Several members of Council of European Professional Informatics Societies (CEPIS) as a permanent associate of the European Commission for information development traditionally organize annual conferences in order to exchange the experience and find the ways to improve the computer usage  in everyday work. After Croatia and Slovenia, this year, a pleasure to organize this important summit got Union of ICT Societies of Serbia - JISA. This exquisitely attended conference named DIGITAL LITERACY – CONDITION AND OBLIGATION took place in the Hotel Continental on 9 October, 2009.

On behalf of Minister of Science and Deputy Prime Minister in the Government of the Republic of Serbia Mr Bozidar Djelic, the conference was opened by special advisor in the Ministry of Science, Prof. Dr. Dragan Domazet, emphasizing the importance of digital literacy for social life and modern business.  
European initiatives and plans were presented in speeches of the current President of CEPIS, Council of European Professional Informatics Societies, Mr Niko Schlamberger, as well as newly elected President of CEPIS, Mr Vasile Baltac.

The importance of the unique European certification that has already become the world one, given that under name ICDL and with the support of the UN is increasingly used outside Europe, the regional director of the ECDL Foundation, Mr Piotr Mrozinski underlined with his keynote. All the national leaders of the IT Association and state ministries responsible for development and application of new technologies in the countries of our region were panelists at the conference.

The European Union, with its concept ECDL, European Computer Driving License, has set a standard of unified minimum knowledge required for employment in government, economic and non-economic institutions, and all educational institutions have included the ECDL segments in their curricula. President of the European Commission, Mr Barroso, at the beginning of the year, officially received nine millionth ECDL index, pointing out the huge success of this concept and the importance of computer literacy, which is now equal to the alphabet. At 52nd conference of ministers and general directors of public administration of the European countries, which took place in Prague in June, once again ECDL standard was emphasized as a measure of digital literacy and basis for promoting EUPAN, European Public Administration Network, which should provide citizens and companies a better implementation of new technologies in communication with public bodies. Therefore, no surprise that the main topics at this year's conference in Belgrade was cooperation between government and non-government sectors regarding IT training and certification of citizens, as well as the results achieved in the countries of the region.

Data, presented by the authorized representatives of IT associations, have shown us that there are already 1,6 million ECDL certified citizens in Italia, which places it, together with Hungary, far ahead of ex-Yugoslav countries whose results are measured by several thousand of such diplomas.

Serbia, unfortunately, proportionally to the population, is much behind Croatia and Slovenia, and from this year even twice behind Montenegro that during the last period, has conducted IT training and certification of all employees in health, and plans to do the same for all employees in education.

How much Serbia lags behind emphasized President of Union of ICT SocietiesJISA, Mr Djordje Dukic, stating that in the case all recently got IPA access funds of 100 million euros were spent exclusively in the IT training of Serbian citizens, it would still not be enough to achieve the half of the current status of Hungary or Greece. This clearly shows how much Serbia must do if wants to equal working capacity of its citizens with the European standards.

The conference was attended by numerous representatives of the Ministries of Education, Youth and Sports, Finance, Defense, Interior, Informatics and Telecommunications, not only from Serbia, but also other countries. The positive experiences of the Ministry of Health of Italy were presented, as well as Government’s interventions in Hungary, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina ... The results achieved in the Ministry of Science and Education of Croatia attracted special attention, where one third of teachers in primary and secondary schools out of 50,000 planned have already passed all ECDL exams!

As a conclusion and the appeal of the conference on governmental authorities and all companies in the region, closing statement of the President of ECDL BiH Association and host of the next conference in Sarajevo next year, Mrs. Mensura Beganovic, spontaneously imposed. She pointed out the first two groups of IPA funds, and all bilateral international donations as well as cross-border cooperation for the initial source of funds that can be used to overcome the unenviable situation and approaching Europe, but also the obligation of employers to encourage ongoing periodic testing of their employees due to the extremely rapid growth of business opportunities that new information technologies offer us on a daily basis.

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