recognizing this importance, NALED has conducted numerous trainings in the previous period to strengthen the capacity of local self-governments. In cooperation with RATEL, over 15 trainings in the field of information security were conducted during  2022, 2023 and 2024 and over 100 IT professionals and other local officials were trained. The trainings were conducted online and live, with trainees, IT professionals, training in identifying cyber threats and defending against cyber attacks, as well as for system recovery. The trainings were also used to raise awareness of the importance of information security among local officials. 

We particularly emphasize the activities in this domain that were carried out within the project "Public Procurement and Good Governance for Better Competitiveness", supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), during 2023 and 2024.

In this context, a series of trainings was organized on the topic of electronic administrative procedures and the use of ePisarnica software, the mass use of which will lead to an almost complete transition of state authorities to electronic office operations. For the purpose of conducting trainings, a presentation was made on the topic of electronic administrative procedures, which can help officers in their daily work.

During the summer of 2023, five trainings, in person, were organized on the topic of electronic administrative procedures, where officials were introduced to the use of the eGovernment Portal, the use of electronic signatures, but also with the institutional and legal development of eGovernment in Serbia – especially with the obligations of officials under the Law on Electronic Administration and the Law on General Administrative Procedure, given that naled's previous research,  especially during the establishment of the Local eGovernment Index (LEI), showed the necessity of strengthening the capacity of employees for the provision of electronic services and for electronic administrative procedures. The trainings were conducted in 5 cities in Serbia: Kragujevac, Novi Sad, Nis, Belgrade and Šabac.

The trainings were attended by 123 officials from 60 local self-government units, and in addition to strengthening the capacity of employees in the field of electronic administrative procedures, the ePisarnica software was also shown to the officials. Through the practical processing of the procedure, the participants are shown the way of working in the software, but also sending and receiving the document in the mailbox (eSanduče), accepting the document and monitoring the status of the case.

The next cycle of trainings was conducted online, through the Microsoft Teams platform, in order to provide all local self-government units with the opportunity to participate in trainings and get acquainted with registry software. A total of 679 local officials attended the training.

In addition to strengthening capacities in this area, attention was also paid to the topic of electronic archiving, since from January 1^st, 2024, it became a legal obligation. Three trainings for the business were organized on this topic, attended by over 100 business entities.

In addition to the business, trainings on this topic were organized through 6 field visits to local self-governments (Niš, Kragujevac, Novi Sad, Belgrade, Čačak and Pirot). On these field visits, the eArchive software (eArhiv) was premiered to officials from all 38 public archives in Serbia, and during the visits to Čačak and Pirot, representatives of local self-governments had the opportunity to get acquainted with this new software from document storage.

As part of the same project, round tables were organized with stakeholders - representatives of local self-governments and the business, which was also used for networking with representatives of the Ministry of Information and Telecommunications and the Office for IT and eGovernment, as well as for the constitution of working groups of the Alliance for eGovernment.

As part of the mentioned project, NALED also conducted an analysis "The concept of a data lake and the possibility of application in the public sector in the Republic of Serbia", which aimed to present data lakes as a technological solution for data storage and management, with all the advantages and disadvantages they offer. It has revealed the great potential that the implementation of the data lake has in improving analytics and decision-making based on big data in the public sector, contributing to efficiency, transparency and better provision of services to citizens.