The Government’s Office for Digital Transformation likes to use other people’s work for self-praise. Which is understandable in a way, as they do not have any successes of their own yet, and, given the current team, it is valid to wonder whether they will ever actually achieve anything.
This time, they boasted about the #DESI2022 report – The Digital Economy and Society Index, where Slovenia has once again moved up the rankings to 11th place, which is its highest ever ranking.
The current Minister resigned from the Strategic Council for Digitalisation
Of course, it is only right to point out that the current composition of the Office in question, with Emilia Stojmenova Duh at the helm, has had nothing to do with this achievement, as the current composition has only been operating for a few weeks. But on the other hand, Slovenia’s progress is proof of what a good decision it was that the Janša government set up a new Digital Transformation Office under the leadership of Mark Boris Andrijančič, which was strongly opposed by the left-wing opposition at the time. It was the previous government that first set up a strategic council to deal with digital transformation, and later, it also established a government department dedicated to this goal. Back then, the current Minister Stojmenova Duh decided to join the so-called Constitutional Arch Coalition’s destructiveness and, insulted, left the consultative group to which she had been invited, using political platitudes to explain her departure, instead of actual arguments.
Namely, she left the Strategic Council at the time, citing the unambitious nature of the programme, but offered no concrete examples of the alleged non-ambitiousness – instead, she served the newspaper Večer the following: “One of the more prominent members of the Strategic Council for Digitalisation, Emilija Stojmenova Duh, a professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, has already resigned due to the (non)ambitious plans for a digital recovery.”
“It is absolutely clear that the kind of investment foreseen in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan will not make this possible. Unfortunately, other strategic documents, such as the Operational Programme, have not yet been made available to the public or even to us. I am therefore not in a position to assess or comment on them. As I have stressed, I see digitalisation as a huge opportunity for Slovenia. But there are two objective conditions for this: that it is transparent and that it is inclusive. Unfortunately, the key development document that is supposed to enable and accelerate Slovenia’s smart digital transformation provides neither this nor a feasible way to achieve a digital breakthrough. After the published figures on the share of funding for digital investments, I cannot help feeling that the Strategic Council is a marketing backdrop rather than strategic, inclusive and transparent planning for digitalisation.”
While the Janša government was furthering digitalisation, Stojmenova Duh was destroying progress
While the left was demolishing and composing empty demolition monologues at the level of Franc Popit, the right was building. The Strategic Council for Digitalisation presented a whole package of measures, which had previously been approved by the government. It consists of 40 solutions to digitise public administration, healthcare, education and the economy. These include, for example, e-building permits, an e-ID card, abolition of the traffic licence, a new tax system, e-home healthcare, and also Slovenian representation in Silicon Valley. Under the current government, the digitalisation service – along with boasting about the achievements of others – has been mainly concerned with planning how to prosecute “hate speech” and waving LGBTQ flags while at the same time, together with the government, making sure that, thanks to local cartels, we will never have modern digital transport platforms in Slovenia, such as Uber – which is the opposite of digitalisation.
The Minister, who defected the Social Democrats party for the largest coalition party, the Freedom Movement – although none of that matters anyway, since it is all one giant party – is suspected of transferring projects and EU money that was allocated to the Digital Innovation Hub of Slovenia (DIHS) in public tenders, to the 4P DIH project, which took place at the Ljubljana Faculty of Electrical Engineering, where she was a lecturer and also head of the project. During the term of the Janša government, she was known as an activist who fought against the closing of schools and distance learning, along with other “covidiots,” and in an interview, she agitated that she does not speak enough Slovenian and therefore could not assist her children in learning at home through online learning. Of course, the question then arises of how could a person who does not know enough Slovenian to be able to explain primary school materials to her children, become a Minister.
Andrej Žitnik
