The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia deployed Nextcloud Enterprise to replace an outdated VPN- and SMB-based system with a secure, compliant and fully on-premises collaboration platform. With Nextcloud, the institution gained complete data sovereignty, keeping all information inside Serbia, while meeting strict privacy, security and national digitalization requirements.
Nextcloud was selected for its open-source foundation, strong compliance profile and its ability to integrate smoothly with the existing infrastructure and Domain Controller. Deployment was straightforward, supported by clear documentation and training that enabled the internal IT team to manage permissions and storage independently.
Since implementation, members of parliament and staff now work from on unified platform for secure file sharing, document collaboration, and backups, with significantly improved ease of use and reduced security risks.
The Assembly plans to further expand its digital workspace with Nextcloud Talk and Nextcloud Groupware.
Serbian government employees relied on an outdated VPN and SMB system that was difficult to use, resource-intensive to maintain, and incompatible with mobile devices or modern collaboration needs.
Nextcloud Files and Office replaced the Samba server, enabling secure external sharing, real-time collaboration, remote access, and protection of confidential data for members of the parliament and staff.
The Republic of Serbia’s National Assembly is the highest representative body and holder of constitutional and legislative power in Serbia. The National Assembly elects government leaders, adopts and amends the Constitution and appoints the Governor of the National Bank of Serbia and other state officials. The Assembly is composed of 250 deputies elected for four year terms.
One part of the National Assembly is the Operations and Technical Affairs and Information Technology Sector. This sector manages everything regarding electronic, information and communication technologies, the technical and current maintenance of the National Assembly premises and other operations and technical affairs.
The Information and Communications Technology Sector’s key responsibility is the maintenance of the National Assembly’s computer network and data center as well as the administration of Internet access, provisioning of IT resources and maintenance of the National Assembly’s Internet presentation. The team also provides e-mail services for National Assembly employees, development of application software and IT services for their users and telephone service and control for users at the National Assembly.
For a long time, Serbian government employees relied on a VPN and SMB (Server Message Block) for accessing and sharing files. However, it wasn’t user friendly and there were often issues that wasted precious IT staff resources. It was clear they needed a brand new solution.
In May 2020, the National Assembly initiated the deployment of a new IT solution for its leaders, employees and members of parliament. The objective was to introduce a secure, open-source, cost-effective and easy-to use platform with full on-premise installation. Nextcloud was selected to fulfill these requirements and provide the necessary capabilities for modern collaboration.
In order to bring the government body back up to speed, the solution also had to fulfill several important requirements. For example, it was important to follow and be in accordance with Serbia’s national digitalization project that promotes digitalization of state and civil institutions, meant to bring many benefits to the general public, civil sector and government institutions. Additionally, they needed the solution to be compatible with external devices like mobile phones and tablets.
In the discovery phase, the National Assembly’s Operations, Communication and IT departments conducted a detailed assessment of their requirements. The outcome was a clear decision: Nextcloud, a platform that delivers security, control and modern collaboration capabilities.
The infrastructure leveraged existing resources, including virtual machine hosting, fibre channel and gigabit networking, and firewall protection. This was further expanded with additional storage systems, virtual machine administration, and comprehensive system management to support the full Nextcloud deployment.
Nextcloud was integrated with the National Assembly’s Domain Controller, allowing the IT department to manage user accounts and quotas internally. All on-premises hardware interventions and technical support are handled directly by the institution’s internal IT specialists.
The National Assembly praised the smooth deployment and comprehensive documentation, which made it easy for teams to navigate and adopt the new platform with confidence.
Once the setup was completed, a dedicated Nextcloud training session was held for the Sysadmin team to ensure they could effectively manage users, permissions and storage.
The implementation of Nextcloud was a complete success. The National Assembly achieved digital sovereignty with several outstanding improvements.
With Nextcloud Hub, collaborating on projects and documents is now much easier, thanks to having all needed documents in one place. This enables employees and their external associates to be much more productive.
Secure sharing of files and documents reduced security risks that can come from faulty email
attachments and compromised mail servers. The team can now safely share files to external
personnel.
Overall, the general sense of increased security has impacted the management departments,
considering how Nextcloud provides data on-premise, encryption, backups and controlled
sharing options.
MPs and colleagues are happy with how simple Nextcloud is to use. They are using file sharing
and backup features a lot and there are no complaints on functionality and possible improvements.
The National Assembly continues to train employees on Nextcloud usage and IT best practices to ensure a smooth and secure digital workspace.
In the near future, they plan to integrate Nextcloud Talk as their primary self-hosted communication platform, taking full advantage of its seamless connection with Nextcloud Files for efficient collaboration.
Additionally, the introduction of Nextcloud Groupware is part of their upcoming roadmap to further enhance productivity and coordination across teams.
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Customer
National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia
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