Become an eCitizen

Starting today, citizens wishing to use all eGovernment services and become eCitizens can receive support in creating an account on the eGovernment portal, in counter halls of city and municipal administration. Being an eCitizen enables them to enroll a child in kindergarten or school, schedule a date for issuing personal documents or perform any of the 500 procedures related to important life events, at any moment, via mobile phone or tablet. 

-Together with NALED and with the support of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, through promotion of electronic delivery of documents into the eMailbox on the eGovernment portal, we trained more than 700 administrative officers to work with the portal. The first designated counter starts functioning today in Kragujevac, and in the upcoming period, this service will be available in more than 140 cities and municipalities. Our goal is to help our citizens, businesses and those that may find it harder to navigate the digital environment in overcoming this first obstacle and enable them to join a group of more than a million users of eGovernment services who already became eCitizens. Another goal is to ensure that the citizens log onto the eGovernment portal in a safe manner, confirming their identity by using their mobile phones  – said the Director of Office for IT and eGovernment Mihailo Jovanović.

Thanks to this initiative, the citizen who wish to use the eGovernment portal and access services and information quickly and easily, will not need to register and install an electronic certificate. The officers at local government counters will create their accounts on the eGovernment portal and explain the main functions and principles of operation.

Every eCitizen can access the eGovernment portal and verify their identity in a digital world using mobile phone (the so-called two-factor authentication). The officers provide citizens with printed out access credentials and support in launching the mobile application (Consent ID). To log onto the eGovernment portal, the citizens only need to type in their username, and they will receive a request to confirm that they are the ones trying to access their account, in a single click via mobile phone.  

- As a city that hosts the seat of the state Data Center, we found it our duty to be among the first ones to appoint the officers who will, following long preparations for working in a digital environment, will serve as support to all people of Kragujevac who come here. Our administrative officers will inform them about the eGovernment tools and mechanisms and encourage them to use these tools more commonly, particularly bearing in mind the pandemic when we should avoid the crowds and long waits in queues – said the Mayor of Kragujevac Nikola Dašić.

According to NALED analyses, the administrative burden costs businesses up to 1.4 billion EUR a year, and the extensive bureaucracy, particularly if requiring visits to numerous institutions and their counters, are often one of the main reasons for non-compliance or evasion of financial liabilities.

- The introduction of eGovernment since 2017 has contributed to savings of 900 tons of paper and 18,000 trees in Serbia, which is a significant result that has been recognized in the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Index for 2020. To continue the best practice, we teamed up with the Office for IT and eGovernment, and with the support of the Ministry of Public Administration and EBRD, we initiated the process of setting up the counters and appointing eGovernment officers in cities across Serbia – said NALED Executive Director Violeta Jovanović.