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The Transition to e-Government. The Romanian Case

Gheorghe FILIP1

Ovidiu STOICA2

Abstract

The e-administration or the administration on-line becomes a reality in the developed countries

nowadays, but also developing countries and countries in the transition period to the market economy

begin to implement this concept.

The modernisation of the Romanian public administration is a necessity. The Romanian government

must realise the necessary efforts for aligning the public administration at western standards,

especially in the perspective of the European integration, and as a prerequisite.

On another level, the new approach of the public administration, the informatisation of the public

administration, correlated with the development of the e-government, permits to increase the citizensdegree of access to public information or his degree of satisfaction as regarding the quality of services

offered by the public institutions.

Transition countries and generally, developing countries, have to impel the on-line public services

implementation and computerisation of the public administration together with the Internet

development.

For the governments in the transition countries, the transformation to e-government supposes to

overpass more obstacles than in developed countries. This is also the Romanian case. But, the

Romanian Government seems to be decided to implement the e-government in the next years, taking

into account their plans.

Why e-Government in Romania? Necessity and Advantages.The modernisation of the Romanian public administration is a necessity. The Romanian government

must realise the necessary efforts for aligning the public administration at western standards,especially in the perspective of the European integration, and as a prerequisite.Before the admissions in the European Union, among the objectives to be reached is the reform of thepublic administration, in order to become more efficient. In this context, the existing orientation in theworld, to the e-government, could be taken into consideration.

The on-line administration, the e-governance, becomes a reality in (some) developed countries, butalso even in developing ones (emerging markets) can be noticed efforts targeting the same final

objective.The objective of this process of transformation, a reform in the central and local public administration,

in correlation with the development of the new economy whose final result is known as e-government is finally the efficiency in the governing process. The solutions offered by the specificsoftware developed in the field (together with the advantages of using the Internet in long distancecommunication), permits to public administration institutions that implement it to reduce their costsand increase efficiency in the internal decision process, through the data centralisation and theintegration of applications. On another level, the new approach of the public administration permits toincrease the citizens degree of access to public information or his degree of satisfaction as regardingthe quality of services offered by the public institutions.E-government represents the government of the future in the new economy, to which we areheading, the use of the Information Technology (IT) in public administration in the highest degree, forcitizens benefit. As a consequence of e-government, public administration becomes more efficient,closer to the citizen, and the bureaucracy and corruption are decreasing.

Of course, even in developed countries, besides the achieved progresses and the doubtlesstechnological advance, there are big differences from one country to another, or even in the same

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country, from a local administration to another one. And this, because the governance transformation,the reach of the e-governance, it is not or firstly a problem of technology. After the common

nowadays, the possibility of making electronic commerce, of buying airplane tickets or books on-line,from the Internet, 24 hours from 24 hours and 7 days from 7, citizens ask for more, for on-line servicesfrom the government and from local authorities.

The Benefits of the e-Government Solutions Implementation

The advantages of the on-line services, of the on-line administration, in comparison with thetraditional variant, among others, are:

! maximum rapidity in solving the citizens requests, contributing in the same time to bureaucracyreduction, and the lack of the direct contact between applicant and public servant having a possiblecontribution as regarding corruption reduction;

! smaller expenditures from the perspective of the public institutions some expenditures regardingthe personnels wages and the headquarters maintenance disappear, and their productivity increases;

! one can save money or at least save time (and nervousness), from the citizens perspective; by apermanent access at the information offered by the public administration the equivalent of a non-

stop program, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week;! accessibility the connection to the on-line services can be made from the citizens own house or

office, or from an Internet-cafe. In order to access the specific services offered by public institutions

through Internet, one do not need a special equipment, but only a computer, a modem, a telephoneline, an Internet connection (from an Internet Service Provider) and a navigation software;

! security/safety and confidentiality for the on-line operations, insured through special encryptingsoftware of the transmitted information.

The main advantage of developing the on-line access at the public administration services will deriveat the beginning from the increasing information efficiency, but a second aspect, which cannot beneglected, could be that of the foreign investors possibility of getting informed, or, later, even askingcertain authorisations from local authorities directly from abroad.

