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Mr. Filipov, the presidential election is less than a week away. Is Information Services ready for the electoral process?
Over the past 24 years, our company has been a strategic partner to the Central Election Commission in the computer processing of election results. We have extensive experience in this field, particularly over the past six years. We have successfully processed data from more than 100 elections. We are ready.
The Central Election Commission published the election documents later than usual. Has this made your work more difficult?
The amendments to the Electoral Code introduced the possibility of machine voting in more than 75% of polling stations, with each vote recorded on a technical storage medium and subsequently processed during the calculation of the final results. This led to changes in the election documents and, consequently, in the computerised processing system. We held numerous meetings with the newly appointed members of the Central Election Commission and reached solutions that fully support the principles of public access to information, transparency, and traceability throughout the electoral process.
Speaking of transparency, observers are now also allowed to be present while your team enters the data into the system. Has there been any interest?
Yes, the Electoral Code allows a wide range of individuals to observe the process, including representatives of political parties, coalitions and nominating committees, election observers, authorized party representatives, members of Precinct Election Commissions and Regional Election Commissions, as well as members of the Central Election Commission. At the most recent elections, held in April 2026, this amounted to more than 150,000 people eligible to be present both at the regional election commissions’ data processing centres and at the Central Election Commission. In practice, we had 150,000 independent observers with the opportunity to scrutinize the operation of the system. In addition, the Electoral Code requires Precinct Election Commissions to display a copy of their official election protocol in a publicly accessible location. This means that, in effect, society as a whole has the opportunity to oversee our work. In this way, citizens can be fully confident that their votes have been accurately recorded, processed and included in the final election results.
Will you be able to ensure comprehensive video surveillance coverage? Will all polling stations be covered?
Video recording begins once voting has concluded and covers the counting of ballots, the completion of the official election protocol, and its signing by the members of the Precinct Election Commissions. At the most recent elections, held on 19 April, we achieved a record level of coverage for live video streaming and recording: 99.83% of all 11,653 polling stations. Only 17 polling stations had no video recordings, and this was due to circumstances beyond our control. This sets a very high benchmark for the upcoming elections, but I am confident that our team is technologically and organizationally prepared to meet this challenge.
However, we saw that the video recordings from the last elections captured several irregularities. Were there any consequences?
Based on the information I have followed in the media, the competent authorities have launched a number of investigations, and legal proceedings are underway.
At the upcoming elections, the results will be taken from the machine’s USB flash drive. In that case, why is live video streaming necessary?
In polling stations where machine voting is used, the results will be retrieved from the data recorded on the technical storage medium, commonly referred to as a USB flash drive. These data will subsequently be verified at the data processing centres of Information Services, which operates under the Ministry of Innovation and Digital Transformation. The verification will cover the file structure, the electronic signature, and all other data formats and validation checks stipulated in our contract with the Central Election Commission, and only then will the information be transferred to Information Services’ election results processing system.
The Electoral Code also requires Precinct Election Commissions to carry out a control count of the machine-printed paper receipts deposited by voters in the designated ballot box. The results of this control count will be recorded in a separate protocol, which will be published on the Central Election Commission’s website alongside the results for each polling station, helping to ensure the integrity of the vote. However, it is the data recorded on the technical storage medium that will be used for computer processing and will determine the final election results.
You have developed a new mobile application for the elections that will be available to all citizens. How will it benefit them?
For the elections held on 19 April 2026, Information Services developed a mobile application that enabled every member of a Precinct Election Commission to verify the calculations in the election protocol before completing the original document. This reduced errors by over than 50% compared with previous elections. We also streamlined our operations and achieved a record turnaround time for computer processing of the election results. In cooperation with the newly appointed Central Election Commission, we have now further enhanced the mobile application. Called Izbori 360, it has already been downloaded more than 26,000 times. The application features a dedicated section for citizens, allowing them to check the address of their polling station, submit requests to change their voting address, report issues, watch a video tutorial on how to vote using a voting machine, and access other useful information. For the members of Precinct Election Commissions, we have added training materials and the various types of election protocols. I hope that Izbori 360 will provide significant support to election commission members, help minimize errors in the protocols, and eliminate the corrections and amendments that we have seen in election documents in recent years. I urge all citizens to support democracy and go to the polling stations to cast their vote.
