New e-Service for Surveyors and Those Who Want to Take the State Professional Exam

On Tuesday, Minister of Administration Lovro Kuščević launched a new e-service in the e-Citizens system – Application for taking the professional exam for performing professional surveying tasks and issuing a certificate of passing the professional exam, developed by the State Geodetic Administration in collaboration with the Ministry of Administration and the Financial Agency. He emphasized that Croatia is moving strongly towards the digitalization of society, especially public administration.

– I am pleased to declare this application and this new system open, and I hope, I believe, I want you to have as many applications as possible, to have as many exams, and more surveyors to improve the situation in the field, in the cadastre and land registry, said Minister Kuščević.

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– This means that all those who are surveyors by profession and wish to take the state professional exam no longer need to come to a specific office and submit requests in writing. They can connect to the State Geodetic Administration’s website or the e-Citizens pages, access the application, and digitally submit all other required certificates in PDF format and request to take the professional exam. When they pass this professional exam, they also receive a certificate signed digitally that they have passed the state exam, so there is no more paper, said the director of the State Geodetic Administration, Damir Šantek, to reporters.

He stated that before the introduction of this new e-service, there were about 20 papers in that case and about a month of “walking around”.

He emphasized that this is the fifth e-service of the State Geodetic Administration that they have put into use in the past year. Šantek reminded that they have so far launched the e-service for copies of cadastral plans, the e-service for ownership lists, the e-service for extracts from the land data base, and the e-Notice Board.

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Minister Kuščević emphasized that today the e-Citizens system is used by just over 500 thousand citizens. He said that this is not enough and that their goal in the next 12 months is to reach at least three times more, to one and a half million users.

– In the e-Citizens system, we have over 45 applications, and today the State Geodetic Administration has created one more application. Thus, the Republic of Croatia is moving strongly towards the digitalization of society, especially in the digitalization of public administration, emphasized Kuščević.

The Project of All Projects

He announced soon projects such as e-stamp, e-fee, and “as the project of all projects” – the Shared Services Center.

– The Shared Services Center is a project under which we intend to connect all information from all state administration bodies so that the official handling the case can extract data and documents themselves, without unnecessarily sending our citizens from counter to counter, explained Minister Kuščević.

He announced that the Government of the Republic of Croatia and the Ministry of Administration will sign contracts worth over 500 million kuna aimed specifically at digitalization in the next 30 to 60 days, with 80 percent of these funds co-financed from European funds.

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– It is important to note that the e-Citizens system uses the most sophisticated security techniques. Thus, it is secured through a digital ID card, and the message to our citizens is that they really do not have to worry about the security of their data. Not only do they not have to worry about security, but I also urge our citizens to actively engage in the e-Citizens system and to take advantage of all the benefits that this system brings, said Kuščević.

Digital Day

He also stated that all digital services of the State Geodetic Administration have contributed not only to a faster, more efficient, and better economic climate but also to security and transparency in the entire economy and business within Croatia. He emphasized that future projects they will work on concern residence addresses, which is, as he said, very important related to the voter registration, and they are closely cooperating on this.

– I would say that today is somehow a ‘digital day’. This morning there was a meeting in the Government led by the Prime Minister of the Republic of Croatia, Andrej Plenković. The Vice-President of the European Commission (Andrus Ansip), who is responsible for digital Europe, was present, and after that, a good conference on the digital society was held at the Westin, and here we are today launching another digital application within the e-Citizens system, he emphasized.

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Kuščević said that they have realized, based on all development strategies and all working meetings they have within the Government of the Republic of Croatia, especially due to the fact that Estonia chaired the European Commission, which has “advanced the furthest in the digitalization of society, especially the digitalization of public administration,” how much digitalization means for the economic development of a society. He added that these figures are in the thousands of billions of euros, as the level of digitalization increases, so does the economy in parallel.

Digitalization Has Brought Numerous Savings

He emphasized that the EU has calculated that digitalization and the reuse of data at the European level could save hundreds of millions of hours in traffic jams, hundreds of millions of euros in fees, charges, taxis, bus and tram tickets, and similar.

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– Therefore, Croatia has committed itself, Croatia follows European practices, and our goal is the digitalization of public administration, digitalization of the economy, public sector, education, healthcare, and everything that the state can contribute to, said Minister Kuščević.