Representatives European Union Delegation in Bosnia and Herzegovina Karel Lizerot, Florian Houser, Giulio Crespi, Taru Kernisalo, Dominika Sikorska and Jelena Maksić visited the Municipality Centar. On this occasion, Mayor Srđan Mandić and Assistant for General Administration Jasna Beba presented to them the “E-bebe” project, which the Municipality Centar has been successfully implementing since November 2021.
The “E-bebe” project, which was launched on the initiative of PARCO in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and is realized through the Program for Strengthening Public Institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the German Society for International Cooperation-GIZ, is also successfully implemented by the Municipality Centar which is the first unit of local self-government in FBiH. Since the beginning of its implementation in the area of the central city Municipality in November 2021, over 600 babies whose mothers reside in the area of the center have been electronically registered in the registry books of the Municipality Centar, i.e. so many registry numbers for newborns have been determined with just one visit of their parents to the premises of the Registry Office of the Centar Municipality Office.
– When we started this very important pilot project a little over a year ago, we first signed a memorandum of cooperation with the representatives of the General Hospital “Prim.dr. Abdullah Nakaš”. As the project developed and showed its great advantages for our fellow citizens, we included the Clinical Center of the University of Sarajevo. We hope that other municipalities will follow our example in the future. In order to enable faster and more efficient provision of services and increase user satisfaction, the Municipality Centar launched the new Viber ChatBot application, which represents another step forward in the digitization of the services of the Municipality Centar, as well as the introduction of the E-registry service for all citizens of the Municipality. Through the application, citizens can submit a request for the issuance of extracts and certificates from the registers and take them, receive information about the status of the case being handled in the Municipality, and information about municipal services. Through this and other projects, we want to achieve complete digitization in the Municipality Centar, and we will succeed when the higher levels of government adopt the Law on Electronic Signatures, which would simplify the procedures for exercising the rights of our citizens, explained Mayor Mandić.
– With the implementation of this project, the waiting time, i.e. determining the birth certificate number for newborns, was shortened from the previous 7 to 10 days to 20 minutes. With one arrival, the parents, after receiving the report from the hospital, complete the procedure of registering the newborns in the birth register. The General Administration Service obtained all documentation through official means, except for the certificate of residence. In the meantime, in cooperation with the IDDEEA, and based on the signed agreement, the possibility has been created that in the coming period, when registering newborns, documentation on residence records will also be obtained through official means, which represents another important step forward in improving services to citizens. By shortening the procedure for registering a newborn, we also managed to shorten the procedures for exercising other rights, especially in the field of social and health insurance. There are over 800,000 entries in the registry books of the Municipality of Centar, which is by far the largest number in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while the employees of our Registry Office provide an average of almost 900,000 services to our fellow citizens annually. Because of these facts, we are very interested in digitizing the process as quickly and qualitatively as possible, explained assistant Beba.
After the meeting, Mayor Mandić took the representatives of the Delegation through the counter hall of the Municipality of Centar, whose reconstruction is in progress, where, in addition to the services provided by the Registry Office of the Municipality Centar Sarajevo, it will also be possible to submit requests and download documents related to JMBG records, residences, identity cards, driver’s licenses, travel documents, change of personal name and registration of motor vehicles. The project is implemented with joint funds by the Municipality Centar and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Sarajevo Canton.
Representatives of the Delegation of the European Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina praised the efforts of the Municipality Centar to simplify procedures and facilitate the way to the services that this local community provides.