E-government is becoming the norm around the world, but people in the Balkans are not benefitting in full because of a lack of political will in some cases and a shortfall in institutional capacity in general, a new report on open data and digitalisation published by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network shows.
The idea of ‘electronic government’, or e-government, is to eradicate queues, reduce paperwork and provide users with quicker, more convenient access to public services, from health to taxation and schooling.
In the Balkans, however, the roll-out has only been partial and faces a range of challenges, according to BIRN’s report, Open Data and Digitalisation in the Western Balkans: The State of Play,
“There remains a significant gap in their capacity to fully leverage digitalization across various dimensions, including skills development, system integration, cybersecurity, and user-centric solutions,” said an Albanian digital security expert.
Limited services
BIRN’s report highlights how Balkan countries are performing badly in e-government development; the online offering of public services remains limited.
In 2022, Serbia ranked 40th on the UN’s E-Government Development Index, ahead of Albania, Montenegro and North Macedonia in 63rd, 71st and 80th place respectively. Bosnia and Herzegovina came in at 96. Kosovo was not listed.
The governments of all six Western Balkan countries covered by the BIRN report have specialised e-government websites and all e-government portals analysed by BIRN are active and up to date; new services are created on a regular basis.
Serbia launched ‘eUprava’ in 2010. A decade later, the portal was updated with a new design and functionality adapted for mobile and tablet devices. The address remained the same – euprava.gov.rs.
Serbia offers 186 unique e-government services, enabling users to access documents, certificates and services concerning education, family, healthcare, employment and urban planning.
Montenegro’s e-government system claims to provide over 500 services under the jurisdiction of 50 public institutions, but 349 of these are instructions on how to use government services.
North Macedonia’s offers services from 170 public institutions, out of a total of roughly 1,300.
Bosnia and Herzegovina has three separate e-government portals – one for each entity and a third for the autonomous district of Brcko. But there is no information on how many services these offer.
The e-Albania portal offers 1,237 online services and boasts a total of almost 3.2 million registered users. The portal, which is managed by the National Agency for Information Society, AKSHI, is accessible in web, iOS and Android mobile app versions, with more than 415,000 users also registered on the mobile app.
Kosovo’s portal, e-Kosova, offers more than 30 e-government services and also makes possible online payments.
Cybersecurity concerns
With increasing digitalisation comes greater scrutiny of digital security given the amount of sensitive, personal data carried on such portals.
“E-Kosova is managed by a private company which does not have a security clearance,” a civil society digital expert told BIRN. “There are no certified security officials because we have no laws that classify information, classify who got access, etc… the security behind e-Kosova has been the main problem.”
Montenegro has already paid dearly for lax security, after its e-government portal was one of the targets of a major ransomware attack in 2022. Services have not yet fully recovered.
In a report published in June, BIRN urged Montenegro to upgrade its cyber security institutions to tackle potential threats, as well as increase public awareness about private data protection, digital rights and online security.
The same year, Albanian government systems, albeit not on the e-Albania platform itself, were hit in July and September by large-scale cyber-attacks, which led to the temporary disruption of most online public services.
An FBI-aided investigation pointed the finger of blame at Iranian hackers, saying they had accessed the Albanian system 14 months earlier.
Lack of financial resources
Digitalisation and the accompanying security requirements do not come cheap. Balkan countries are particularly limited in how much they can invest.
“State budgets for digital transformation are often limited and insufficient to achieve comprehensive progress,” a representative of the institution in charge of e-government services in Bosnia and Herzegovina told BIRN. “Budgetary allocation priorities are not always focused on digitalisation, resulting in a lack of funds for digital transformation projects.”
EU and international actors such as the UNDP and German GIZ provide some financial support for e-government projects but one expert told BIRN that these are project-based and not long-term solutions.
Additional funds are required to promote e-government services once they are developed.
A 2023 survey by NALED in Serbia found that 61 per cent of Serbian citizens lack proper information on the eUprava portal and how it works.
Read the full report here.