Abstract
Most public services in Romania are provided by local public institutions, especially town halls and city halls. Although Romania has produced a number of national e-government development strategies, in the end, their implementation will mainly be in the hands of local municipalities. This study aims to find out the challenges that IT professionals in local administrations face in digitalizing their institutions, their success stories and their opinions about online service delivery in the face of continuous technological change. The general sentiment is that e-government development is never a priority, especially at central level, and that essential national technological infrastructure is underdeveloped or non-existent. Because of these shortcomings, even online services that work well in a local context will be hard to replicate or integrate at a country level.
Highlights
Online services are increasingly seen not so much as a novelty, full of excitement and potential, but as just another utensil in the public institutions’ toolboxes, helping them reach more citizens and companies and serving them better
The efforts to implement e-government measures and services throughout Romanian public institutions date back to at least 2001, when the first relevant legislation was adopted: Law no. 544/2001, on Free Access to Information of Public Interest, which stipulates the kind of information that is provided by default, including on the institution’s webpage, and that the requested information can be delivered through electronic means whenever possible
If we look at countries that top the UN E-government Index (United Kingdom, South Korea, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Singapore) or to newcomers moving fast in this field (Estonia is the obvious example here), there are a number of prerequisites that help in achieving sophisticated online services that citizens and companies increasingly expect from public institutions
Summary
Online services are increasingly seen not so much as a novelty, full of excitement and potential, but as just another utensil in the public institutions’ toolboxes, helping them reach more citizens and companies (clients, in NPM parlance) and serving them better. The efforts to implement e-government measures and services throughout Romanian public institutions date back to at least 2001, when the first relevant legislation was adopted: Law no. As a member of the European Union, is within the scope of the Europe 2020 strategy and, especially relevant to our discussion, for the Digital Agenda flagship initiative, which aims to ‘unleash the digital potential and diffuse the digital culture widely across the EU’ (European Union, 2016). The Romanian government agreed to a set of goals (for example, at least 35% of people use e-government systems; at least 60% of citizens use the Internet regularly; at least 30% of citizens make purchases online; etc.) which, presumably, would help public institutions focus on these objectives and advance the development of a digital society
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