Slovakia is lagging behind the Czech Republic in its development of digitalisation, indicated a survey conducted by the Association for International Affairs NGO cited by the public broadcaster RTVS. According to Peter Pištek, pro dean at the Faculty of Informatics and Information Technologies at the Slovak Technical University, the problem is that Slovakia loses potential IT experts every year. "IT is the field with the largest demand for students, however, we can see them leaving to go abroad. Thus we are losing potential experts, which we doubt will come back," said Pištek.
Hand in hand with the development of digitalisation Slovakia is lagging behind the Czech Republic in fighting bureaucracy, reports the survey. Karolína Tichá of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for Investment and Informatisation mentioned for the public broadcaster RTVS some of the steps taken to decrease bureaucracy. "Of course, the state supports digitalisation. In its fight against bureaucracy, it is introducing the so called one time and enough principle. It practically means that once the state has some information about a citizen or a company, it cannot ask for it anymore," said Tichá. As of September 2018, Slovaks no longer need to bring three previously required documents: an excerpt from the company register, an excerpt from the self-employment register and a document of ownership from the cadastre.
However, the survey indicates that Slovakia is better at digitalisation in the field of education than the Czech Republic. But according to experts, this slow development in digitalisation in the education sector is the most alarming.
