Jovanovic: Serbia to get and install most powerful supercomputer in region by end-2025

By the end of 2025, Serbia will get and install the most powerful supercomputer in the wider region, announced the director of the Office for IT and eGovernment, Mihailo Jovanovic.

At the panel “Data Management in the Public Sector: Securing Transparency, Equitability, Responsibility and Protection of Citizens’ Data”, held within the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence Summit, he said that the priority continued to be the implementation of artificial intelligence to create better conditions for all citizens’ lives.

Jovanovic emphasized that Serbia had had the vision to adopt the Strategy of Development of Artificial Intelligence in 2019 for the period 2020-2025 and thereby set strong foundations for the construction of the digital economy and the application of artificial intelligence in various sectors of the society.

– Already at the beginning of its mandate, the new Government showed extreme dedication to digitization and new technologies, primarily the development and implementation of artificial intelligence, because the prime minister, Milos Vucevic, already during the first 100 days of the Government’s operations, formed the Council for Artificial Intelligence, which features eminent experts from the public administration, the private sector and universities. The Council is already working on various tasks, primarily the implementation of artificial intelligence in everyday life, the quality of the operations of the public administration, public companies and the corporate sector – Jovanovic stated and added that the Council continuously worked on adopting one of the most important strategic documents at that moment, the new Strategy of Development of Artificial Intelligence for the period 2025-2030, which would be adopted by the end of 2024.

– In 2025, we continue investing in the further expansion and application of the supercomputer located at the State Data Center in Kragujevac, as well as the development of adequate software in various sectors of our society which will help us have a more efficient public administration and better diagnostics in healthcare and other fields. For the purpose, the Republic of Serbia is setting aside a total of EUR 55 million – he said.

He specified that, in the first part of the next year, with the first upgrade of the existing supercomputer, we would have 7 times faster graphics processor than the existing system, as well as additional data storage space.

– For this phase, an agreement worth EUR 5 million has already been signed. We are currently negotiating about the second expansion and application of the supercomputer with the Government of the Republic of France. It’s a loan worth a total of EUR 50 million – Jovanovic said and added that the further modernization and investments in the most modern infrastructure were part of the Program “Leap into the Future – Serbia 2027”.

Kancelarija za informacione tehnologije i elektronsku upravu Beograd

Office for IT and eGovernment

State Data Center Kragujevac

Government of France

Mihailo Jovanović

Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence Summit

supercomputer

procurement of supercomputer

Strategy of Development of Artificial Intelligence for period 2025 2030