Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government Branko Ružić stated at today’s presentation of the Draft Law on Central Population Registry that it crowned all efforts made to digitalise registers, starting with the Law on General Administrative Procedure in 2016. “The new Law imposed a duty on administration services to exchange documents among themselves, instead of demanding of citizens to present those documents, and the citizens were promised that the administration would, with every new step, move away from the administration known for long queues, papers, unreasonable costs and wasting citizens’ time and patience, because invariably at least one document would be missing”, said the Minister. He emphasised that a number of steps had been made since then towards the Central Population Register, a comprehensive record containing all data on citizens. “As all data are now pooled in a single electronic database, authorised officers will be able to obtain ex officio the data they need to provide services to citizens from 11 different records, which will make the procedures much faster, simpler and cheaper”, Ružić said, adding that the aim was to have the Draft Law enacted by the National Assembly of Serbia by the end of the year, so it could be implemented swiftly next year, as the Office for IT and eGovernment has already implemented the required hardware infrastructure. The Minister said the software infrastructure would be implemented and tested in 2019. “This is the first time that 11 records are integrated in a single register and it poses a specific challenge for the experts at the Ministry and the Office for IT and eGovernment, as well as for the five institutions which are currently in charge of these areas (Ministry of Interior, MPALSG, Centralb Register of Compulsory Social Insurance Organisations and local tax administrations)”, Ružić said, adding it was an opportunity for the Serbian IT community to reaffirm its status as the regional leader in eGovernment and the IT sector.