News
CATEGORY: Socioeconomic development
LOCATION: North Macedonia
START/END: 2019-2020
CLIENT: EUD to North Macedonia
ORIGIN OF FUNDING: EC – IPA under FWC SIEA 2018- LOT 2: Infrastructure, sustainable growth and jobs
PARTNERS: Stantec (Belgium), AESA (Belgium)
PROJECT VALUE: 299,990.00
LDK’s BUDGET SHARE: 70%
STAFF PROVIDED: 4
Type of Services
The Consultant provides the following services under the two results areas:
RA 1: ICT Strategy and action plan
8. Stakeholders mapping and engagement;
9. Comprehensive current state of affairs (gap assessment) in each of the identified areas;
10. Benchmarking and gap analysis with respect to global best practices in the identified domains and recommend ways to enhance/expand existing initiatives under consideration;
11. Development of a vision and mission for the National ICT Strategy with a strategic framework with which to implement proposed interventions arrived at after the above gap analysis;
12. Within the strategy, development of specific sub-strategies for e-Government, Digital Empowerment of Communities, Research and Innovation, and Cyber Security;
13. Recommendation of actionable programmes and projects as vehicles with which to implement the proposed interventions in a time-bound manner with pre-defined roles for stakeholders responsible for implementation.
14. Preparation of an Action Plan for implementation of the Strategy with identified period of importance of the activities to be implemented in short, medium to long term.
15. Establishment of a monitoring and evaluation (M@E) matrix defining performance indicators (and indicators passport) to monitor results of implemented measures
RA 2: Institutional apparatus
6. Collection of information and analysis of the current state of affairs regarding institutional setup
7. Review and revision of the existing business processes, policies, procedures and proposals for institutional development according to the best practices for information, communication, security and other forms of ICT management
8. Compliance with legal requirements – review and revision of the legislative, statutory, regulatory and contractual requirements of information systems to assure alignment with relevant EU acquis;
9. Recommendation of an institutional framework to oversee and drive the implementation of the strategy;
10. Provision of recommendations on Information Security Policy with specific topics, such as: access control policy; information classification (and handling) policy; physical and environmental security policy; password policy; official government e-mail usage policy; social media sites policy; acceptable use of assets policy; clear desk and clear screen policy; information transfer policy; mobile devices and remote access policy; asset management; logical access security; malware; network security; change management; information security awareness; monitoring and logging; information security incident management; documented operating procedures; business continuity management; backups, etc.
Description
As part of its democratic reforms initiative and in response to known weaknesses in its cyber security infrastructure, the Government of the Republic of North Macedonia (GOM) established a National Council for Information and Communication Technology and Cyber Security (NCICTCS) on 30 January 2018. Tasked with developing and implementing a national ICT strategy for North Macedonia, the Council is comprised of relevant ministerial-level officials representing key government institutions with significant ICT infrastructure.
The present project will provide support to the NCICTCS and the Ministry of Information Society and Administration in order to strategically improve the process of governance, transparency, accountability, service providing and overall competitiveness of the whole society in line with EU accession requirements. This will be done through setting the strategic framework (Long-Term National ICT Strategy) for Government operations in the digital transformation, including establishment of efficient, strategic and coordinated investment planning and development in the area of Information and Communication Technology. This should lead to an environment that stimulates and encourages investments in sectors relevant for the digital economy.
The project will identify potential niche areas for the development of the Republic of North Macedonian ICT sector, including both the domestic and international markets, particularly within the EU; identify potential areas and linkages with priorities set as part of Digital Agenda for Europe and Digital Single Market strategy, including Western Balkans Digital Agenda priorities; identify measures for GoM to pursue to empower and enable the ICT sector business community, including start-ups, to gain access to their target markets; identify initiatives, activities and actions with which the local ICT sector could empower the local business community and the SMEs in non-ICT sectors by enhancing their efficiency and productivity through the application of ICT; identify initiatives with which to help GoM provide wold-class citizen-centric public services and maintain optimal levels of internal efficiencies end effectiveness through a whole-of-government approach; and propose comprehensive steps to promote ubiquitous adoption of digitalisation in the society at large through building digital literacy, imbibing trust and confidence, local content creation, digital penetration in society and other desirable pursuits.
The policy steps and other interventions mentioned above will be in line with Europe 2020 vision and the objectives of the Digital Agenda for the Western Balkans, but will also contribute in bridging the existing gap between the country and the Member States and to enable reaching the targets that may be identified in current and future EU strategic documents, including the Flagship Initiatives "Innovation Union" and "A Digital Agenda for Europe".
The project results will guide the Government of North Macedonia in establishing a system to regularly monitor and evaluate the progress made by the country in the following areas:
- ICT Governance, Policy, Legal and Regulatory Framework;
- Infrastructure Development and Access;
- ICT Safety, Security and Standardisation;
- E-Services, Audio-Visual and Local Content Development;
- ICT Skills and Human Capital Development;
- Research, Innovation and Industrial Development;
- Regional and International Cooperation.
The project is expected to have two measurable results:
R1: National ICT strategy 2020-2025 and its Action Plan with a Whole-of-Government and Whole-of-Society focus is developed, including comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system to track development and implementation of the strategy, and
R2: Institutional apparatus and mechanisms with which to deliver national ICT strategy is established and its capacity strengthened
