Minister of Economy, Digitalisation, Entrepreneurship and Tourism Radu Miruta told a press conference in Brasov on Friday that Romania is far from true digitalisation, arguing that the state has wasted nine years because digitalisation was used mainly as a way for politicians to divert public money.
"We have not reached a genuine level of digitalisation in Romania today. To speak of digitalisation, today, in the Romanian state is an insult to the noun 'digitalisation'. What we are doing - and we have achieved this with the specialists we have recruited and whom we pay almost at private-sector levels - is to build the state's digitalisation architecture, which will be technically coordinated by this ministry and will set out what each ministry must do (...) after which the political decision must go through the Prime Minister's Chancellery. (...) At present, there is chaos that benefits those who are 'inflated' with software contracts from the Romanian state. If you hear that a piece of software cost 10 million or 100,000 euros, you are probably at a loss for words, because you do not know what to write to inform the public. If you hear about a hospital, a motorway, a bridge, you have a unit of measurement - it is big, small, attractive, functional - but if you hear about software, you do not know what the algorithm behind it does, or whether it is correctly assessed," Radu Miruta said.
According to him, digitalisation will not benefit citizens if it amounts to nothing more than swapping out computers in a ministry.
"The key to digitalisation is communication - not paying twice for the same software needed by both Brasov County Council and Gorj County Council, when in fact each pays separately, and this happens in about 42 cases. The key is not to spend a ministry's funds just to replace old computers with new ones. These things must be done with a purpose: enabling communication between institutions. Digitalisation will not deliver results for citizens if data are not exchanged," Minister Radu Miruta also said.
In turn, Under-secretary of State Andrei Miftode responsible for coordinating the ministry's General Directorate for Electronic Communications, Digitalisation Policies and Strategies, said he is facing both staffing and infrastructure issues, noting that when he took up the post, "it was raining through the ceiling and equipment was breaking down".
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