The World Bank and the Romanian Ministry for Information Society hosted a workshop on e-Government over the weekend as the roll-out of e-Government services in Romania continues. The workshop, titled e-Government Transformation: Moving from Nice-to-Have to Must-Have, was part of the World Bank's regional Smart Specialization and Digital Agenda scheme.

“Romania has embarked on an ambitious project of aligning itself to the latest trends in e-Government and introducing the most advanced electronic systems in providing public services to its citizens,” said Romania's Minister for Information Society Dan Nica. The Minister referred to the government's digital agenda, which lays out the adoption of of online digital services and two recent programs; Online Issuance of Civil Status Documents and the e-Agricultural Registry. Meanwhile, World Bank Country Manager in Romania Elisabetta Capannelli highlighted the apparent dual benefits of online government services – increased efficiency and cost reduction, as well as an improvement in the quality of service to the public.

“With e-Government, citizens and businesses have easier access to government agencies and institutions electronically, thus avoiding having to wait in line or dealing with paper documents. e-Government provides better services in half the time for half as much,” she said.

Capannelli also stressed that e-Government went beyond simply putting existing state services online, instead “involves rethinking and transforming the ways government institutions operate, with the citizens’ benefits and expectations at the core of such re-conceptualization.”

On the agenda for discussion were interdepartmental collaboration between parts of government, effective collaboration and tackling the knowledge gap between government and those responsible for implementing technological systems, as well as the latest developments in the IT field relevant to online government administration. Secure system access, user identification, data protection and other security issues were also discussed at the workshop.

In late April, Romanian Ministry for Information Society announced plans to invest some EUR 35 million in creating an online system that would allow Romanians to receive marriage or divorce certificates, as well as birth and death certificates without the hassle of queuing. The plan comes under the larger Digital Agenda and aims to get the whole registration process online, with citizens only using their ID cards to access the system.

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