[Conference 48 Hours] Digitalization Will Increase Revenue for Cities

An increasing number of Croatian city administrations are operating digitally and transparently, communicating with citizens in a transparent manner, and how they do this was the topic of two panels with the same name at Lider’s 48 Hours conference. The first panel addressed the open city, while the second discussed the benefits citizens derive from it.

The panels featured mayors and entrepreneurs whose products and services are utilized by Croatian cities, who agreed that an open and transparent city is a result of digitalization and that it must be implemented at all levels of governance. One of the panel participants, Dario Hrebak, the mayor of Bjelovar, believes that digitalization is extremely important as it is the mortal enemy of bureaucratization and nepotism, which he supported with the example of the digitalization of children’s enrollment in Bjelovar kindergartens and the selection of students for scholarship awards.

– Digitalization is not something modern that a mayor should introduce to be cool; it is becoming the killer of bureaucracy, nepotism, and corruption. The more digitalized we are as a society, the more successful we will be – said Hrebak, who claims that digitalization will increase the revenues of Croatian cities in the next ten years.

To simplify the digitalization of administrative processes, cities can use the Open platform from the company Libusoft Cicoma, presented by Marko Ignjatović, as well as the services of the company Prehnit, which deals with innovations discussed by Vlatko Roland, who emphasized that the biggest challenge in the digitalization process of cities is outdated official data and their inconsistency.

In response to the panel leader Roko Kalafatić’s question, a journalist from Lider, regarding the results of the digitalization of the city administration of Karlovac, Mayor Damir Mandić explained that in 2018, a smart city project was conceived on the idea that it must be known how every kuna is spent.

– All city accounts are public, all city companies must publish their accounts on our platform so that it can be seen how public money is used. Digitalization must ultimately lead to an increase in trust between citizens and the city administration – said Mandić.

The city of Samobor, according to Mayor Petra Škrobot, is the first in Croatia to implement a pilot project introducing the Okitoki application for communication between kindergartens and parents, through which parents are informed in real-time about everything happening with their children. According to Tatjana Novak, co-founder of the company Okitoki, the application of the same name was designed in collaboration with educational experts and is currently used internally, with city-wide implementation starting at the beginning of next year.

Regarding the results of digitalization and transparency, Škrobot stated that her first move upon taking office was to introduce transparency. This resolved two issues: it allowed citizens to see how their money is spent and increased employee accountability towards their work.

– With transparency, everything is served; citizens can see all the data, which has a significant and positive effect for the city – says Škrobot.

Samobor is preparing to introduce several more applications, and Hrvoje Sagrak from Infodom, a company that collaborates with cities on smart city projects, spoke about a dozen e-services of varying complexity that they have developed for national use and which cities can utilize in the digitalization process.