Director of the Office for Information Technology and Electronic Governance of the Government of the Republic of Serbia, Mihailo Jovanovic, spoke with the new UNDP Resident Representative in Serbia, Francine Pickup, on the cooperation of the two institutions in the field of e-government and the ICT sector.
At the meeting, plans were discussed for further development and improvement of co-operation in these areas.
Expressing his appreciation for UNDP’s support to Serbia in all areas of digitization, Jovanovic said that the two institutions have had excellent cooperation so far, with the belief that it will be even better now.
Mihajlovic underlined that Serbia in its digitization and development of the ICT sector recognized its chance to become one of the technological leaders in the region.
Successfully implemented new eGovernment services for citizens, the economy and the state, adopted legislative and strategic frameworks, encouraging state institutions to open 500 data sets, 1,500 trained candidates in IT sector retraining programs are some of the many results that citizens recognize, he said.
The successful cooperation established between the Office for IT and UNDP will continue to work towards establishing a Regional Center for the World Economic Forum to legislate for the implementation of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, blockchain and IoT technologies and smart cities.
Jovanovic stressed the importance of UNDP’s support to the IT Office, noting that in the coming period, the office intends to focus even more on developing new eServices that will make it easier for citizens to communicate with the public administration, as well as to develop creative industries.
He pointed out that the creative industries are very important for the prosperity of the Serbian economy, and that the share of young people in that industry is more than 60 per cent.
Francine Pickup pointed out that the IT Office is a major partner of UNDP in activities that contribute to digital transformation in Serbia.
According to her, the two institutions are working together to open data of the public institutions so that citizens and the IT community can use them to create new applications and development solutions through greater availability of quality data.
In addition, she said, it is also about creating a digital future in Serbia through retraining for the IT sector and building data storage infrastructure in the national data centre.
The meeting discussed the current project of great importance “Open Data – Open Opportunities” supported by the World Bank and the United Kingdom Good Governance Fund (GGF), which has a clear objective to contribute to the construction of an open data ecosystem in Serbia.
Also discussed were the results achieved, as well as plans for the Digital Transformation in Serbia project, funded by the Government of Serbia and the United Kingdom through the Good Governance Fund, implemented by UNDP.