On Tuesday, President Andrej Kiska addressed the ITAPA International Conference with a speech on eGovernment:

“Ladies and Gentlemen,

To start off with, I would like to thank the organisers of this event for inviting me. Let me also express my appreciation for the people who, for 14 years now, have been trying to advance eGovernment, stirring interest in this topic in Slovakia and promoting successful projects. You have my thanks for your endeavours to turn Slovakia into a modern 21-century country.

I would also like to thank all those present here for their day-to-day genuine and responsible efforts aimed at improving the functioning public administration, as well as for their quest for ways of how to make the best possible use of modern technologies in delivering public services which make the life of our citizens and businesses easier, save their time, and reduce their costs. Your work ties in well with a number of successful projects which have helped modernise Slovakia, at least a little, and which can serve as examples and inspiration for others.

I consider it important to highlight these success stories for they illustrate that Slovakia can become a leader in the modernisation of public services. For example, Slovakia was one of the first EU member states to engage general public in consultations over legislative proposals before they reach the government for decision. Let me mention another example – the Act on Free Access to Information – which is celebrating its 15^th anniversary this year. Apart from having improved the access of citizens to information on the activities of public administration, the law triggered, or served as a basis for, a number of useful projects – from online broadcasts of cabinet debates to mandatory publication of government contracts on the Internet.

These are the examples of how Slovakia can leap forward, come up with good ideas, and offer useful solutions. Yet, this is what makes the failure of the state – which we are all witnessing – all the less understandable. The Operational Programme “Informatisation of Society”, which Slovakia launched in 2007, has had great ambitions and even a greater budget. Today, eight years into the programme, it is clear that the state will manage to do only half of its homework, i.e., to spend almost 900 million EUR. This spending is oftentimes non-transparent and, in many instances, brings no benefits at all.

It is true, though, that changes in certain areas did occur. Electronic services have become reality, important data have been digitalised, and some red tape has been eliminated. All those who participated in this process deserve our thanks. However, those hundreds of millions of euros spent so far have not been sufficient for those in charge to achieve the basic goals which they themselves had defined.

For example, the “one-stop principle”, based on which people should not be providing the same data and information to public authorities over and over again. This great idea drowned in the traditional culture of ring-fencing and amidst all those gigantic public contracts with unclear terms of reference and lamentable deliverables. Instead of benefitting from pro-active public sector services, the citizens and businesses of Slovakia continue to act as postmen between civil servants. Rather than being a user-friendly portal of eGovernment services, the so vigorously promoted website of slovensko.sk is a triste internet memorial of the unacceptable degree of bureaucracy which our citizens are still confronted with. I have recently visited Estonia and to see how things are working there. When I then visited the slovensko.sk website, no other word but “shame” came to my mind.

Sadly enough, eight years into the process of society informatisation, Slovakia has failed to catch up with the global front-runners in this field. Slovakia has failed to draw inspiration from their successes and learn lessons from their mistakes. Slovakia has failed to accomplish the necessary reforms in the sector of public administration. Slovakia has failed to transform itself into a modern country with good and simple services for the citizen. If the innovative IT sector is germinating in Slovakia, it is not thanks, but rather in spite of the government and its “society informatisation project”.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As I have mentioned, I recently visited Estonia which has become a world leader in the provision of eGovernment services. A small country which transformed itself from a post-Soviet bureaucracy into a lean and modern state operating online in almost all walks of public life, which smartly uses this particular strength for its own promotion. I have also visited Finland, another country which understood that the objective of informatisation is not to digitalise the old bureaucratic paperwork, but to deploy modern technologies in order to rid the citizens and businesses of numerous obligations vis-à-vis the state.

In Estonia, you can establish a company online in a matter of 15 minutes. Estonians file up to 98 per cent of their income tax returns electronically. Even the term “file” is not accurate because, for the most part, they only confirm the automatically filled-in data. To sign in for a plethora of electronic services, e-Health including, they only need one document – identity card or only a mobile phone. We have chosen a different route – which seems to be irreversible – whereby the use of some electronic services requires identity card, while the other require insurance policy cards. The login option via mobile phones is still referred to in future tense ... even in 2015.

Many of you know these examples and we could spend hours and hours talking about various successful services which are working well in other countries and which are not working in Slovakia at all, or not properly. More importantly, and these experiences confirm it, Slovakia shouldn’t draw inspiration from technical solutions and IT systems in the first place, but from the way of thinking and from the management of projects designed to meet this objective. If Slovakia does not want to repeat the fiasco from the first round of the EU funds earmarked for society informatisation, the change must occur in the mindset of those in charge, politicians including.Unless the mindset changes, further hundreds of millions are doomed to be wasted.

In my view, a successful and truly useful modernisation and informatisation of society should be based on three principles. Firstly, it requires a clear delineation of political responsibility and focused interest of the top political leaders in the country. Secondly, it must focus on comprehensible and measurable outcomes which simplify the life of both citizens and businesses. And it should be based on openness, transparency and inclusion of the largest possible number of innovative professionals and firms.

Let be briefly elaborate on each of these three points.

We will probably agree that nowadays it is not technologically difficult to pick up any agenda of the state and scrutinise it as to whether it still makes sense and meets its original purpose, whether the way in which it is implemented is still justified, efficient and expeditious, and whether or not it poses excessive burden for the citizen. And if so, then change it. However, the politicians in charge need to understand the possibilities which informatisation offers so that they are able to formulate clear, understandable and transparent terms of reference.

Therefore, the present situation – in which a handful of companies have gained control over the drafting of strategic documents, definition of projects, public procurement and the entire implementation of public investments with lamentable results – is primarily the failure of the state. The role of politicians is to fix it and make sure that the whole process is managed as a counter-balance to the omnipresent ring-fencing and vested interests of public authorities and their business partners.

This is linked to the ability to focus on comprehensible and measurable outputs for citizens and businesses. When talking about the quality of healthcare and ability of the system to cure patients, success cannot be measured through the number of devices deployed in hospitals, but through the health status and life expectancy of citizens. When talking about the quality of education, success is not measured by the number of schools and teachers, but through the performance of students and their ability to make it in professional life.

It is therefore high time we stopped measuring the success of informatisation in Slovakia through the number of datacentres built, amount of funds invested in infrastructure, or volume of bureaucracy which the state, respecting the interests of individual public authorities, shifted from paper to the Internet, although not very successfully. These oftentimes nonsensical investments should, perhaps, be of interest to law enforcement agencies, but they are definitely nowhere near being the criterion of usefulness for people in Slovakia.

Informatisation is not only about logins to portals here and there, or getting things done over the Internet. Modernisation and informatisation should, first and foremost, be about disentangling the web of various duties and services where the citizens and businesses hold the shorter end of the stick. The success of informatisation should be measured by the number of people using electronic services, by the time and money they save, and also by the volume of red tape cut.

And finally, the role of the state in informatisation is no longer reduced to the mere effort of introducing electronic services of all kinds. No economy is rich enough to fund that. Instead, the state must focus on making available, in a transparent manner, all the data which it may disclose. And the use of such data – save for the important competencies which the state must retain – should be left up to those for whom they are beneficial. Slovakia has enough qualified people with good ideas and the necessary zest. The way in which these skilful people can use, process, evaluate and interpret such data is what turns countries into leaders and brings a new quality to life.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The role of informatisation is to enhance the quality of life, cut red tape and modernise the services of public administration. However, successful countries have gone further than that. They have given an opportunity to all innovative individuals and firms to use modern technologies for their new projects and activities. This is what can turn our beautiful Slovakia into global Slovakia.

Thank you for your attention.”