Today in Sarajevo, in the u Hotel Europa, a final conference of the project “Training of employees who execute the jobs of civil service for application of information technologies and work on computer” was held, which was financed by the funds of the Public Administration Reform Fund, implemented by the consortium Net-pro d.o.o. Brčko and Eksa d.o.o. Sarajevo, in cooperation with the civil service / administration agencies at all administration levels in BiH.

In the past ten months of project implementation, two cycles of IT training were completed within which the training was attended by 1745 employees of the civil service and the units of local self governance, and currently, there is a third cycle, in which 35 attendees attend the training, which would make 1780 the total number of implemented trainings, as it was planned by the project.

The programme of training for application of information technologies and work on computer was implemented in accordance with the “ECDL Base” European standard (European Computer Driving Licence), and the objective of the project, as stresses by Aleksandar Karišik, head of the Operations Unit of the Public Administration Reform Coordinator’s Office, is to contribute, by development of IT skills of the employees of the public administration, to development of effective and modern civil administration in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which would be capable to answer to the requests of the integration processes in the EU and ensure a quality service to its citizens, clients from the business sector and to other users of its services.

The results of the training and tests of the attendees were presented by the administration levels by the representatives of the civil service / administration agencies in BiH. Of the total number of attendees in three cycles of training, 387 candidates are from the level of the state institutions of BiH, 600 candidates are from the level of the Federation of BiH, 593 candidates are from the level of the Republic of Srpska, and 200 candidates are from the level of the Brčko District of BiH. Until now, 1538 attendees acquired the ECDL Base diploma, while the remaining candidates will take the final exams in the next period.

“Increase of digital skills and IT abilities of the civil servants has a direct influence on increase in efficiency of public administration, which is definitely one of the very important conditions for a quicker economic recovery”, Mensura Beganović, chairwoman of the IT Association in BiH pointed out.

Branislav Zimonjić, senior expert associate for information technologies in the Ministry of Communication and Transport of BiH, pointed out the significance of strengthening of IT skills for future processes of introduction of electronic services and development of e-Administration in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“The influence of this project to development of IT skills of employees who execute the jobs of civil service is demonstrated also by the fact that the average evaluation of the level of IT skills of the attendees at the end of the training is increased by 49% in relation to the average evaluation of the level of their initial skills”, stressed Slađana Simić, project manager of the Net-pro d.o.o., the project implementer.

At the final conference, diplomas were awarded to the most successful attendees of the training who attended the training in the accredited ECDL centres in the locations in Sarajevo and East Sarajevo.