The Ministry of Public Administration aims to become the first digital ministry next year, completely eliminating paper from administrative procedures, announced the relevant Minister Maraš Dukaj.
According to him, the ministry achieved measurable results by the end of this year.
"Today, 57 digital public services are available to citizens and businesses, a functional eGovernment platform has been established, as well as a digital platform for the interoperability of registers," said Dukaj at an event organized by the Ministry to present the results and next steps of the Reform Agenda with a focus on the area of digitalization.
Dukaj announced that the Reform Agenda for the period 2024-2027 represents a clear political framework of the Ministry's commitment to European values, accountable governance and measurable results, with a strong focus on digital transformation as a key tool for the modernization of the state, reports PR Center.
"It is important to emphasize that the implementation of the Reform Agenda is already bringing concrete results in financial terms. The achieved reform steps allow Montenegro to access significant funds through the Reform and Growth Instrument within the Western Balkans Growth Plan, which further confirms the European Union's confidence in the reform capacity of our country," said Dukaj.
He said that the results achieved in the previous period ensure that processes in public administration are accelerated, simplified and more transparent.
"We are intensively digitizing internal processes within the Government itself. We also have a clear, internal goal, that from next year the Ministry of Public Administration will become the first digital ministry, completely eliminating paper from administrative procedures," said Dukaj.
Speaking about the area of cybersecurity, Dukaj recalled that a new Law on Information Security was adopted, fully aligned with the NIS2 Directive of the European Union (EU), G-SOC was established as an operational core for 24/7 protection of the state's digital infrastructure, and the Cybersecurity Agency and its management bodies were formed.
Dukaj said that in the coming period, the Ministry of Public Administration will focus on further delivering user-oriented digital services, fully operationalizing the institutional framework for cybersecurity, as well as strengthening the trust of citizens and businesses in the state's digital services.
The Director General of the Directorate for Infrastructure, Information Security, Digitalization and E-Services, Dušan Polović, in his presentation of the results and future steps, said that the Ministry of Public Administration will fulfill all indicators from the Reform Agenda in full by June next year.
Presenting a comparison of the results achieved between last year and this year, he emphasized that significant progress has been made in three key areas - digital transformation, trust services and cybersecurity.
"One of the most important steps forward has been made by improving the system for electronic data exchange through the introduction of the X-Road platform, which is used in EU countries such as Estonia and Finland. Key institutions, including the Tax Administration, the Ministries of Interior, Education and Justice, are already connected, and data is already being exchanged electronically. This means that in the future, citizens will not have to obtain certificates and documents from different institutions, but the state will exchange them for them," Polović emphasized.
He added that a meta-registry has also been formed as a central catalog of registers and services within the X-Road system, while the Government portal has been further improved and today records around two million users and more than 25 million views.
The Ministry has prepared a new Law on Electronic Identification, which transposes the latest EU eIDAS 2 regulation into Montenegrin legislation. The law will soon be subject to public debate.
A special step forward was achieved by establishing a national certification authority (CA), which for the first time enabled reliable electronic identification, electronic signing and full legal validity of electronic documents in Montenegro.
It was emphasized that Montenegro has already signed agreements on mutual recognition of trust services with Serbia and North Macedonia and that similar agreements are expected to be concluded with Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina next year.
In cooperation with UNOPS, a feasibility study was developed for the establishment of a state data center, which will significantly improve the level of information security and enable further development of digital services, including at the local level.
When it comes to artificial intelligence and plans for the coming year, the Ministry of Public Administration assumed responsibility for the field of artificial intelligence at the end of this year and formed an inter-sectoral working group in which representatives of state institutions, the academic community, the private and non-governmental sectors participate.
"Already at the beginning of next year, the first applications of artificial intelligence systems will be introduced on the e-government and government portals, which will enable citizens to more easily navigate administrative procedures and access documents," said Polović.
It was announced that the development of 78 new digital services is planned for next year, which represents an increase of around 35 to 40 percent compared to the previous period.
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