How and why the Republic of Serbia deploys Nextcloud for compliant, on-premises collaboration

The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia is the country’s highest representative body, holding constitutional and legislative power. With 250 elected deputies, it plays a central role in shaping national policy, appointing state officials, and overseeing government work.

Handling sensitive information every day, the Assembly needed a collaboration platform that is secure, compliant, and fully under its control.

The challenge: modern collaboration under full data control

As part of Serbia’s broader national digitalization initiative, public institutions are expected to adopt modern IT solutions that improve efficiency while protecting citizen and state data.

Before Nextcloud, employees of the National Assembly relied on a combination of VPN access and SMB (Server Message Block) to share and access files. While functional, this setup was difficult to use, caused frequent technical issues, and placed an unnecessary burden on IT staff. It also lacked the flexibility and collaboration features expected from a modern digital workplace.

In consequence, the National Assembly initiated a project to replace this legacy setup with a secure, open-source, cost-effective, and easy-to-use platform, fully deployed on-premises.

Key requirements included:

• All data must remain physically in Serbia
• Compliance with data protection and privacy regulations (including GDPR)
• Support for large files and reliable performance
• Compatibility with mobile devices
• Alignment with Serbia’s national digitalization strategy

Why Nextcloud: on-prem, secure file sharing

Nextcloud’s ability to run entirely on-premises, combined with secure file sharing and modern collaboration features, made it a natural choice for a government institution handling sensitive data.

Implementation: a sovereign platform built on existing infrastructure

The deployment was designed to make the most of the National Assembly’s existing infrastructure, including virtual machine hosting, gigabit networking, firewall protection, and additional storage systems.

Nextcloud was integrated with the Assembly’s Domain Controller, allowing the internal IT team to manage users, permissions, and quotas directly. All hardware interventions and ongoing technical support are handled in-house, reinforcing full institutional control over the platform.

To ensure a smooth rollout, dedicated training sessions were held for system administrators, enabling them to confidently manage and operate the environment for more than 700 users across the organization.

The result: digital sovereignty in practice

The implementation of Nextcloud was a complete success. Today, the National Assembly benefits from a secure, sovereign collaboration platform that supports daily work while meeting strict public-sector requirements.

What’s next for digital sovereignty at the National Assembly

The National Assembly continues to train employees on best practices for secure digital collaboration. Looking ahead, they plan to expand their use of Nextcloud by introducing Nextcloud Talk as their primary self-hosted communication platform and adding Nextcloud Groupware to further enhance coordination and productivity.

This project demonstrates how public institutions can modernize collaboration while maintaining full data sovereignty, compliance, and control, a growing priority for governments across Europe.