Serbia’s budget for 2020 will see significant investments foreseen for “digitization”, especially when taken into account in the previous year, according to a budget analysis published at Nova Ekonomija.
Particularly problematic is the famous Data Center under construction in Kragujevac, for which 40 million euros will be allocated over the next 3 years. There is no excuse for such megalomania; a tiny Fort Knox could be built for that money, not a single server-housing facility.
Interestingly, in the 2019 budget, the “miracle” was supposed to cost 10 million euros less, but the “agile” IT director Mihajlo Jovanovic apparently drastically underestimated the cost.
The IT office will spend over 50 million euros; in addition to the Data Center, it will pay for licenses of 13 million euro (predominantly Microsoft) with an additional one-time allocation for the introduction of Oracle technology of 6 million euros. As many as 14 million euros are planned for various software solutions.
The Ministry of Finance, with its organizational parts, has by far the largest IT spending. Thus, we will pay over 100.000,00 euros for the Ministry’s employee registry and some other software platforms; for the electronic invoice platform over 50.000,00 euros and the data consolidation platform 20.000,00 euros.
The tax administration is relatively modest with 4 million euros, the Customs Administration for the support of the information system receives 5 million euros. The Treasury Directorate is a record holder with IT expenditures of 24 million euros: information support for the treasury business is over 8 million, 3.7 million is planned for the improvement and automation of business processes, the central register of invoices (which already exists) is 300.000,00, for “Backup and backup location” 1.7 million, centralized salary calculation 1.3 million, budget accounting information system 2.3 million and monitoring of the execution of local governments 3 million euros.
No one disputes the need to modernize the work of the treasury, however, the question arises whether it is necessary for all the aforementioned services to be realized in one year? Can the staff in that administration accept and implement these new technologies?
Investments for IT are also significant in the interior, where 5 million euros is planned for the construction of the “Information Security Center” in the next 3 years (despite the Fort Knox IT Office in Kragujevac); More than 5 million euros is being invested in “IT capacities”, plus over 2 million euros in telecommunications systems.
The Ministry of Education has not been immune to “digitalization” either, so 17 million euros is being earmarked for this purpose. It is nice that the youngest, at the expense of the budget, will be able to use the didactic “Bee”, which costs “a modest” 350.000,00 euros. That’s not all, it will be funded with 5.5 million euros and a “digital textbook and digital classroom”.
The Ministry of Trade and Telecommunications will spend 18 million euros for the project to connect schools to the Internet, as well as 1.5 million euros for the development of ICT infrastructure in science, education and culture institutions.
