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Ministry of Economy receives regional award for in...
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Ministry of Economy receives regional award for innovation in field of digital economy
Published on: Nov 6, 2020 • 8:30 PM Author: PR Service
The Ministry of Economy was awarded a regional award in the field of digital economy at the 2020 Western Balkans virtual public administration award ceremony, organised by ReSPA, OECD/SIGMA.On behalf of the Ministry of Economy, the award was received by Minister of Economy Dragica Sekulić.
"There were many challenges that we faced during the new situation caused by the coronavirus. In order to be able to understand the magnitude of the challenges we faced in preparation for launching this project, you need to know that our Government adopted the Business and Employee Support Programme on 24 April, giving a public promise that assistance will be available from 1 May. I am sure that no one outside our team can imagine the level of pressure, but also the level of excitement and motivation that we experienced in that period," Minister Sekulić said.
She said another big challenge was based on the principles of proportionality for different structures: the tourism sector; those whose activities were banned and those who continued to work, but to a limited extent. Furthermore, the Minister said that the intention was to support all individuals who were ordered to quarantine and self-isolate and parents who stayed at home during the suspension of classes during the lockdown. She also stated that a special part of the programme was dedicated to employers who, despite the crisis, decided to hire new staff.
"We knew that this structure makes the programme extremely complex to implement in terms of different controls and criteria, but we were convinced that it was the right approach," the Minister said.
She stressed that they were aware that they had to create a 100% digital process that precluded people coming to the counter, because any other approach to the programme that should include more than 15,000 companies and more than 70,000 employees per month would create long queues, which would be completely unacceptable during epidemic.
A team of more than 20 members from various institutions (Ministry of Economy, Tax Administration, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of the Interior, Employment Agency, etc.), together with the private sector, developers and IT experts from Infostream worked 24 hours a day.
"This group of people managed to design, prepare, test and run an application for submitting applications, automatic control and processing, and finally the payment of salaries in real time, directly to the bank accounts of each individual employee. For that purpose, we had to connect several databases from different institutions," Sekulić pointed out.
At the end of the presentation, the Minister thanked ReSPA for recognising the effort, expertise and innovative approach built into this project.
"This award is really valuable for us, but the biggest reward for the whole team was the satisfaction and gratitude of our citizens," she concluded.
The award ceremony was organised by ReSPA, OECD/SIGMA for the first time this year, due to the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and is planned to become a tradition.
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