It is often said that, despite Bulgaria’s highly developed IT sector, the country’s e-government services are lagging behind. Do you agree with this assessment?
I would argue with confidence that a number of government institutions have already been fully digitised, including the National Revenue Agency, the Customs Agency, the Registry Agency, the Agency of Geodesy, Cartography and Cadastre, and many others. The main shortcoming is the lack of a systematic approach to developing individual systems, as well as the absence of mandatory requirements for integration between them. Not all systems are interconnected, and in many cases, citizens receive electronic documents that they must print out and deliver in person to other government institutions. The state should not expect citizens to apply for services to which they are legally entitled. Instead, they should receive those services automatically. For example, a person with a disability assessment issued by a competent medical expert commission should automatically receive the benefits to which they are entitled, such as a free road vignette and a reduced vehicle tax. The fundamental challenge lies in the lack of a systematic approach, not only to implementation but also to the very understanding of what e-government and the digitalization of public administration processes should mean. We need to adopt a radically new approach, moving away from fragmented, disconnected systems towards an integrated, data-driven model of public administration.
Healthcare is perhaps the most digitised sector in Bulgaria, thanks to Information Services. Are there any new services you are currently developing?
We are proud of what we have achieved and are committed to digitizing the entire public healthcare sector, including the operations of the Ministry of Health and the National Health Insurance Fund. We began developing the National Health Information System in late 2020. Today, the system is fully operational and widely recognized by the public. It now contains more than 800 million unique health records and is used in real time by over 34,000 physicians, nearly 11,000 dentists, and 7,600 pharmacists. More than 3,300 pharmacies are connected to the system, along with nearly 1,200 laboratories and 400 healthcare facilities.
The system has been developed at an exceptionally low costр not just in Europe. A single health record costs less than 2 eurocents. Over the past six years, the state has paid Information Services €16 million for system maintenance and the development of all its functionalities, including the eZdrave mobile application. Through the app, patients can access their health status, receive information about their medical care, and view digital prescriptions, medical appointments, and referrals. More than 800,000 Bulgarian citizens are doing so.
We are also supporting the National Health Insurance Fund’s campaign to help citizens link their electronic health records to their mobile phones free of charge. This can be done using an electronic signature or, at no cost, at any of our offices or those of the National Health Insurance Fund. I urge everyone to take advantage of this opportunity, as it will enable patients to verify whether a medical service has actually been provided to them. This is made possible through a new feature called Public Oversight. Patients receive a notification on their phones and can reply with “Yes” or “No”. To date, the feature has been used more than 800,000 times, with only 3,300 responses indicating that a service had not been provided. Each of these reports is investigated by the Ministry of Health or teams at the National Health Insurance Fund. Feedback has already been provided to patients in more than 33% of these cases, and follow-up action has been taken.
We would not have been able to digitise the healthcare sector without our strategic partnerships with the professional organizations representing physicians, pharmacists and dentists — the Bulgarian Medical Association, the Bulgarian Pharmaceutical Union and the Bulgarian Dental Association — as well as with more than 100 private software companies that have integrated their solutions with the National Health Information System. We built on the strength of Bulgaria’s well-developed private-sector technology market. All software companies can access information about new developments in healthcare through the health information system’s website. Our aim is to remove barriers and ensure that, for example, a startup looking to develop a hospital information system has access to the data and technical resources it needs to do so. In this way, we have brought together the entire healthcare technology ecosystem. We believe this collaborative approach has enabled us to build the most advanced health information system in Europe. We have ensured full transparency and traceability across processes, while providing equal opportunities to all stakeholders within the healthcare ecosystem.
Q: In your last interview with 24 Chasa, you said that Information Services and the Ministry of Health would soon be completing a pilot project for diagnostic imaging. Is it ready?
The commitment we made in that interview has now been fulfilled. The project was successfully completed at the end of August, and Information Services has implemented the necessary integration; the results are now available.
