Genc Pollo, Former Minister and MP
In the years 2009-2013, as Minister of Information Technology, I was responsible for the National Agency for the Information Society (NAIS). Our main goal was to computerize all state systems from Health to Transport and to provide existing services online to users.
The functional task of the ANA was to create a central infrastructure of digital systems on which the digital systems of each ministry would be based; the latter ranged from databases to applications for providing services to the public or state institutions.
With a grant from the European Union, the National Agency for the Promotion of Education procured and built this infrastructure called the “Electronic Service Bus” and on this basis, the first three applications were offered to users in the summer of 2013. One of them was the online registration of that year's graduates in the State Matura exams.
There, an innovative platform was also conceived, advanced compared to countries in the region or the EU, which was later called E-Albania. Today, the number of services in this framework application has reached nearly 400, facilitating the state/citizen and state/business relationship.
So, the ANA itself carried out a limited but essential number of procurements, while the bulk of purchases of systems and computer programs (software) were carried out by ministries, their subordinate agencies and local governments.
The role of the AKShI was to ensure that all these purchased products had the necessary technical standards and enabled interoperability between them. To this end, the AKShI, based on the standards of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), an institute based in New York that serves as a world reference, developed standards that were approved by decision of the Council of Ministers and thus became mandatory for any public procurement.
While ministries and municipalities were responsible for the procurement procedure themselves. But the tender was declared open by the Public Procurement Agency only after the Public Procurement Agency confirmed that the standards in the tender documents were in line with the official ones approved by the Council of Ministers. This scheme of action reflected the division of responsibilities and checks and balances between state actors.
Just as the French Enlightenment philosopher Montesquieu and James Madison, one of the fathers of the US constitution, postulated, in a broader concept of the state, with the aim of avoiding the concentration of power or, as they expressed it, tyranny. This procurement scheme may not have 100% excluded abuse, but it was generally functional and abusive cases were exceptional and easily found and corrected.
In the first two years of the Rama government, this scheme changed and the ANA was given by law the powers to carry out all procurement of the state's digital systems; from conception "with the advice of the ministries" to operation and maintenance. All this power in the sole hands of Ms. MK, the director of the ANA (the longest-serving in the Rama government, who has been under house arrest for 12 days and has not yet resigned/dismissed and replaced) and her circle, which led to well-known and well-explained consequences conceptually by the aforementioned Frenchman and American.
In the case of AKShI we have specifically:
1- since the standards of digital systems, including security ones, were determined by the rule "self-sign, self-seal" they degraded; this resulted in external hacking or even internal abuse of the digital systems that housed the databases. It is enough to remember how the world's salaries were leaked to the public or how often cyberattacks block E-Albania, including today as I write these lines.
2-Since the tenders were in one hand and the budget was huge, it became the norm that a system that was offered on the market for, for example, one million euros would be contracted by the ANA for 5 or 9 million euros. This does not need clarification or examples because the media is currently full of them.
3-Since the digital systems (databases) belonging to various ministries and institutions were concentrated in just one hand, and moreover in one hand that has operational access to these systems, the abuse takes on frightening proportions and consequences. An example is the patronage database with the misuse of voters' personal data. The investigation is uncovering cases where mafia groups have also gained access to the systems through the AKShI, accessing or even manipulating the Treasury and Cadastre for business interests or to hit rival politicians or gangs. One might think that when a party and its leader have complete power, the architecture and administration of these systems do not matter. Practice shows otherwise: the TIMS border system was conceived as a stand-alone system, administered by the State Police and could not be annexed by the AKShI. In 2023, bandit officials went with USB sticks in hand to steal the data but failed because some honest and courageous officials reacted. At the ANA
I realize it may sound like a non-priority, but it is nevertheless very important that a future government commits to normalizing the National Agency for Information Technology and state databases. Not simply by cleaning the personnel from bandits and their sisters; but by restoring legislation and institutions in the spirit of Montesquieu and Madison.
In the past, when records were generally made of paper, this case would be listed in the dark chronicle of corruption and criminality in the office and that's it. Today, not only in Albania but throughout the world, the digitalization of state systems, while having immensely increased the effectiveness of work, has also created weak points or vulnerability to criminal and hostile actors.
The worst case according to the literature is when systems are organized in a way that offers a single point of failure (SPOF). This is exactly what the Rama government and the AKShI seem to have done. Leaving state information and personal data at the mercy of gangs like Gysi's and hackers from Iran and elsewhere. Therefore, future correction is not only an element of good governance but especially an imperative of public and national security.
Editorial
