ZAGREB, 5 April 2022 - The Central State Office for Digital Society (SDURDD) on Tuesday launched a new digital platform, called e-Poslovanje (e-Business), designed to facilitate communication between business entities and public administration bodies.

The platform, developed in partnership with the Financial Agency (FINA) and the Apis IT company, is available via the e-Građani (e-Citizens) portal, and the project, worth close to HRK 51 million, was co-financed with money from EU funds.

The platform builds on the e-Građani system, whose services are used by 1.6 million users, SDURDD state secretary Bernard Gršić said.

The e-Poslovanje platform integrates the different business services available in the e-Građani system, which can be used by both individual citizens and companies, Grčić said.

The project is still not complete, but the platform has been set up and currently has 10 active services, with 16 more being tested. Once everything is finished, the plan is for the e-Poslovanje portal to become a portal like e-Građani, said Gršić.

He noted that Croatia is at the bottom of the EU ranking in terms of the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) but that in the past five years a lot had been done to change that and that 20.4% of the funds under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan was intended for investments in digitalisation and development of complex, integrated services, while HRK 2.9 billion was intended for the digital society and public administration component.

The head of FINA's digital solutions sector, Andreja Kajtaz, said that with e-Poslovanje FINA had regulated public services for business entities and for authorisation and power of attorney systems, having integrated a set of services for citizens and companies free of charge.

Apis IT CEO Saša Bilić said that the platform would spare entrepreneurs the paperwork.

September the 26th, 2021 - The Republic of Croatia is set to present APIS IT, headed by Sasa Bilic, at an upcoming summit in the Belgian capital of Brussels at the end of this month.

As Poslovni Dnevnik/Lucija Spiljak writes, the development of a cloud strategy and the application of open source and cyber security issues are the main topics of the EURITAS summit entitled "Ensuring Digital Sovereignty of European Governments" which is set be held on the 30th of September in Brussels.

EURITAS is an organisation of European providers of IT services operating within the public sector that brings together eleven IT companies in majority public ownership from eight countries. Along with Croatia, those countries are Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland.

Croatia will be represented at the summit by APIS IT (Agency for Support of Information Systems and Information Technologies), whose President of the Management Board, also Vice President of EURITAS, Sasa Bilic, will participate in the discussion on digital sovereignty. This is a close area to APIS IT, considering that it is Croatia's leading state-owned company for IT solutions for state administration and local self-government, which participates in the development of the national cloud strategy.

As a publicly owned company, APIS IT is focused on the needs of public administration, so the biggest users are the Ministry of Finance, ie Tax and Customs Administration, the Ministry of Justice and Administration and the Ministry of Physical Planning, Construction and State Property for which APIS IT has built and maintains complex information systems.

On the other hand, in cooperation with the Central State Office for the Development of the Digital Society, APIS IT is collaborating on two significant EU projects - the establishment of the Shared Services Centre (CDU) as a state cloud, and e-Business.

As the cloud strategy is one of the key topics of the summit, Sasa Bilic gave a brief overview of cloud services in Croatia and in Europe, but also specifically in the company he leads.

"According to Eurostat data, Croatia's use of cloud services is above the European average, ie in the upper third of the table. This, however, applies to the economy, while we as a technical partner to the Central State Office for the Development of the Digital Society in the cloud platform construction project are particularly focused on public administration. Here we can say that in less than two years since the beginning of the project, we've reached 200 public administration bodies that use the infrastructure and services of the Shared Services Centre, which is an excellent indicator of the justification of the project implemented by the Central State Office. Namely, the planned performance indicator that we need to achieve by the end of 2023, when the project officially ends, is 300 users, which speaks volumes about the interest and needs of public administration bodies,'' explained Sasa Bilic in a bit more detail.

Sasa Bilic also explained why the summit's focus is on primarily digital sovereignty. For the European Union this issue is becoming increasingly important given that 92 percent of the data from the Western world is stored on servers owned by companies outside the EU that aren't subject to European laws on personal data protection, while at the same time, among the largest 20 technology companies have none from the EU.

