eGovernment development

Since its establishment, NALED has advocated the introduction of electronic procedures in the work of public administration. Following the best world practices, with the aim of modernizing public administration in Serbia, in 2016, in cooperation with IBM experts, NALED developed the first Strategic Framework for eGovernment in our country, and established a thematic eGovernment Alliance within the organization.

At the initiative of the Alliance, in 2017, the Government of Serbia established the Office for IT and e-Government and the Coordination Council, which systematically deals with the development of eGovernment. NALED is engaged in the Government Coordination Council for the Development of eGovernment, and contributes to the preparation of the Government Action Plan for the Development of eGovernment.

KEY INITIATIVES

So far, NALED and the Alliance have launched numerous initiatives to improve practices in this area and facilitate wider use of electronic services, such as the introduction of cashless payment of fees and charges at POS counters in public administration, enabling electronic archiving and others.

Electronic services

Through a project implemented by NALED, with the support of the EBRD and in cooperation with the Office for IT and eGovernment, trainings have been organized for more than 800 employees who support citizens to register on the eGovernment portal and use electronic services as eCitizens.

After the introduction of eDelivery of the decision on property tax and the lump sum tax, NALED initiated amendments to the Law on Cadastre Registration Procedure, enabled the delivery of the decision on property registration via eMailbox, and the Office for IT and RGZ successfully implemented the reform.

Cooperation has been established with the Ministry of Finance in the implementation of electronic invoicing system. NALED supports its implementation through promotion and education, as well as with the organization of more than 35 activites - round tables with businesses, IT companies and accountants, training for public and private sector users, in cooperation with the British Embassy (Grow Small project) and Philip Morris (StarTech project).

One of the key priorities of NALED is the expansion of cashless payments, with the goal of influencing the reduction of the shadow economy. Currently, NALED, in cooperation with Visa and MasterCard, is implementing the Better Way project with the aim of sharing POS terminals in the public and private sectors and providing incentives to merchants to encourage greater use of POS.

NALED also implements projects for the introduction of ChatBot technologies, with the support of German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) and SAGA, ChatBot MIA has been launched in pilot local governments (Šabac and Sombor in Serbia, Bijeljina and Laktaši in Bosnia and Herzegovina), while ChatBot IVA for inspections has been introduced through a project supported by the EBRD.

In 2023, through a project financially supported by the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency (SIDA), NALED plans to open 40 new eCounters for the businesses and citizens and train officials to provide electronic services. In this context, NALED will provide support to business entities in opening an account on the eGovernment Portal, considering the deadline for mandatory registration and receiving notifications in eMailbox.

Also, NALED, as part of the EDGE project, which is financially supported by the World Bank, plans to promote electronic services, with the aim of increasing their use among the businesses and citizens.

Abolition of the seal for business companies 

With the support of the British Embassy, ​​and as part of the project Towards administration without redundant papers, NALED initiated and participated in the adoption of amendments to the Law on Business Companies, which abolished the use of seals for business companies.

Electronic invoicing and fiscalisation

NALED, with the support of the British Embassy and the Philip Morris company through the Star Tech project, implemented a project to support the Ministry of Finance in introducing a new system for electronic invoicing, as well as digital fiscalisation, which were two long-term priorities of the Alliance for eGovernment. In both projects, the goal is for the end users and taxpayers of both regulations to get to know the obligations as closely as possible and to prepare for the new business model as easily as possible. As part of the project to support the introduction of eInvoices, 35 training sessions were held for system users - public and private sector entities, as well as workshops for accountants' associations and independent accountants, as well as for ERP providers. Over 1,500 participants attended the training. On the other hand, as part of the project to support the introduction of the fiscalization system, we visited over 500 small businessmen with the aim of providing them with timely information about current events in the field of electronic business and electronic payment, but also to help them make their services and products more visible by will be mapped on Google maps.

In addition, trainings and workshops were organized, and a Guide for good business in e-Commerce was created, while on the Small Business Informator website you can find all relevant information and educational material for entrepreneurs, micro, small and medium-sized enterprises, including the possibility of applying to the monthly newsletter.

Information security and data protection

Pen-tests checking the security of IT systems, websites and applications were conducted in ten local governments, and workshops were organized for municipal management and 119 public servants in the IT sector, in order to get acquainted with the obligations under the Law on Personal Data Protection and the Law on Information Safety and planned regulatory changes.

After that, a new training cycle followed in 2019, which resulted in an extensive survey of the situation and Analysis of information systems and information security in local self-governments, which was prepared and published by NALED in January 2020.

In 2022, the continuation of technical trainings for system and network administrators in local governments was held, and within this cycle, about 45 IT experts from more than 40 LSGs attended trainings and were trained in defense against cyber-attacks and system recovery on the most modern platform for this purpose - Cyberbit Range. The trainings were conducted in cooperation with the National CERT of Serbia, RATEL.

In the course of 2023, the continuation of training and cooperation with RATEL is planned, with the aim of further training IT experts and other officials from local governments on the topic of the Act on the Security of ICT Systems and strengthening information security at the local level.

Local eGovernment Index

During 2021 and 2022, NALED implemented the project Establishing the Local eGovernance Index (LEI) for local self-government units in Serbia, which was financially supported by the European Union. The main goal of the project was to establish an eGovernance Index that will enable understanding of the current level of eGovernment development at the local level, identifying challenges in the development of eGovernment and digitalisation at the local level, as well as presenting recommendations for their improvement. Within the same project, NALED conducted five trainings for 100 officials from 47 LSGs on the use of eSignatures, eSeals, the eGovernment Portal, as well as the software Pisarnica, which trained the officials for a new way of e-Business. Also, on this project, NALED cooperated with more than 70 Civil Society Organizations, which participated in workshops on the topic of monitoring the development of eGovernment at the local level. The results of the research, as well as information about the project, can be found on the website www.lei.rs