prijava
SARAJEVO, January 7 (FENA) - The General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina warned in an official letter that the functioning of the "e-government" system could be in question because the state budget has not been adopted yet, and requested urgent insurance of funds from the current reserve in the amount of about 680,000 KM for the purchase of necessary equipment.
In 2009, the Council of Ministers of BiH passed a conclusion by which the General Secretariat is in charge of supporting e-business and "e-government" institutions that use these services, and in that period they served about 10 institutions with several services.
However, over the years, under the pressure of reducing expenditures and audit recommendations, and primarily due to the great enthusiasm of employees who worked in that service, the system has grown into one of the largest IT systems in Bosnia and Herzegovina and currently provides 36 services to 58 BiH institutions.
A document from the General Secretariat, which FENA had access to, noted that since the establishment of the system, data security, user and service protection have been impeccable and there have been no serious security breaches.
In addition, in 2018, the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina adopted the Decision on the Adoption of the BiH Interoperability Framework, which obliges the Service for Maintenance and Development of Electronic Business and "e-Government" to build and maintain interoperability infrastructure.
Also, the Public Administration Reform Strategy and the Public Administration Reform Action Plan recognized the General Secretariat as a key institution for providing aggregate services to citizens and businesses through a shared services center.
These are millions of projects to be funded through IPA III, but due to organizational, human and financial problems, the General Secretariat will simply not be able to use these funds, given the lack of support in providing stronger support and problem-solving in the central institution in charge of implementing these infrastructure projects, in the way that all countries in the region do.
Earlier, we informed the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina about the problems, but there was no support for solving the specific problems that arose, and they believe that the reason is other problems that Bosnia and Herzegovina is facing.
“The current situation is alarming, considering that we have not adopted a budget on time for the third year in a row, and the mentioned problems represent a big problem in the current work of the service and could potentially cause the collapse of the entire "e-government" system,” they warned.
The budget for 2021 plans major infrastructure projects, including the replacement of equipment in the data center of the Council of Ministers of BiH, for which the support of manufacturers in January 2022, replacement of air conditioners with which the Service for Maintenance and Development of Electronic Business and "e- government" has continuous problems, the expansion of storage devices, given the large increase in the need for additional space due to the transition of certain institutions to the DMS system.
None of these projects have been implemented because 2021 ended without an adopted annual budget and institutions were funded through four temporary funding decisions.
The collapse of the "e-government" system, which is likely in the next period if they do not receive adequate support from the BiH Council of Ministers, will lead to the collapse of the entire system of BiH institutions that use it and take BiH back 20 years.
(FENA) A. B.