"Such a state of affairs and dependence on monopolistic suppliers who aren't subject to the European Union's rules of the game is an obvious strategic weakness of the EU, which the prime ministers of Germany, Denmark, Estonia and Finland warned about in a joint letter sent to the European Commission a few months ago.

Control over data, but also hardware and software, they pointed out, is not only an important economic but also a first-class social and security issue. Therefore, the leaders of the four countries, led by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, called on the European Commission to adopt an action plan based on a new digital policy that will be open to cooperation with all, but whose main motive will be digital independence and self-determination.

The Croatian IT giant, which records revenue growth every year, has secured two national data centres in Zagreb and Jastrebarsko that meet the strictest TIER3 security and availability standards.

"Thanks to such a level of security, we can be the first choice for storing all IT systems, applications and data, so, for example, data about people will not have to be stored outside of Croatia. However, an equally important aspect of this topic is that through the construction of digital independence, we can provide and retain high value jobs, which creates the preconditions for the further development of society as a whole,'' explained Sasa Bilic.

The guaranteed availability of data centres stands at an impressive 99.98 percent per year, they have more than 1800 square metres intended for the storage of IT equipment, with the possibility of further expansion, while the delivery of 1.6 MW of electricity is guaranteed through the installation of four electricity sources with a total capacity of 7.2 MW.

This provides capacities that can successfully follow the growing needs of public administration, but also the private sector in the next medium term. According to the company, both data centres have redundant power sources, cooling systems and telecommunications networks, which can guarantee their customers uninterrupted operation and business continuity in all circumstances.

For more, see Made in Croatia.

ZAGREB, July 16, 2020 - The government on Thursday amended its decision on developing a mobile application in support of contact tracing in the event of contagious diseases whereby it included the Health Ministry in this task.

Health Minister Vili Beros is authorised to conclude a contract with the APIS IT company on preparing a digital platform to trace and manage COVID-19 infections.

The funds in the amount of HRK 625,000 (€83,000) are ensured for the first stage of the development of the platform.

Specialists of the APIS IT,  the Croatian agency that provides services to the public and government sector in planning, development, and maintenance of their information systems, are working on the design of the Croatian version of a mobile application in support of contact tracing for COVID-19,  the Jutarnji List daily reported this past Saturday.

Contact tracing is perceived to be of particular significance as containment measures are lifted.

May 15, 2020 — Croatia’s coronavirus contact tracing app will avoid harvesting personal data and instead model itself on its Singaporean and South Korean predecessors, according to Saša Bilić, president of the company tasked with creating it.

The APIS IT head said in an interview with N1 the application spent weeks in development. It will be released in a few weeks.

The app will use Bluetooth technology, not geolocation, to monitor people’s contacts. It will be completely voluntary.

The company said it followed recommendations from other EU countries and kept privacy foremost in mind when building the app.

 “If a person gets sick, they will voluntarily let everyone they have been in contact with over the last 14 days and contact an epidemiologist," Bilić said.

Applications will be interoperable across countries, to align with the tourist season.

“The application will record contact if people are closer than two meters and in contact for more than 20 minutes,” he said. “When someone gets sick, if that person allows, his contacts are sent an anonymized message that they were in contact,” explained Bilić, adding the patient’s name is not revealed.

The app is based on the positive experiences of Singapore and South Korea with the aim of technology helping the medical, epidemiological profession trace contacts.

Bilić especially emphasizes that there is no data storage, that all records are only in a particular mobile device, and that using the application would be part of the responsibility of each of us.

The app will work on Google and Apple devices. The companies will release updates to their mobile operating systems allowing the apps to run — but only for official purposes.

Croatia’s app will fall under the auspices of the Ministry of Health, Bilić said, emphasizing that it will not record names of phone numbers. 

He also said that they are ready for the elections, organizationally and in terms of personnel and that they should start with all the necessary actions as soon as they receive an order from the elections committee.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković first mentioned the government’s app on Wednesday.

“New technologies enable much more [help for the healthcare system] than without them,” he said. “Croatia is working on the application. It will protect the privacy of all our citizens.”

At a press conference of the National Civil Protection Headquarters, Interior Minister Davor Božinović confirmed an earlier statement by Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic that Croatia has been working on an application for "catching contacts" for several weeks.