25.07.2024. / 14:46
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Serbia is preparing with the Chinese to defend against “state-sponsored attacks” and “politically motivated non-UN sanctions”
BANJALUKA – Editorial office of the portal CAPITAL she asked the Government of Republika Srpska to deliver to her, in accordance with the Law on Free Access to Information, a copy of the contract she concluded in early June with the Chinese company ELINC, from which she ordered protective software worth 57 million marks without publishing a public invitation and notifying the public.
PHOTO: Copilot
Respecting the possibility that there are parts of the contract that relate to security aspects and that they cannot be shown publicly, we have asked the RS Government to anonymize those parts if it deems it necessary, and to make the data that should be transparent available to citizens who will to pay.
This is not the first contract that the Government of RS hides from the public eye and that was signed completely without the knowledge of the citizens, but until now it was mainly done due to the insistence of the Chinese side. However, it is not clear now whether the Chinese asked for it or whether the Government of the RS decided to withhold it from its citizens on its own initiative.
There is no information about whose idea it was to buy Chinese cyber security software and what guarantees were given for the implementation of this contract, i.e. how they will pay for the shield of 57 million marks, especially if you take into account the past experience of the RS Government with non-transparent procurement of overpriced software .
The government should explain why it is hiding the contract
In Transparency International BiH, which helped in drafting the request to the Government, they say that this is only the last in a series of contracts concluded with Chinese companies that the Government of the RS is hiding from its citizens. They also remind of the secret contract for the construction of the Banjaluka-Prijedor highway, which the Government of RS hid for years despite the court rulings that ordered its publication, and then showed it and hid the most important part about financing until now.
“With the fence that the Government has the right to withhold certain parts of the contract, in accordance with the special law on secret information and who has the right to see it, the entire information should not be hidden. It should actually be explained why he is hiding. Citizens and the public have the right to know everything about the work of the organs and to be given access to the public to the greatest extent possible. It is possible to separate this information and to enable insight into the parts that should not be secret, while the other parts are anonymized“, they explained in TI BiH.
They add that there are grounds for this contract to be at least partially transparent.
It should also be noted that there are numerous controversies in the world regarding Chinese software and frequent accusations against China that it uses its technological solutions for espionage and collecting data on users.
At the beginning of June, the government signed a secret contract with a Chinese company in order to hide another spending of tens of millions of marks on software from the public, and after we wrote about it a few days ago, the confirmation arrived yesterday from the Agency for Information and Communication Technologies of the Republic of Srpska.
What is Srpska preparing for?
Interesting in the announcement of the Agency for Information and Communication Technologies of Srpska, which was issued the day after CAPITAL published the text, many people missed an important detail, that a defense against an IT attack by another country and an attack by police-motivated sanctions is being prepared, which many interpret as an acknowledgment that the entire project is a consequence of American blacklists, but also the shutting down of the official domains of the Government and other institutions of Srpska.
CAPITAL’s writing confirmed: The Chinese have the largest ICT project in the history of Srpska
„From a technical point of view (software and hardware solutions), the system consists of 15 security hubs and a data center and is designed to defend against the most complex cyber threats, including state-sponsored attacks. In accordance with the Government’s guidelines for crisis management of supply chains and politically motivated non-UN sanctions, the company ELINC, of the China Electronic Corporation group, a specialized manufacturer of equipment from the domain of national information security systems, was chosen as a partner. it is stated in the announcement.
In their announcement, they also confirmed that a detailed analysis of the state of information security in public administration and critical infrastructures was carried out, which we stated was in a very bad state.
They said that they have drawn up guidelines for the development of information security and designed a new national protection system, and that in terms of scope, resources and complexity, this is the largest ICT project in Srpska and will include 780 institutions.
They announced that by the end of August, the start of the implementation of the project is expected in two parallel phases that enable the integration of government bodies, academia and the private sector in incident management.
It is planned to implement this software in all institutions in Srpska for a period of ten years, and ELINC got the job based on a previous agreement behind closed doors, without a tender and notifying the citizens from whose pockets it will all be paid.
CAPITAL: Andrijana Pisarević
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Source: www.capital.ba
