Serbia
Digital
Serbia
Digital
In 2017, the Serbian government prioritized the digital transformation of public administration, launching a comprehensive campaign to integrate digital solutions across the public sector.
At that time, Serbia lacked a cohesive strategic and legal framework for e-government development, with responsibilities scattered across various ministries and agencies. The government network did not adequately cover the central and municipal administrations, and there was no scalable government cloud infrastructure.
Additionally, key government databases, such as the population and address registers, were not available in a consolidated digital form. The central e-Government portal was outdated and not optimized for mobile devices, hindering the delivery of modern, user-friendly public services.
A prime example of our approach to institutional development is the support we provided for establishing and developing the Office for IT and e-Government. The Serbian government established this institution in 2017 to lead the digital transformation of public administration, reporting directly to the Prime Minister.
They started with a small team and a modest budget, but with ambitious plans and high expectations. The daunting task before them included consolidating the government’s digital infrastructure, establishing a government cloud, connecting disparate government databases, and modernizing the central digital services portal, all while building their credibility as a center of excellence for digital transformation in the public sector along the way.
UNDP, with initial funding from the UK Government, provided comprehensive support to the Office for IT and e-Government from the very beginning, allowing them to quickly demonstrate tangible results and prepare for more demanding challenges. We initially concentrated our efforts on assisting with the formulation of strategic goals, operational planning, and supporting recruitment for key technical and managerial positions. We also assisted with reviewing existing infrastructure, leasing the first cloud computing resources, mapping e-government architecture, and establishing data governance and information security protocols.
As the Office for IT and e-Government grew, we facilitated study visits and training, enabling staff to learn from global leaders like the UK Government Digital Service. We assisted civil servants in developing new skills, such as those needed for designing people-centric digital services, and promoted their closer engagement with local IT communities through multi-stakeholder working groups and competitive challenges.
UNDP helped the Serbian government consolidate and significantly enhance the reliability and security of its digital infrastructure, which now serves thousands of state and municipal institutions, facilitating efficient and scalable data exchange and digital service delivery for millions of citizens.
This journey began in early 2018 with a comprehensive audit of the government’s network and IT systems. The audit identified obsolete equipment, service bottlenecks, and single points of failure, enabling the Office for IT and e-Government to address critical issues and efficiently utilize credit lines approved for ICT modernization. It also highlighted the need to consolidate government computing and storage resources, improve their reliability and disaster resilience, and accommodate diverse workloads, including new digital public services, data processing, and AI applications.
One of our most significant contributions was supporting the construction of the region’s largest data center facility. This multi-year effort, which began in 2018, saw UNDP’s Digital Team and Engineering Tech Cell collaborate with the government to develop a high-level concept and rollout strategy, architectural design, technical documentation, operational and business model studies, finance and personnel strategies, and obtain international certifications (ISO 9001, ISO 27001, and EN 50600).
The result is a 14,000-square-meter facility with 14 MW of power and space for over 1,000 equipment racks. This Tier 4 certified data center, with complete fault tolerance and redundancy for all vital components, boasts a projected uptime of 99.995%, or only 26.3 minutes of downtime per year.
We continue to support the data center’s operations by helping the Office for IT and e-Government recruit highly skilled professionals to operate the facility. Apart from serving government agencies, the facility is attracting increasing interest from the private sector. Notably, in 2023, global tech giant Oracle established its first regional hub in Southeast Europe at the Government Data Center in Kragujevac.
To manage and secure the vast network and cloud resources, we also assisted the Office for IT and e-Government in drafting internal security rules, setting up a Network Operations Center (NOC), developing standard operating procedures, and implementing a platform for automated infrastructure and service monitoring by leveraging local managed cloud industry expertise.
One of the most challenging yet rewarding efforts in our digital journey has been the deliberate and sustained push to help the government shift from an institution-centric to a people-centric culture. This transformation involves work on multiple levels, including establishing the foundations for end-to-end digital services, creating robust customer support mechanisms, and building new capabilities for people-centric service design and agile software development.
We helped the Office for IT and e-Government understand the complex realities of digital governance by developing a new Digital Government Enterprise Architecture. This enabled them to prioritize smooth data exchange between institutions and introduce common shared services, such as single sign-on and e-payments, necessary for the development of end-to-end digital services. Additionally, we facilitated the establishment of the Support Center for Digital Government, which now offers phone, chat, and email support to both citizens and civil servants, handling thousands of inquiries every week.
Our continuous support for public institutions includes streamlining administrative procedures, redesigning government portals with a focus on mobile responsiveness, accessibility for people with disabilities, and the inclusion of various vulnerable groups. We also build civil servants’ capacity to apply product management, user research, advanced service analytics, and agile practices to the development of digital public services.
All this foundational work paid off during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the Office for IT and e-Government was able to quickly deploy several digital services and platforms to help citizens and the government cope with the crisis. UNDP supported these efforts, which included creating a system for registering volunteers, a portal for providing essential digital tools (the Digital Solidarity Portal), and a comprehensive vaccination enrollment, data analytics, and business intelligence system to support the national COVID-19 immunization program and real-time decision-making by top government officials.
Today, the Office for IT and e-Government has expanded to 150 employees with a substantial annual budget. It operates the region’s largest government data center, serves tens of thousands of civil servants and hundreds of institutions, maintains a suite of shared government services, a government data exchange platform, and a central e-Government Portal with over 2 million registered users.
The office is now recognized as a leader in digitalizing the public sector in Serbia and beyond. The OECD and the Regional School of Public Administration (ReSPA) honored them for the innovative digital solutions they launched during the COVID-19 pandemic. Serbia’s rankings on the 2022 World Bank GovTech Maturity Index and the 2022 Global UN e-Government Survey showed significant improvement, largely thanks to their efforts.
