It’s been a long time since this state has so pointlessly tormented its citizens as much as it has now, with the obligation to obtain new ID cards. With constant warnings and threats, and finally the blackmail of blocked bank accounts, the stampede of citizens had no choice but to rush to the Ministry of Interior’s counters. But why has this been imposed on us, and what have we gained from it?
The short answer is – nothing. Apart from administrative headaches and Monty Python–style confusion with ID card activations, codes, and certificates, there’s nothing new you can do today that you couldn’t do yesterday with the old ID card; there’s no service that has become easier to complete electronically than it was before.
The reason lies in the fact that while the state was whipping you into going to the counter and getting a new ID, it kept endlessly extending its own deadlines to provide any meaningful e-service for which the new ID card would actually be useful.
Go to the eGovernment portal and see for yourself – try to find any electronic service that actually requires the new ID card. You’ll need it only to register on the portal, after which you can peacefully browse through dozens of empty “under construction” pages – “no results found” is the answer to every query.
Your eyes aren’t deceiving you – all objective research confirms that we’re lagging behind not only the EU but even neighboring countries when it comes to how little can actually be done electronically. While the Prime Minister talks about artificial intelligence and blockchain, his citizens are standing in line at the counters, enjoying the lowest level of digitalization of public services in the region.
According to the European Commission’s eGovernment Benchmark 2023 report, which measures and compares the development of digital public services, Montenegro has the weakest results in the region and ranks near the very bottom among all 35 countries included in the assessment. Out of the four categories of public administration digitalization measured in the report, Montenegro comes in last in two of them, and near the bottom in the remaining two.
According to the UN’s E-Government Development Index, which measures the level of e-government development in 193 countries around the world, Denmark ranks first, Estonia second, Serbia 39th, Albania 62nd — and Montenegro only 81st. In the category of electronic services, Montenegro is among the worst performers in Europe: out of 43 countries, we rank 39th, behind Belarus and only slightly ahead of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to the SIGMA/OECD study on the quality of public administration, Montenegro has for years recorded the weakest results in the areas of digital governance and quality of public services, lagging behind the regional average—especially behind Albania and Serbia, which are miles ahead of us. In the indicator measuring service delivery, this year we had the worst result in the entire region.
In the research we at the Institute Alternative conducted together with our regional colleagues, Montenegro again ranks at the very bottom of the region in terms of service delivery and digitalization, performing slightly better only than Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our regional public opinion survey showed that citizens in Montenegro are the least likely to believe they can influence the development of public services.
The agony of our digitalization is likely to continue—according to the Government’s Digitalization Service Plan from February this year, a total of 162 services are planned to be digitalized by the end of 2027. However, the document devotes more space to explaining the excuses for why that probably won’t happen than to specifying what will actually be digitalized and how. The listed services are described superficially, mostly without cost estimates, precise deadlines, or defined activities. Some institutions even refused to participate in drafting the plan and failed to submit data—so how can we expect them to take part in its implementation?
The new ID card was first mentioned in 2018, quite suddenly and without any analysis. For months we requested the Feasibility Study from the Ministry of Public Administration—they claimed it existed but could not provide it. Thus, without any prior assessment of needs, costs, or benefits, this project was included in strategic documents without technical specifications and without clear comparison to practices in other countries. The public was therefore presented with a fait accompli and dragged into a complex and expensive project that resembled an ill-considered improvisation more than a carefully planned reform. The constant refrain was that this was a necessary precondition for developing advanced electronic public services—allowing citizens to securely identify themselves before the administration and complete their obligations with minimal effort. Seven years later, we have new ID cards, but the promised services remain only on paper.
The story of the new ID cards perfectly illustrates how reform processes unfold in our public administration—it’s always easiest to impose obligations on citizens, while the state’s own obligations toward them come with no deadlines.
Instead of motivating citizens to voluntarily replace their documents through well-designed electronic services that make life easier, the state first forces them to obtain new documents and only afterward promises that, someday, they’ll actually be useful for something beyond the counter.
Citizens suffer the consequences of an inefficient state that has no qualms about making their lives harder and setting strict deadlines, while the state’s promises to make its own processes faster, cheaper, and easier to navigate drown in a whirlpool of empty phrases, irresponsibility, lack of seriousness, constant missed deadlines, and blame-shifting.