January the 28th, 2022 - First came transparent Bjelovar, and now after years of Milan Bandic being, well, let's say ''less than transparent'' about where and how the City of Zagreb's money is spent, new mayor Tomislav Tomasevic is introducing the Smart City Hub Zagreb, which will openly show how the capital's cash is spent.

As Novac/Jutarnji/Hina writes, on Wednesday, Zagreb Mayor Tomislav Tomasevic presented the Smart City Hub Zagreb, the goal of which is to unite all different types of applications and information from various city offices in one place, and one of the novelties is the Open Budget of the City of Zagreb.

Tomasevic emphasised that the coronavirus pandemic has become an "engine of change" that aims to provide various digital services to all citizens, digitise existing services and further simplify them.

"The idea of ​​the Smart City Hub Zagreb is to have all different types of applications that exist in different city offices and institutions on one platform. There are so many digital projects in Zagreb that it's difficult to list them all, and a largr number of people don't even know they exist, let alone how to use them,'' Tomasevic said.

This idea will put everything in one place with the simplest possible approach and increase the amount of data that is systematically collected by the City of Zagreb, as well as its companies and institutions. All of this data should be processed as much as possible in real time, so that there is no need to interact and wait for information.

Part of the platform is the Open Budget, which shows the priorities of the local government, what the money is spent on, what its projects are. "This is just the beginning of opening the budget up so people can see what's going on, because a transparent and open budget is the foundation of any transparency of the government," Tomasevic pointed out.

He expressed regret that the City of Zagreb is not a pioneer in Croatian digitalisation, but assured that it will do everything to reach the level of other digitised cities in a very short time.

"For the first time, the city budget is not only available in an excel spreadsheet, but also in a machine-readable form so that everyone can analyse, process and present it in different ways," Tomasevic said.

Detailed information on budget revenues and expenditures will be available to the public through the Smart City Hub Zagreb.

He explained that the budget was adopted on the so-called the third level of detail, although under the new law it must be presented at the second level, with less detail.

"We want to present it on the fourth level of detail, we'll be one step ahead of what is now the standard and two steps ahead of what is the legal standard. We want more detailed data on budget revenues and expenditures to be available to the public," said the mayor.

He announced that they are expected to comply with the law, which will not only show the budget, but also the actual transactions made from the account, where exactly an amount is paid, to whom and why it has been paid will be monitored.

"There will be countless questions now, it isn't something pleasant to go through for any government, but we absolutely need to do that, we won't hesitate to make all data as accessible as possible to people and to open up topics we may not even know about," he said.

The government's exposure to criticism is an integral part of any democratic society, we must accept criticism even when it isn't well-intentioned, we must endure it without arresting people,'' Tomasevic said, referring to the recent arrests of people for writing various comments about certain politicians on social media.

Sanja Malnar Neralic, Head of the Department for Realisation and Coordination of the Zagreb Smart City Project, pointed out that the platform isn't creating a new database, but integrating different databases to be available in one place.

In addition, the City of Zagreb and ZICER want to use the Hackathon competition to choose a prototype of a digital solution whose primary goal will be a simpler overview of city budget items. The hackathon will be held at ZICER from February the 25th to the 27th, so all people involved in design, programming, data processing, investigative journalism and other related occupations are invited to apply for it.

For more, check out our politics section.

October the 1st, 2021 - Zoran Milanovic is known for not mincing his words and speaking his mind. The president, who is also a former prime minister, has become somewhat famous (or infamous, it depends how you view it) for his creative insults and wars of words with PM Andrej Plenkovic. He has now spoken frankly about his beliefs about the former local Zagreb government, and the poor management which caused the dire issues the city is facing today.

As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, Croatian President Zoran Milanovic said on Wednesday that, as far as reconstruction after the devastating earthquake of March 2020 in Zagreb is concerned, we're now "simply going into the red''. This was his picturesque warning of the fact that the financial situation in the Croatian capital city is not good because the previous Zagreb government led it into this ''abyss''.

"If we're talking about the reconstruction of Zagreb, we're now quite simply going into the red. The financial situation in the City of Zagreb, as far as I hear, isn't good, not because of this government, but because of the previous Zagreb government,'' said Milanovic, clearly pointing fingers at the former mayor, Milan Bandic, who was one of the most controversial Croatian politicians of our time, even by this country's rather impressive standards.

Mired in corruption accusations and alleged wrongdoing, Bandic (often affectionately referred to as Bandit) died suddenly and prematurely from a massive heart attack earlier this year, with many calling him the greatest Croatian politician of all, simply because he died without ever having been charged.

Asked about the reconstruction of Zagreb after the earthquake, he told reporters at the "Big Plans Day/Dan velikih planova" conference that it was financially important in Zagreb for Prime Minister Andrej Plenković to start paying some actual attention to it.

"There's no room for trade and agreements. The city cannot borrow beyond a certain point, and the previous Zagreb government brought it into this abyss of a situation it's now in,'' concluded the president.

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