The top-level national domain is one of the elements of the national wealth and sovereignty of each country. The formal recognition of Croatia in the global internet space began on February 27, 1993, with the confirmation of the use of the new top-level .hr domain by the international organization ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers).
“In the past 30 years, we have reached a figure of almost 125,000 .hr domains. We have built infrastructure, take care of the security of the national domain space and .hr domain users, followed and aligned ourselves with international domain development trends and the needs of the digital world. Today, we can proudly say that our national domain is one of the safest and most reliable in the European Union, making a strong contribution to the identity of our country in the digital world,” emphasized CARNET CEO Hrvoje Puljiz.
Moreover, Croatia is the only European country where legal and natural persons engaged in independent activities can register one national domain completely free of charge. Every citizen of Croatia can register a .from.hr domain for free.
CARNET contributes to the digitization of enrollment in educational institutions, monitoring participants throughout the entire education process, digital transformation of teaching and business processes in primary and secondary schools, and higher education, as well as the development of computer networks through projects it manages and participates in. The total value of these projects exceeds 330 million euros and includes public kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, centres for upbringing and education, as well as public higher education institutions. If we convert this into the number of users, we are talking about more than a million participants in the education system, including employees, students, and parents.
CARNET’s e-Schools project, worth 212 million euros, encompasses all primary and secondary schools funded by the state budget and contributes to strengthening the capacity of the primary and secondary education system with the aim of preparing students for the job market, further education, and lifelong learning. The project brings new high-performance local networks to schools, equipment for employees, modern equipment for two classrooms, digital educational content, numerous services for teachers, and more efficient school management.
A kind of continuation of e-Schools is the Brain project, worth 15 million euros. Within this project, research will be conducted on the impact of digital technologies on mental and physical health, a curriculum will be developed for a new elective subject focused on developing students’ information literacy, and a system of smart recommendations for teachers and students will be established.
With the “Supporting Equal Opportunities in Education for Students with Developmental Difficulties – ATTEND” project, worth 3.5 million euros, CARNET seeks to improve the education of children with developmental difficulties by ensuring access to digital assistive technologies, as well as their adequate and effective use in educational activities. The goal of the project is to contribute to creating equal educational opportunities for children with developmental difficulties and their more successful integration into society.
CARNET is also involved in the e-Enrollment project, which encompasses the complete computerization of the education system. In 2022, e-enrollments were conducted in kindergartens, and a new enrollment system for high schools was put into operation. This year, a pilot project for e-enrollment of students in elementary schools in the Zadar County is being implemented. The continuation of this project is the 8 million euros worth project “Comprehensive Computerization of the Education System,” which will improve and connect existing electronic services and registers throughout the entire education vertical.
By the end of 2025, CARNET will implement the e-University project to digitally transform higher education in Croatia by improving digital teaching infrastructure and introducing digital teaching tools. It is one of the largest projects in the field of higher education in Croatia, with a total value of 84 million euros, funded under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan 2021–2026.
At the end of last year, CARNET became the leader in introducing experimental quantum communication infrastructure through which Croatia will contribute to the construction of the European quantum communication infrastructure. The goal of the CroQCI project, worth 10 million euros, is to establish an experimental network infrastructure that will encrypt traffic at the photon level and lay the foundation for the development of an extremely secure, high-performance communication network.
