Strategic Document for Digital Growth and Next Generation Access Infrastructure (2014 – 2020) Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Executive summary 3 2 Issues addressed under this strategy 8 2.1 Digital economy as a way towards growth 8 2.2 Development of digital economy in Slovakia 11 2.3 Structure of the document 13 3 Situation and trends in information society in the world compared to Slovakia. 15 3.1 Benchmarking of selected information society indicators 15 3.1.1 Digital growth 16 3.1.2 Access infrastructure 20 3.2 Approaches taken by individual countries 24 3.2.1 Identification, authentication and authorisation 24 3.2.2 Registers 29 3.2.3 Communication infrastructure 31 3.2.4 Data repositories and computing power 34 3.2.5 Investment models for broadband deployment 40 3.3 What are the trends in the information society development 43 3.3.1 Analysing strategic documents of advanced countries 43 3.3.2 Digital Agenda for Europe 50 4 Operational Programme Information Society 53 4.1 Results of the Operational Programme Information Society 53 4.2 Progress in information society development in Slovakia 54 4.3 Lessons learned from the 2007-2013 period 56 4.3.1 Information society development 56 4.3.2 Improving broadband internet access 57 5 SWOT analysis and recommendations for Slovakia 59 5.1 SWOT analysis 59 5.1.1 Strengths 59 5.1.2 Weaknesses 61 5.1.3 Opportunities 64 5.1.4 Threats 66 5.1.5 Information sources used for SWOT analysis 68 5.2 Summary of recommendations 69 5.2.1 Conceptual layer 69 5.2.2 Presentation layer 70 5.2.3 Platform layer 71 5.2.4 Information layer 73 5.2.5 Security layer 73 1 6 Vision and strategic objectives for information society 75 7 Proposed priorities for further information society development in Slovakia 78 7.1 Proposal of priorities 78 7.1.1 Priorities and specific objectives 78 7.1.2 Funding instruments 79 7.1.3 Legislative requirements 80 7.2 A Digital Agenda for Europe 81 7.3 Services for citizens and businesses 83 7.3.1 Development of electronic services 83 7.3.2 Use of open data 89 7.3.3 Supporting the small and medium-sized enterprises in the digital economy 92 7.3.4 Promoting eInclusion 97 7.4 Effective public administration 99 7.4.1 Establishing the eGovernment innovation centre 99 7.4.2 Supporting the processes of effective public administration 100 7.4.3 Introducing eGovernment cloud 105 7.4.4 Security 111 7.5 Broadband/NGN 113 7.5.1 Specific objective concept 114 7.5.2 Public investments 117 7.5.3 Regulation and rules 127 7.5.4 Private investment 129 7.5.5 Planned activities in broadband / NGN 130 7.5.6 Implementation of the Digital Agenda for Europe 134 8 Regional dimension of priorities 135 9 Acronyms and terminology used 136 10 Assessment grids 138 11 Annex 1 – Methodology to determine indexes for country comparisons 142 12 Annex 2 - Methods to measure indicators of the fulfilment of specific objectives 144 13 Annex 3 - List of white areas 145 2 1 Executive summary Encouraging economic growth, boosting competitiveness, enhancing economic with a higher value added and increasing effectiveness of public administration are among Slovakia’s key priorities. The strategy presented in this document considerably contributes to accomplishing these priorities. The present document defines a strategy for further development of digital services and next generation access infrastructure in Slovakia and focuses on the fulfilment of the ex-ante conditionalities by means of which the European Union evaluates readiness of Member States to implement investment priorities of their choice. The document particularly discusses the fulfilment of the two ex-ante conditionalities defined under thematic objective 2 “Enhancing access to and use and quality of information and communication technologies”. The thematic objective for Slovakia was defined by the European Commission in its position paper 1 in which the European Commission describes its view of the main development challenges and the selection of thematic objectives and priorities to be funded from European structural and investment funds in Slovakia. Under Government Resolution No. 139/2013 of 20 March 2013, a body in charge of the fulfilment of the aforementioned thematic objective is the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic which is responsible for the development of information society in Slovakia, including eGovernment development2. The proposed development activities defined in the strategic part of this document are also based on the seven pillars of the Digital Agenda for Europe 2020 (including taking account of new priorities under the revision of the Digital Agenda of December 2012). The Digital Agenda for Europe thus serves as the basis for further considerations on the future development of information society in Slovakia. The proposed measures are also based on analyses and benchmarks defining Slovakia’s position and its weaknesses and strengths against other countries under review. Slovakia wishes to build information society on the same level as the most advanced European Union countries. Information society leaders are currently those countries whose governments make considerable investments in innovative technologies and solutions in order to revamp economic growth muffled by the crisis, thus ensuring their sustainable development. A majority of advanced countries have already implemented the crucial eGovernment services and they now focus on their further development, comfort of use, and possibilities for their citizens to participate in their further improvement. One of the most prominent trends in building information society is the trend of open and shared data which may contribute to increasing the overall welfare and freedom in society. Deployment of open and interoperable solutions has a positive economic and social impact on the entire ecosystem of information society. The use of IT tools and instruments is also prerequisite to further increasing effectiveness of public administration and moving towards a customer-centric interaction between public servants and citizens. Crucially essential to further development of information society is an overall broadband availability to enable full participation of citizens in a digital single market of the European Union. Thanks to the Operational Programme Information Society implemented under the 2007-2013 programming period, Slovakia expects a considerable progress in the implementation of eGovernment services. Projects are currently implemented to ensure the provision of eGovernment services at the transaction level. eID cards will start to be issued for citizens’ authentication and authorisation purposes. Basic registers have been centralised and common modules of the central public administration portal implemented, which will serve as a single point of access to eGovernment services. These services will also be available, in an assisted manner, through integrated service points. The implementation of such extensive changes has 1 Commission position paper: http://www.nsrr.sk/sk/programove-obdobie-2014---2020/pozicny-dokument-europskej- komisie-k-partnerskej-dohode-a-programom-sr-na-roky-2014---2020/ 2 §7 of Act No. 575/2001 Coll. on the organisation of the government activities and the organisation of central government administration 3 not been and is not absolutely flawless but Slovakia has learnt priceless lessons and built the necessary capacities and competence to further improve this process. The present Strategic Document draws on experiences from the previous programming period and also takes them into consideration in proposals for further development activities for the new period. Investing in eGovernment considerably facilitates the development of digital economy which has strong prospects to substantially contribute to a growth in GDP, employment and overall competitiveness of the economy. Slovakia is aware of its weaknesses, including, in particular, the delayed completion of the missing fixed broadband lines, as well as slow deployment of eGovernment services and/or limited capacities to implement ICT-based solutions in public administration. Development activities proposed under this strategy seek to eliminate these weaknesses while utilising the opportunities for further development of digital economy at the same time. One of the key purposes of this strategy is to contribute to creating agile society able to flexibly respond to a changing environment and emerging opportunities. In order to identify trends and obtain inspiration, strategic documents of advanced countries were analysed. Crucial trends identified include an increased public engagement and participation, transfer of innovation from the private to public sector, building a common platform for services and information sharing, as well as a general change in the eGovernment approach towards smart systems and applications for public administration. As far as concrete models are concerned, Slovakia gets inspired by Austria and Scandinavian countries, for example. The vision of further eGovernment development in Slovakia until 2020 includes actions to move towards functioning information society and building of Smart Government. Information technologies will become inherent in people’s everyday life and an essential driver of Slovakia’s competitiveness. This vision should be accomplished through the following strategic objectives: . Moving towards electronic services to improve the quality of life; . Moving towards electronic services to boost competitiveness; . Constant improvements in services