A team of experts with no ties to the political class could manage Romania's digitalization architecture, an idea that has been accepted both by the Presidential Administration and the Prime Minister, Minister of Economy, Digitalization, Entrepreneurship and Tourism Radu Miruta said on Wednesday within the second day of Smart City Highlights, an event organised by the University Politehnica of Bucharest.
"An important step we need to take, and this idea is to be accepted both at the level of the Presidential Administration and by the Prime Minister, is to form a team of specialists with no ties to the political class, who would manage Romania's digitalization architecture," Minister Radu Miruta said.
He mentioned that the Ministry of Economy, Digitalisation, Entrepreneurship and Tourism (MEDAT) has identified a method to fund a team of software architects who would vet any software solution to be purchased by the Romanian state.
"At the ministry, we have identified a way to pay a 17-person team differently from the public sector wage standards. A software architect who earns 5,000 euro on the market will never come to work at the ministry for 1,200. Efforts are underway to build such a team, through which any software solution to be purchased by the Romanian state will be filtered, for the time being at the central level," the minister explained.
He expressed his belief that "Romania needs to have a library of so-called 'Building Blocks', an inventory of existing software solutions at national level."
He believes that political will is essential for this to happen.
According to the relevant minister, digitalization is moving in the right direction. "There are some barriers that we need to overcome together, and society is being pushed to overcome them. My view, more as a software engineer than as a minister, is that things are heading in the right direction. The fact that there are obstacles doesn't mean there is something wrong in Romania, but rather that it is this human resistance to change," the Digitalization Minister concluded.
The first edition of Smart City Highlights, the largest national event dedicated to academic urban innovation, began on Tuesday, being organised by the University Politehnica of Bucharest, together with the Technical International Center for Innovation in Smart C (Community, City, County, Country) - CITI and in partnership with the Association of Municipalities in Romania (AMR).
According to the organisers, on Tuesday and Wednesday the event transforms Bucharest into a hub of ideas for smart cities, bringing together representatives from central and local public administration, top technology companies, academia and leading research within a neutral and strategic platform.
Participants can tour interactive exhibitions and watch live demonstrations, including a mobile data centre, an electric vehicle exhibition, a smart bus stop, along with solutions for IT infrastructure, document management and intelligent street lighting. Among the participants there are the AI Citizens robotics team (world champions) and Cyberlis76 (European runners-up) in robotics competitions.
Smart City Cluster is an initiative of the University Politehnica of Bucharest, a cluster built on the triple helix model of the Smart City value chain (companies, universities and research institutes, authorities and other catalyst organizations). The cluster facilitates and integrates communication and collaboration among members to provide solutions for green and sustainable cities through digitalization, research and innovation.
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