The Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic and the Association of Towns and Municipalities of Slovakia have established the DEUS association, and one of its tasks was to ensure the conditions for the exercise of public power electronically and electronic communication of local self-government bodies. DEUS provides this task through the operation and development of the Municipal Data Centre Information System (IS DCOM).

The implementation and realization of the DCOM project was completed on 30 November 2015. As part of the implementation, the central part of the DCOM IS (data centre) was refinanced in the total amount of EUR 29.3 mil and part of the area expansion for municipalities for EUR 16.6 mil. The organisation of the IS DCOM operation is based on a service contract by a consortium of suppliers during the entire five-year sustainability period of the project.

Flat-rate expenses for the operation of the DCOM IS in 2016 amounted to EUR 2.95 mil and in the following year EUR 2.73 mil. With the introduction of the obligation for municipalities - to exercise public power electronically from 1 November 2017 – the importance of the central solution by IS DCOM has increased. This information system brought the municipalities not only technical equipment, but also their services electronisation.

Nevertheless, municipalities joined the IS DCOM on a voluntary basis. In order to achieve maximum efficiency, it is necessary to ensure the full use of IS DCOM for all cities and municipalities. Due to the exclusion of the Bratislava region from the rules for EU funds allocation and management, the financing of municipalities from this region will cause additional financial requirements for the State budget.

Although the National Concept of Public Administration Informatisation, approved by the Slovak Government in 2016, defines DEUS as a partner for the Government cloud, which plans to expand the number of municipalities involved in the project "Migration of IS municipalities to Government cloud - IS DCOM second stage”, DEUS is only an interest association.

Therefore, significant funding from public sources and entrusting such important tasks and functions to an interest association SAO SR considers a non-standard step. Attention will also need to be paid to the fact that, due to the initially contracted equal ratio (1:1) of the DEUS association funders, the burden of financing was gradually taken over by the State. According to the SAO SR, it is also important to coordinate the procedures of stakeholders in order to achieve a unified approach to the informatisation of local government. This applies in particular to the delegated performance of State administration.

The full text of the press release about this topic in Slovak language is available here. Use the Google icon in the top bar for automatic translation into the desired language.