Mr. Miladin Kovačević, Director general and Ms. Mira Nikić, assistant director of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, in charge of development and international cooperation, took the part in webinar, organized by World Bank. It was an internal World Bank webinar organized by the Community of Practice for Statistical Capacity Building, which is an informal network of WB project leaders and economists working on statistical projects around the world.

The objective of the third in the row Winter school, which was organized by the Eurostat, GOPA and Statistical office of the Republic of Serbia (SORS), was to exchange experiences and knowledge among partner NSIs, in order to be more agile and adaptable to the unpredictable changes and to ensure continuous growth and survival.

In the February 2021, members of the IST team, enforced with the colleagues from the SORS Regional data centres department, held the online meeting with the colleagues from the statistical offices of Russia, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Georgia. The subject was how to keep business continuity in the new situation caused by COVID19 pandemic. Lots of discussions, lots of new ideas, successful stories and solution which were approved in practice were on the table.

Again, keen to implement innovation in statistics, especially in understanding the needs of our users and to automatize the process of providing information to the statistical audience, IST team, together with the decision making support guys and Microsoft experts, following the OECD idea of including chat bot in communication with the data providers and interested parties, started to work on this idea.

Due to SORS intention to present and expand its work and experience in using and developing IST, the online meeting with colleagues from Vietnam statistics took place on the July 2, 2020. The topic regards new stuff implemented in IST, since we already made collaboration with Vietnam statistics and organizing our return visit to Vietnam statistics, considering a prior study visit of colleagues from Vietnam statistics to SORS, as well.

In the period from 22-24. June 2020, the regular, 68th in a row, web session of the Conference of European Statisticians (CES) was held, bringing together CEOs of statistical offices from more than 60 countries and numerous international organizations. The aim of the conference was to enhance inter-institutional cooperation in facing official statistics with various challenges

The online meeting, considering the memorandum of understanding and cooperation agreed and signed between the State Committee of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Statistics SORS, was held on April 17, 2020.

Our eminent colleagues and IST developers, Aleksandra Skoko Despenic and Nevena Pavlovic, visited the Vietnam statistical office, in the period of 09 - 13 March, 2020. This was a return visit, since Vietnam experts already had the opportunity to have an insight in IST concept, during their prior visit to SORS.

The second IST Winter School - Metadata-driven data integration concept, Statistical Business Register (SBR) and Data visualization was held at the Majestic Hotel, as well as on the premises of the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, from 10th to 14th of February, under the auspices of GOPA Worldwide Consultants.