Partner of the Year 2025 is the Ministry of Public Administration of Montenegro

This year, the e-Governance Academy’s award “Partner of the Year 2025” was forwarded to the Ministry of Public Administration of Montenegro for the excellent collaboration in enhancing national cybersecurity capabilities and improved interagency coordination of the country.

Hannes Astok, Executive Director of e-Governance Academy, handed the prize over to Dušan Polović, Director General, E-Governance and Information Security of the Ministry of Public Administration of Montenegro at the e-Governance Conference networking event. “This recognition is not only about overcoming the challenges that arose from the cyberattacks in August 2022,” said Astok, “but also about turning crisis into opportunity and leading with purpose toward a more secure and resilient digital society. As we say in Estonia — you didn’t let a good crisis go to waste.”

In accepting the award, Dušan Polović highlighted the importance of the partnership: “Our collaboration with the e-Governance Academy team — especially with Merle Maigre — has been very productive. I sincerely thank you for your dedicated support during the times we needed it most.”

eGA team’s collaboration with the Ministry started in 2022 within the European Union-supported Western Balkan rapid assistance project. The work included strategic advice on election-related cyber threats, procurement and installment of cybersecurity hardware and software, and extensive trainings for Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRT). It resulted in quicker response times from national stakeholders and improved interagency coordination during the cyber attacks.

Additionally, with the European Union support, the government officially opened its Security Operations Center last autumn. The Security Operations Centre is a vital hub that now monitors, prevents, detects, investigates, and responds to cyber threats in the government cyber systems around the clock. 

All these initiatives are vital in protecting the country’s security interests, ensuring the resilience of public services and fundamental rights of its citizens.    

According to Astok, such achievements have only been possible through close cooperation between the Ministry of Public Administration of Montenegro, the European Commission, and the expert team at eGA, including Merle Maigre, Milan Sekuloski, and the entire Western Balkans Rapid Assistance Project team.

Since 2015, eGA has awarded the most enthusiastic partners who develop digital governance that help to govern in a more efficient, transparent and sustainable way. Previous annual awards went to the Ministry of Economic Development and Digitalisation of Moldova (2024), the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine (2023), Government of Benin (2022), Electronic Interoperability Centre of Kyrgyzstan (2019), the State Agency for e-Governance of Ukraine (now the Ministry of Digital Transformation) (2018) , the Government Office of the Republic of Namibia (2017), the the Government of Faroe Islands and the City Council of Ivano-Frankiivsk (2016), Moldovan e-Government Center, Effecta Solutions, State Agency for Public Service and Social Innovation under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, City of Tartu, and EMT (2015).