The State Needlessly Stores More Than 90% of Documentation Permanently and in Paper Form
The beginning of the project ‘Towards a Paperless Administration’ has been formalized with the meeting of all participants in the Palace of Serbia. The meeting concluded that the Law on Electronic Document, Electronic Identification and Trust Services in E-Business, adopted in October last year, represents an excellent framework for developing effective communication between the state, citizens and businesses. On this occasion it was announced that the draft by-laws for this regulation would be prepared by the end of April.
"Implementation of the Law will enable faster and more efficient communication of the public administration with citizens and businesses electronically, which will result in cost reduction and time savings. We also expect that, due to legal solutions regarding trust services, and in particular cloud electronic signature services, there will be massive utilization of electronic signatures, whose use will be significantly simplified. On the other hand, the electronic storage service will greatly reduce the costs of storing paper documents," said the State Secretary at the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications Tatjana Matić.
About 80% of information from state institutions and businesses around the world remains on paper, and in Serbia this accounts for more than 90%. The obligation to archive paper documents in our country is prescribed for a period of two to 70 years or permanently, which imposes high costs. In Business Registers Agency only, millions of euros a year are spent for managing and storing paperwork while the length of the shelves of this institution has already exceeded 30 kilometers.
"Archiving documents in paper form slows down the decision-making process, which prevents businesses and citizens from exercising their rights timely and efficiently. Therefore, the UK Government supported the project ‘Towards a Paperless Administration’ through the Good Governance Fund, to help state authorities and Serbian businesses in a transition to e-commerce," said Deputy Ambassador of Great Britain Tracy Gallagher on the occasion of the launch of the project.
The project is implemented by NALED, Pricewaterhouse Coopers and Center for European Policies, which will be in charge of supporting the Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications and the Ministry of Culture and Information in drafting eight by-laws that will further regulate the archiving system of e-documents.
One important task, with respect to the archival profession, is to amend the Regulations on the Categories of Registry Material with Shelf Life, which is 25 years old and prescribes that 1,117 of the 1,202 types of documents in the state bodies are kept permanently (92.9%), which should be significantly reduced.
The effects of the project will be visible to all institutions, citizens and the economy, because the regulation of e-archiving is a prerequisite for the mass development of e-services and the improvement of the business environment.
"The costs borne by businesses due to the obligation to keep business documents on paper are even greater than in the case of state authorities. A mid-sized bank produces 11 million pieces of paper annually, and a smaller retail chain spends up to 150,000 euros on toner, paper, printing and lease of warehouses and we are sure that e-commerce will save hundreds of millions of euros. More importantly, it will make a big change in the work of the institutions, as it will enable easier search and use of data for better planning of public policies "- says Dragana Ilić, Coordinator of NALED’s E-Government Alliance.
The drafting of by-laws will be followed by an analysis of the capacity of public administration institutions and the Serbian Archives (which receives 30% of documents after the expiration of the period of mandatory storage in the aforementioned bodies) to switch to the use of e-documents, making recommendations for improving their IT systems and training of officers. Also, a model for translating paper documents into an electronic form will be tested with notaries, which will guarantee their identical value and importance in the new form.