Press Release - AmCham Conference „Digital Croatia 2030“

“In the past several months, many aspects of our lives have been rapidly digitized due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which was met with approval by the citizens. Virtual education, working from home, physical examinations by telephone, issuing of e-permits and meetings with business partners via digital platforms have been realized in an extremely short amount of time. Today’s conference is also a true example of that”, said Ruža Tomić Fontana, President of AmCham Board of Governors at the occasion of the opening of the online conference titled “Digital Croatia 2030”, organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Croatia and held on 30 June 2020.

The first panel held on the topic of the digitization of the Croatian economy concluded that the pandemic revealed the benefits of digitization and accelerated the implementation of digital tools.

Zdenko Lucić, State Secretary, Ministry of Economy, Entrepreneurship and Crafts, said that, since the onset of the pandemic, 150,000 new users signed up to the e-građani service, aided by the already built public administration infrastructure. For example, the Start MGPO project facilitated the founding of 500 new businesses and companies via the application from the end of 2019. He emphasized that further digitization of the Croatian society and economy requires a cooperation between the public and private sectors. The future of digitization in Croatia has a good outlook, said Lucić, adding that Croatia has more than 20 billion EUR at its disposal in the next 7 years, including for the funding of the digital economy.

Ante Rončević, representing the Homeland Movement party, emphasized that the adjustment of citizens and entrepreneurs to the new and existing digital channels also depended on the existing infrastructure, which is not satisfactory everywhere on the Croatian territory. Despite the fact that some individuals managed well, the pandemic demonstrated that the state is not ready for such processes due to the very structure of the Croatian economy (60% of our economy falls within the service sector), which has proven to be our biggest bottleneck. The lack of infrastructure, poorly allocated funds and public administration are the greatest stumbling blocks when it comes to the competitiveness of the Croatian economy. It is necessary to reform the educational system, boost investment in R&D, and establish a better cooperation between the economy and the educational system, said Rončević.

Joško Mrndže, Country Manager Adriatics, Google Hrvatska, added that COVID-19 prodded us into digitization – businesses started digitizing and going online overnight. Searches for online retail grew by 200% at the global level, and there was a sharp increase in online training courses. A digital breakthrough has been made, and it has become clearer what digitization offers and what possibilities of new knowledge it brings. Education at all levels (state, public administration and SMEs) and opportunities that arise from it are essential for further digitization – we already have the prerequisites, therefore we must take advantage of the possibilities for further growth and development so that we can become a successful digital society. We need a window into the world, and digital technologies offer us just that, concluded Mrndže.

Boris Petrušić, Senior Sales Manager Technology, Oracle Hrvatska – the IT sector has adapted exceptionally quickly; those companies that had prepared and were ready for telework also have increased productivity. The state should continue working on the digitization of processes in an understandable way that is accessible to all citizens and entrepreneurs in Croatia. It is necessary do digitize more services and the public administration as well as to invest more in know-how and competence that are in global demand. Businesses can and want to adopt new technologies because they will enable them to do business more quickly and easily, while the role of the state is to make the relevant legal framework and digital services simple to use for communication with the public administration.

Ivan Hukavec, Territory Account Manager, Cisco Hrvatska – In Croatia, processes are sluggish, and deadlines are too long. In some cases, processes can be shortened, which will contribute to the competitiveness of both the state and the private sector. A change of approach is needed, by taking a proactive approach.

The topic of the second panel discussion was digitization of the public administration. The panelists were Ivan Malenica, Minister of Administration; Marko Rakar, representing the Restart Coalition; Zoran Šegić, Oracle Application Sales Executive & Business Development Manager, Oracle Hrvatska; and Emil Franjčec, Public and Enterprise Account Manager, Cisco Hrvatska.

Ivan Malenica, Minister of Administration – A million of e-građani service users is a figure that demonstrates that citizens have recognized everything that has been done so far in the digitization of the public administration, said Minister Malenica, mentioning as an additional example the rapid digitization of the public administration in connection with the e-passes project and Andrija application. We intend to continue digitizing public administration processes and procedures, i.e. we will work on the digitization of internal processes (such as the communication between national and public authorities – shared service center for a quicker and more effective communication) as well as digitization for citizens themselves, which is limited by the procedures carried out by various authorities – a greater coordination and connection between all national and public authorities are needed, said Minister Malenica, adding that local self-government will also undergo digitization.

Marko Rakar, representing the Restart coalition – Digitization was short-lived and superficial. Today we are in the same position as before the coronavirus. There is a difference between the number of users and number of active users of the e-građani service. The national ICT is fragmented into several pillars, which makes an actual implementation of what has been agreed difficult. The existing public administration systems do not recognize the term “user experience”, are impractical for use and illogical. One of the points we advocate is to enable people to impose certain topics of discussion to the Government, Parliament, local self-government etc. via an electronic petitioning system. The digitization of the public administration requires us to look up to the best, concluded Rakar.

Zoran Šegić, Oracle Application Sales Executive & Business Development Manager, Oracle Hrvatska – The risk of backsliding is negligible in the private sector. The public sector lags behind when it comes to digitization compared to the private sector and most of SEE countries despite the fact that increasingly more attention is paid to the importance of digitization by the public sector. The lack of continuity is one of the reasons for the ever increasing disproportion between the public and the private sector when it comes to digitization; the lack of flexibility or adaptation in connection with strategic and reform projects; lack of qualified staff in the public administration, and current income. There is a need for a consensus of key priorities and reforms that will lead us to an efficient state, sustainable in terms of costs. As the most important projects for the digitization of the public administration, Šegić listed the quality project, competence project, one-stop government project, human resources project in the national administration as well as the e-health and justice system digitization projects.

Emil Franjčec, Public and Enterprise Account Manager, Cisco Hrvatska – The segment of broadband Internet coverage of zones that are not of commercial interest and the network infrastructure represent much room for improvement. In some digital service segment, Croatia is among the top ten countries when it comes to mobile banking and e-commerce. Public services should also follow a similar example. Things happen more quickly in the SEE countries. However, Croatia has an opportunity to adopt next-generation technologies, there is no need to start anew. Croatia should be a lot quicker, i.e. adopt new things that will be topical in 3-4 years, not do something that was done in the West 5 years ago.

More than a hundred distinguished representatives of institutions and the business community participated in the event.