Prishtina, 21.06.2024 – The Ministry of Economy (ME) organized the digital event “How to Turn a Crisis into an Opportunity for Good – Building a Results-Driven Government Starting with People,” where experiences were exchanged among the participants, based on the United States Digital Service.

The United States Digital Service is a technology unit within the Executive Office of the President of the United States, providing consulting services to federal agencies on Information Technology.

The meeting was attended by the Minister of Economy of the Republic of Kosovo, Artane Rizvanolli, the former first administrator of the United States (USA) Digital Service and former Deputy Chief Information Officer in the USA, Mikey Dickerson, the former Minister of Public Administration, Digital Transformation and Media in Montenegro, Tamara Srzentic, representatives of public institutions, and professionals from the country’s Information and Communication Technology sector.

Minister Rizvanolli expressed her happiness for organizing this discussion and added that, as a government, our key principles are good governance and transparency, and these principles strengthen our governance, achieved through digitalization as a tool to ensure open and equal access for every citizen.

She affirmed that with digitalization, closely linked to the reform and modernization of public administration, the electronic services we are creating are citizen-centred while reorganizing processes, reducing bureaucracy, and making it easier for citizens to access the services they need.

“We are continuously working on the digitalization of some of the key and most used services for our citizens and businesses, and so far, we are showing impressive progress.” “We have created more than 175 online services through eKosova, over 300 in total, including other portals. These cover all areas of services”, Rizvanolli said.

She added that the importance of this was demonstrated during the citizen subsidy program for efficient devices, where through the eKosova platform, citizens had the opportunity to apply easily, quickly and transparently. This positively impacted not only the applicants but also the Ministry staff involved in the process.

Meanwhile, Mikey Dickerson emphasized that changes are always welcome and this is achieved by starting with people. He advised that if you want to create subsidy programs, you can do so in peaceful times, when there are no crises. Therefore, his message was to learn from these crises and how you can benefit from them for the better.

“When you had an energy crisis during winter, it was a real problem and you understood that the issue is evident, so crises focus people better than when you want to do something when there is no crisis and everything is going well; sometimes things happen in unexpected situations”, Dickerson said.

Dickerson appreciated that priorities are not the same and the main purpose of what he wants to say is that when such things happen, when normal adaptive behaviours are impossible to achieve, then we have a golden opportunity, so when a crisis occurs, reform can be made according to the need to address this existing crisis and this is a good time to institutionalize reforms.

On the other hand, Tamara Srzentic, who moderated the discussion session, stated that they are here to share experiences, “not only for you to learn from us, but also for us to learn from you because you are one of the most stable societies and by doing good work, you as a government have achieved this”.

She affirmed that a crisis always gives an opportunity to mobilize and we can say that very often there are challenges, and for this reason, and her journey has therefore been through many countries. She noted that the construction of “Tech Park Prishtina” is a good example of how the community can benefit.

Emphasizing that they can learn a lot from each other, she stated that her mission is working in public services, which she does with passion, and shared her work experience when working in “Obama Care” during the time Barack Obama was President of the USA.