Stefan Andonovski: 20 more institutions will join the national e-document system

North Macedonia has advanced its digital reform agenda in recent years, with this year's evaluation marking further progress in Chapter 10 — Digital Transformation and Media, Minister Stefan Andonovski said at a press briefing. He presented key findings from the European Commission's 2026 report and highlighted results across five digital-transformation areas.

e-services, interoperability and e-document flow

Andonovski said the National Portal offered 338 services by the end of August, and the next priority is to enable end-to-end electronic completion of these procedures — from submitting an application to receiving the document — so citizens do not have to visit institutions in person.

"We know what going to collect documents means. Leaving work, travelling to another municipality, waiting and extra costs. Sometimes a whole day is spent on a single administrative procedure. Every service that we successfully transfer into electronic form should solve part of that problem," Andonovski said.

Interoperability between state bodies has also improved: monthly transactions on the interoperability platform rose from 700,000 in 2024 to 1.4 million in 2025 and to 5.2 million in 2026, the minister reported. "Institutions must exchange data. We should not ask the citizen to be an intermediary between two state institutions," he added.

Progress was noted in electronic document management as well. The Commission's report records that by the end of June 2026 the central electronic document management and electronic archive system (eDMS) was in use at 44 institutions. Andonovski stressed that digitising incoming requests is not enough if documents are later printed and carried from office to office.

"With eDMS we work on the whole lifecycle of a case: receipt, distribution, processing, signing and archiving," he said, and announced that another 20 institutions will join the platform in the coming months. The stated aim is to make electronic work routine in administration, improving organisation, accountability and transparency over case movement.

On cybersecurity, the European Commission noted the establishment of the government computer incident response team (MKD-GOV-CSIR) and investments in response platforms and expert capacity. "Every new electronic service brings responsibility for its security. Citizens rightly expect their data to be protected and systems to be available when needed," the minister said.

Andonovski also warned that the digital ID card and digital driving licence are not yet legally valid in interactions with the police and said legal amendments are necessary to address that gap.

Photo: Ministerstvo za digitalno opshtestvo)