Government launches €1.6M AI procurement after investing in Vezilka

The Government published a public tender for IT hardware and software to support artificial intelligence systems worth 100,000,000 denars (about 1.6 million euros), even though it has already invested in the national AI project known as Vezilka.

Background and the sums involved

Vezilka was publicly presented at a government event at a Skopje hotel in late June 2026, attended by Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski, Minister of Digital Transformation Stefan Andonovski, the EU ambassador Michalis Rokas and representatives from academia. Prime Minister Mickoski said on 24 June 2026: "There are projects whose value is not measured only by the investment they bring or the infrastructure they create, but by their ability to change the direction in which a society is moving."

The project was described at the same event as "a factory for artificial intelligence" capable of producing solutions for science, business and the state in the Macedonian language. The EU ambassador said Vezilka will "strengthen digital public services and improve efficiency for citizens and businesses." Minister Stefan Andonovski told attendees: "'Vezilka' is not a project about computers. 'Vezilka' is a project about people…. Institutions that need to become more efficient… but primarily the citizens who should receive better services."

Vezilka's total cost is reported as 6.2 million euros; half of that funding came from the EU and the other half from the Government and FINKI on behalf of the Ss. Cyril and Methodius University.

One month after the promotion, on 27 July, the General Secretariat of the Government published a revised public procurement plan introducing for the first time a new procurement item: "IT equipment and software licenses to support artificial intelligence systems." On 7 August the Secretariat issued a public procurement notice with an estimated value of 100,000,000 denars for a 36-month period; the planned opening of bids was set for 9 September.

The technical specification described the purchase as an "Enterprise platform for generative artificial intelligence (Enterprise AI Platform) which will enable secure use of modern AI technologies to support administrative processes, information analysis, document processing, automation of repetitive activities and improvement of operational efficiency."

When reporters tried to attend the scheduled opening on 9 September they were told the procurement had been cancelled. The Secretariat said the procedure was annulled after an operator submitted 60 questions and the commission uploaded an incorrect answer to one of them; a new notice was announced but has not yet been published.

In replies to questions from the press, the General Secretariat argued that Vezilka does not replace the need for a local production infrastructure for e-government and that the planned procurement concerns different components with different purposes, which in certain cases can complement one another. The Secretariat also explained the choice of on-premise hardware by noting that e-government handles materials and documents related to the government's work and sessions, so AI solutions are to be run on local infrastructure in order to keep documents and data in a controlled environment and avoid sending them to public or external AI services.

The Ministry of Digital Transformation, while not giving a categorical yes or no about consultations, told reporters that there is currently no legal obligation for other institutions to consult the ministry when conducting public procurement. The ministry added that Vezilka is a capital project intended to connect domestic universities, startups, companies and institutions with EU supercomputing and digital resources, and that the project foresees acquisition of hardware and development of software for a large language model in Macedonian that is planned to be used in public administration for many of the same purposes described in the Secretariat's tender specification.

In practice, the ministry's statement indicates that Vezilka could provide the services the General Secretariat sought. For now, the General Secretariat has not reissued the cancelled tender.

Photo: press material from the event