How to turn Slovakia into a fast, service‑oriented digital state? The panel featured Pavol Frič from the IT Association of Slovakia and Juraj Bardy from the company Alisti. They agreed that the key is continuity, strong teams, and real transformation of processes, not just digitizing paper.
Switch off e‑government? Why a plan is better than a switch
According to Pavol Frič, e‑government simply “cannot be switched off.” During COVID, it kept the state afloat, and many services today are existentially dependent on electronic communication. A sudden shutdown would therefore mean collapse rather than a restart.
Juraj Bardy clarified that he is not calling for a headlong shutdown, but for readiness for a crisis scenario and using it for renewal. He recalled the Estonian experience, where a break in legislative continuity after the 1990s enabled a digital leap. The collapse of the old can be an opportunity for a new architecture if the country has a plan in advance.
Continuity, not revolutions: what leaders do differently
The Slovak problem is a restart every four years, says Frič. Projects are re-evaluated after political changes, ministry leaderships often rotate, and continuity suffers. The new NKIVS, with an emphasis on digital transformation, only makes sense if it survives changes of government and wins basic consensus across the spectrum.
Bardy added that in successful countries, a strong internal team and the courage to make systemic decisions are decisive. Since 2014, Denmark has operated digitally “by default” and achieved high service usage; Estonia built its laws on the digital‑first principle. China and Singapore rely on centralization and uniform solutions, but these models cannot be simply transplanted due to different culture and legislation. It is standards and know‑how rather than ready‑made systems that are transferable.
From digitization to transformation: practical steps and accountability
The panelists agreed that the era of “digitizing paper” is over. Processes, and with them legislation, need to change; otherwise the state will not slim down and services will not speed up. The number of officials can be reduced only after agendas are simplified, not the other way around. Moreover, the state is bound by what the law prescribes, so it must be an evolution grounded in rules.
A practical example of the need for order is the mobile ecosystem: instead of a single “super app,” there needs to be a coordinated and unified approach for multiple applications. The case of the cadastre outage showed how deep infrastructure debt paralyzes the state and how important it is to invest continuously in security. There was also a call to quantify damages from outages transparently and to bear responsibility for them. Only then will there be pressure for the quality that people rightfully expect from state services.