More than 81,000 medical images from diagnostic imaging examinations performed at hospitals across Bulgaria are now linked to patients’ electronic health records. This means patients no longer need to carry their images on physical storage devices when consulting specialists.
With the patient’s consent, any medical specialist can also access their electronic health record through the mobile application.
You are developing the European Digital Identity Wallet. How is the project progressing, and will Bulgaria be ready by the end of the year, as required by the European Commission?
This is a fundamental project for the further digital transformation of society, particularly public administration. By the end of this year, Bulgaria must have its own digital identity wallet, enabling every Bulgarian citizen to present and verify their identity digitally. By mid-2027, the wallet should also be capable of being used for electronic signatures, initially for a limited range of services that will gradually expand over time.
One thing that is crucial – the EC allows multiple wallets; private companies can also launch their own, but it has to be certified. However, the implementation of this project by the state, with Information Services playing a key role, helps safeguard Bulgaria’s digital sovereignty. Some EU member states are only just beginning to assess the risks associated with relying on private entities for critical components of their digital infrastructure. Ownership of certain private companies is being acquired by, or placed under the control of, individuals and entities from third countries. This can leave governments highly dependent on decisions made by private owners when it comes to the delivery of public services. In today’s digital society, such
What other projects are you working on?
We are upgrading the public procurement platform. It enables businesses to submit tenders regardless of their location or the time of submission, with all offers received and processed electronically. To date, 650,000 bids worth more than €100 billion have been submitted through the platform and over 200,000 contracts have been signed.
Other major projects involved the implementation of the government’s commitments under Bulgaria’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan. These included the Insolvency Information System for the Registry Agency and the Energy Poverty Information System for the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy. We successfully completed both projects on time.
Against this backdrop, the long-standing debate between the private sector and Information Services has recently resurfaced. You are being accused of holding a monopoly. How would you respond to these allegations?
Bulgaria’s public administration comprises more than 580 institutions and organizational units. Information Services operates in only 33 of them, representing approximately 5% of the total.
As I have already explained, we developed the National Health Information System by leveraging the expertise and capabilities of the private sector. We follow the same partnership model in many other projects.
A significant part of system integration involves supplying infrastructure components, including servers, personal computers, software, maintenance and cybersecurity systems. As the National systems integrator, Information Services is responsible for providing these, whilst fully complying with Bulgaria’s Public Procurement Act. The contracts we sign with our contracting authorities are entirely public and transparent. They are published both on our website and on the Public Procurement Agency’s platform. At the same time, I can point to public procurement contracts awarded to private companies at prices significantly higher than those at which we deliver the same services. Some are as much as 13 times more expensive. In other cases, everything is classified and entirely inaccessible to the public — including both the technical specifications and the unit prices. Perhaps this is part of the problem.
There are systems that could have been implemented many years ago, before we took them on. Other companies tried to deliver them in the judicial system and healthcare, but failed. We succeeded!
Is it common practice in other countries to have a systems integrator?
Every EU Member State has similar organisations. We are members of EURITAS, the association of public-sector IT service providers and systems integrators. Its members include organisations from Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Finland, Denmark, Croatia, Poland, Malta, the United Kingdom, Ireland and other countries.
In Bulgaria, as in these other countries, digitalisation is driven both by these organisations and by the private sector. I certainly do not believe that all private companies act in bad faith — quite the opposite. We partner with many of them to deliver key projects of major importance to the state and society.
Are your systems open source?
Under the terms of our contracts, the source codes for all our systems are state-owned and must be uploaded to the government repository, where they are accessible to everyone.
In addition, the Ministry of Health’s website provides a rich collection of structured, anonymised data that any citizen can use as they see fit. This level of public access and transparency in the healthcare sector is being introduced for the first time.
We have also developed risk analysis and oversight systems that are already delivering results in the fight against corruption. By the end of the year, we will make information available to every patient who has the eZdrave mobile app installed, showing how much the National Health Insurance Fund has paid for each healthcare service they have received — including medical consultations, prescriptions, referrals and hospital stay.