National Technology Officer, Microsoft Central and Eastern Europe
Tomislav Vracic is holding a position of Microsoft National Technology Officer in the Central and Eastern Europe. His main occupation is engaging in strategic initiatives to support innovations development and preparation for the next generation technologies by working with industry, regulators, and policy makers. He is also working with key and leading national cybersecurity agencies and institutions to increase preparation and cyber resiliency for the country and to orchestrate Microsoft's contribution to mitigate and respond during national events. He joined Microsoft in 2016 and since then he is engaged in many domains across region (Government, Healthcare, Public Safety and Justice, Education, Research, Postal, Finance). Before joining Microsoft, he served as Government official of the Government of Republic of Croatia where he led many e-Government and interoperability projects, national open data initiative and has actively participated in the European Commission’s groups and committees on e-Government. He is also guest lecturer on e-Government at the University of Zagreb (Faculty of Law, Faculty of Business and Economics).
With national digital transformation advancing, more and more governments realize the need of providing interfaces and possibilities for cross-border data exchange and service integration. While technical interoperability seems feasible, the legal and organizational collaboration seems to be barriers to taking down national and regional digital “silos”. How can we foster this integration, how can we build digital single markets creating more public value? To begin we would like to learn how important (if at all) is at the moment the cross-border and regional collaboration for digital transformation. Do governments recognize the need for cooperation? If yes, then is it entirely about harmonization and interoperability or are there also initiatives towards jointly addressing problems and finding solutions for these problems together?
