Meeting of AmCham members with Mr. Bernard Gršić, State Secretary

The topic of the meeting, held on January 30, 2019, was the work of the Central State Office and plans for the upcoming period.

Mr. Gršić stressed out that the work of the Government in the last two years has been characterized by intensive work on many projects aimed at integrating different systems within the public administration. Currently there are around 40 ongoing projects that include:

- Shared Service Center, aimed to unify different state services in one place trough integration of different databases and registers,
- e-poslovanje (e-business), aimed at administrative unburdening of doing business in Croatia by making services available online instead of by going to different state offices in person, 
- m-poslovanje (m-business), that will enable simple and easy access to the e-građani portal through a mobile application,
- e-pristojbe (e-fees), aimed to offer a simpler way of paying fees and taxes through POS devices and online, which will lead to the abolition of paper tax stamps.

One of the obstacles to the realization of Government’s projects is the shortage of IT experts working for the public institutions. 

The Central State Office is becoming the coordination body in charge of monitoring, development and oversight of all informatization projects in the country. 

AmCham representatives pointed out the need to set digitalization as one of the economic priorities during the Croatia presidency over the EU Council in 2020. 

In the current EU budget (until 2020) there are limited funds for digitalization of businesses. Funds are predominantly available for businesses in certain sectors and those conducting research and development. AmCham is advocating for defining the EU budget for the period 2021-2027 in a way that would enable funds for businesses, regardless of the sector they belong to, for purchasing equipment and services which would help increase the overall level of digitalization of all businesses in Croatia, with an emphasis on micro, small and medium enterprises. 

AmCham representatives, whose core business is not ICT, also face issues with the lack of qualified IT experts. One way of overcoming such issues is contracting external IT experts. This approach could also be considered by public administration institutions in order to ensure successful completion of projects despite the lack of experts internally.