“The project of development of smart cities based on cloud infrastructure, which is being implemented in Petrovac na Mlavi, Bečej and Šid, aims for the city and municipal administrations to improve, by utilizing modern technologies, their own work and provide sustainable life to their citizens. We hope that, in the near future, the citizens of these three municipalities will be able to quickly report utility issues they encounter, to get information on air and water quality, find out about traffic jams and free parking spaces, and that the local administrations themselves shall better manage infrastructure and resources”, the State Secretary of the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, Maja Mačužić Puzić, has said at the seminar on the occasion of presenting the progress of the implementation of this project so far.
Noting that the Republic of Korea, as one of the world leaders in the field of digitization, is an important partner of Serbia in this field, Mačužić Puzić has expressed her belief that further cooperation between the two countries shall contribute to implementing the smart city development project in as many local governments across the country as possible. .
“The Government of the Republic of Serbia has made great efforts to modernize public administration, while the Ministry continuously supports and encourages city and municipal administrations to provide better and faster high quality services to their citizens and businesses by improving electronic services, saving them significant time and money,” the State Secretary has pointed out.
She has added that local self-governments should invest in smart development, unite, cooperate and exchange experiences in creating services, in order to improve the quality of life of their citizens.
The newly appointed Ambassador of the Republic of Korea to Serbia, H.E. Jaewoong Lee, has also made an address at the event, praising Minister Marija Obradović for the efforts of the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government to improve electronic services and expressing his gratitude for the cooperation in digitization and modernization of public administration achieved so far.
The implementation of the joint project of the Ministry of Public Administration and Local Self-Government, the Korean Development Institute (KDI) and the South Korean multinational company “Samsung” titled “Development of cloud technology based smart cities in the Republic of Serbia” had commenced in late 2021 in Municipalities of Petrovac na Mlavi, Bečej and Šid. In the coming period, an analysis shall be made on how to provide infrastructure for the establishment of smart cities and their networking, as well as recommendations for services that will be offered, while the representatives of “Samsung” shall propose a hardware-software solution for the functioning of cloud-based smart cities in the aforementioned municipalities.