Impact

HITRO.HR covers one-stop-shop based services in the processes of starting a business (company, craft) and filing on line applications for the health and pension insurance + taxes. From the beginning the approach to the clients was through two interfaces – the office as the human contact and through the web for the electronic solution. In four years 19 844  e-cards were issued to business in order to use it for e-services. Through HITRO.HR over 30 000 companies and crafts were established.

By establishing HITRO.HR offices/counters in FINA branches the first step was made in shortening of the procedures. Clients could do 5 steps in one office vs. going to 5 different governmental/administrative offices or sending the papers through mail which was very time consuming. One must know that Croatia has many islands at the Adriatic Sea and cities as far as 500 to 900 kms from the capital Zagreb, and yet before HITRO.HR was established some of the administrative steps for registration of the company/craft involved documentation from the offices that were situated only in Zagreb (National Bureau of statistics, Ministry of justice). Also there are 13 court registries throughout the country and clients needed to travel to those cities in order to submit papers for company incorporation. HITRO.HR is a link for the clients, and collects/handles client’s documents as a channel between the client and a State bodies.

 HITRO.HR puts business subjects as clients ahead of procedures. That is why HITRO.HR, in comparison with the “classic way” of starting a business and going to all the different institutions, has become so popular and is receiving the highest marks in general public. What clients appreciate the most is HITRO.HR¢s orientation to their individual needs and the transparency of the procedures. Having insight in every stage of the procedure, the client is aware of the status of his request during the whole process.  Also it was the first time ever in Croatia that an “administrative body” calls upon client and addresses the client by phone, e-mail, sms etc. in order to give message about the status of their applications as well as the notice if there is any extra documentation needed for the process.

At the Corporate Registers Forum 2009 in the “World class Indicators” report presented by the Companies office of UK  HITRO.HR service was pronounced a “top performer” in the area of company registration, usage and application of electronic solutions among 42 countries from Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania.

The client satisfaction survey, that was conducted by an independent Customer relations agency, showed that the clients of HITRO.HR ranked highest time saving through faster procedure, less personal visit to different institutions, less paperwork, availability of all information/forms/payments at one place, clear and understandable procedure, transparency and professionalism of the employees. Continued efforts are made for increasing public awareness of using the e-services . Government has launched an e-Corner campaign through HITRO.HR offices in FINA branches. E-Corner is a free education spot that is set to give insight into the possibilities and advantages of using an e-card and the services included. It helps transition from paperwork to electronic business transactions by helping citizens to overcome their fear of using new technologies and allow themselves more freedom for the development of new business activities.

 

Track record of sharing

HITRO.HR is a concept that can be easily implemented by any administration regardless of the law (civil or common) background. The level of IT infrastructure today can follow any business procedure and transform it in to the electronic world. In order to achieve this, standards must me adopted and applied and there must be a joint synergy action plan implemented by all relevant bodies of the government. That can then lead into the interoperable services that can operate on the One Stop Shop principle. Technology used in the e-services implemented through HITRO.HR helped to remove unnecessary steps from the administrative bodies and has removed replication of data in the systems.

 

This project was presented at regional and international conferences such as SPIRA by USAID in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, CRF (Corporate Register s Forum), Vancouver, Canada, IACA (international Association of Commercial Administrators) Seattle, USA, EU Charter for SME, Vienna, Austria.

 

For the purpose of exchange the information and sharing the broader picture in Croatia many bodies were linked in order to cooperate jointly. There were joint workshops with the Trade court officials, Croatian bank for restructuring and development, Croatian Trade and  Investment promotion agency, Croatian Agency for Small and Medium Enterprises. All these workshops had a primary goal to change the mindset of the public in Croatia and work jointly in order to promote the effectiveness of Croatian economy.

 

Numerous meetings were made in the regional level with the Serbian business registers agency and the Central registry of Macedonia in order to form a sort of regional cooperation group and exchange of good practice to implement.

There are ongoing efforts to apply for different bilateral project funded by the European Commission, as tenders are applied for upgrade of existing services and to promote our own projects and, hopefully, implement it through other administrations.

Lessons learnt

Prior to starting a radical reform such as reform of the administration, and as early as possible, is necessary to ensure as wide as possible consensus on the basic principles of the reform within the Government and competent institutions. Sustained vision of the reform will only be implemented if this consensus is achieved at the very beginning.

Since reform involves competencies of several ministries, it is necessary for the Government to establish an inter-ministerial body to follow up and coordinate the overall reform and to ensure consistency in the regulations and in the implementation of the Action plan for the reform. This helps to ensure that the Government departments avoid introducing duplicated or superfluous forms and/or contact points in the reform of the procedures. All involved will have the broader picture and the higher level of the interoperability would be introduced of all stakeholders, hopefully resulting with integrated services across governmental bodies.

There is definitely need to use IT and databases as much as possible for the transmission and authentication of information submitted and/or the exchange of information between public authorities. Within those reforms standards must be followed but not as a bottleneck for the use of new technologies such as advanced digital signature use and the use of digital documents instead of paper ones, but as a “gate opener” to the new perspective of business solutions.

When one puts it into simple words I guess these three key words would describe our reform in the best way are simplicity, open approach and adaptability.

Simplicity would open the minds of the general public into introducing one new service and hopefully change the general mindset of “fear of the new and unknown” as one of the key components within simplicity is transparency of the procedures.

Open approach goes two ways, to the project partners and to the public. Mangers need to listen to the pulse of the public as well as of the decision makers in order to provide the most effective service at a high time for it, so timing is relevant factor for this component as well as it is openness to the introduction of new and innovative technology but not at any cost as some common sense and realistic possibility must be taken into consideration.

For the third factor; adaptability, basically summons up the best of the first two as we strongly believe only simple yet innovative services developed through the synergy of all of the stakeholders at a right time will be adaptable enough in order to replace the “old” procedures.