Montenegro is the penultimate among the six countries of the Western Balkans region in the digitalization of public administration and service provision, according to the results of the regional WeBER report, which monitors public administration reform in the area of service provision, and is being conducted in Montenegro by the Alternative Institute.
As announced by the non-governmental organization, at today's conference "Citizens First", representatives of state institutions, the business community, civil society and the media discussed Montenegro's development in the field of providing public services and digitalization of public administration, as well as citizens' experiences through everyday interaction with the administration.
It is stated that it was announced at the conference that in Montenegro, despite the new e-government portal and the Development Plan for 171 electronic services by 2027, practical implementation shows that citizens and businesses are still faced with a lack of real electronic services, fragmented administration and inadequate relations between civil servants.
"Montenegro is the penultimate among the six countries of the Western Balkans region in the digitalization of public administration and service delivery, only half a point higher than Bosnia and Herzegovina," the statement said.
Jelena Radulović from the Institute of Alternatives, presenting the results of the WeBER report, pointed out that a new achievement in Montenegro was the introduction of the e-government portal in December last year, with the first electronic services integrated only in April this year.
"The portal brings improvements in terms of available information - citizens can see which institution is responsible for a particular service, how much it costs, and what documentation and forms are required," Raduković said.
According to her, despite all the improvements, none of the seven most needed services from their sample (issuing personal documents, company registration, vehicle registration, real estate registration, and others) are available on the new e-government portal.
The key problem that Radulović highlighted is that institutions in Montenegro do not ask citizens what they need, how a certain service should function, or how it should be improved. Public opinion research confirms this.
"Only 27,8 percent of respondents believe that they can have an impact on the development of public administration services. This means that the majority of citizens see public administration as an unchangeable structure that cannot be significantly influenced," added Radulović.
Summing up the key recommendations, Radulović said that the state should consult citizens on what services should look like and how they can achieve them.
"Citizen feedback and experiences should be formalized and made publicly available with clear channels through which citizens could share their experiences and needs," said Radulović.
She also believes that public administration employees who provide services have not received additional training on how to work with vulnerable groups.
"There have been no such trainings in the past two years. The Human Resources Department should create them," said Radulović.
She also emphasized that data should be published in multiple formats, and that digital signature and payment should be the basis for implementing electronic services, and the e-government portal should be the central point of all e-administrative services.
The Director General of the Directorate for Infrastructure, Information Security, Digitalization and e-Services at the Ministry of Public Administration, Dušan Polović, explained that the Ministry conducted three cycles of research with UNDP to understand what citizens need.
"Citizens want the administration portal to be a central point – so that they don't wander through all the portals of different state bodies," said Polović, adding that the Ministry has incorporated this principle into its Digital Services Development Plan.
According to Polović, implementation is going slower than it should.
He explained that the key challenge, in addition to the digital literacy of citizens, is interoperability at the government level.
"Due to the failure to adopt a personnel plan, we could not fulfill an important goal - strengthening the information society inspection. Certain state administration bodies are not acting in accordance with their obligations under the Law on Electronic Administration. Citizens have to contact the bodies individually and are wasting time," said Polović.
UNDP Program Manager, Boris Rebić, emphasized that a major problem is that citizens, even when they know that electronic services exist, do not use them.
"Around 52 percent of citizens know about e-services, but only eight percent use them," said Rebić.
As he added, resistance to electronic services is not due to traditional scruples or fear of technology.
"Citizens want processes to be made easier. We've seen what issuing an ID card looks like in 2025. That's crazy. The main problem is that there are no e-services. They should be developed - regardless of the level, it's important that the service exists," said Rebić.
He emphasized that the problem is that electronic services depend on the quality of data and the exchange of information between institutions.
"Institutions are not paying enough attention to this," Rebić pointed out, adding that the existence of e-services is conditioned by data registries and quality data exchange that must be secure, intensive and continuous.
"This is the reason why some services remain underdeveloped," Rebić emphasized.
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