Progresses in the Implementation of e-Government in Romania

The first concrete steps towards e-government in Romania have been already made, significantprogresses being registered especially in the year 2001.

The first e-government application in Romania is considered to be the high school entrance exam, inthe summer of the year 2001. The Research and Education Ministry achieved, together with some

well-known specialised companies (Compaq, Hewlett & Packard, IBM and an IT Romaniancompany), the computerised repartition for 203,000 pupils - candidates and published thecompetitions results on the Internet, on a special conceived site

3. The success of the application can

be evaluated in quantitative terms by the more than 1 million accesses of the site from that period oftime and by the substantially reduced time which was necessary for processing such a hugeinformation volume only 2 hours. This allowed the reduction of the waiting time for those who were

directly interested, both children and their parents.The application, ADLIC Electronic Secondary School Admission and Distribution 2001 wasselected to be presented in an exhibition, connected with the e-government conference "From Policyto Practice" from 29-30 November 2001, organised jointly by the European Commission and theBelgian Presidency of the Council in Charlemagne, Brussels.4Other significant fact is that, from the whole number of e-government projects (applications for thelocal administration, practically) from the whole Europe, submitted for funding from the European

Commission and accepted with the occasion of the above-mentioned e-government Conference, 25were Romanian ones (which means more than 10%).

In the same year 2001, as an expression of the Romanian authorities preoccupation from theinformation technology domain, was created the Group for Information Technology Promotion coordinated by the prime-minister which already implemented 20 pilot projects in the e-government

area.

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In an e-government study made by the World Markets Research Centre and by the Brown University,Romania is ranked in the first third part of classification, taking into account 2,288 government

websites (executive offices, legislative offices, judicial offices, cabinet and ministerial offices, andmajor agencies serving such crucial government functions as health, taxation, education, economicdevelopment, foreign affairs, foreign investment, tourism and business regulation) from the 196evaluated countries. The criteria which mattered/counted for the hierarchy were:! on-line services (the researchers were evaluating how much material was available, that would

help citizens in contacting government agencies and navigate websites; also, where governmentservices required a fee, they took into account the inability to make credit card payments online oraccept digital signatures considering this an limitation of the fully executable online services. Of thegovernment websites analysed only 1% accepted credit cards and only 0.2% allowed digitalsignatures);

! on-line publications (publications that a citizen could access on-line);

! data bases available on-line;! settlements regarding the personal data protection (privacy policy, security policy). Beside the

outstanding importance of this final criterion, in the case of our country, unfortunately, the obtained

score was 0%, because at that moment were not applicable any legislation to the subject. Although,the legislative preoccupations from the last period will materialise in a short period of time,contributing to an improvement of the situation.

! handicap accessibility (for the hearing or visually impaired, websites providing Text Telephone orTelephonic Device for the Deaf, or permitting the use of audio on sites).

Country

CountryGeneral

Rankingsby

OnlineServices

Publica-tions

DataBases

PrivacyPolicy

SecurityPolicy

HandicapAcces-sibility

USA 57,2 34 98 90 81 56 37

Canada 49,6 34 100 72 79 14 7

UK 47,1 30 100 67 7 0 7Germany 40,6 59 88 56 0 0 0

France 40,1 25 100 63 0 0 0

Slovenia 37,6 0 90 40 0 0 0

Bulgaria 34,5 0 100 23 0 0 0

Greece 34,2 0 100 18 0 0 0

Hungary 33,0 0 94 41 0 0 0

Croatia 32,6 0 81 48 0 0 0

Poland 32,0 0 95 42 0 0 0

Slovakia 32,0 0 100 0 0 0 0

Romania 30,7 9 100 18 0 0 0

CzechRep.

26,1 0 50 17 0 0 0

Table 1. E-Government ranking and country profile for selected countries5

Again, as a progress in the direction of implementing the e-governance, we should remark the fact thatrecently, the National Institute of Research and Development, with the support of the Ministry ofCommunications and Information Technology launched the first electronic bookshop from Romaniaand presently it works at a network of virtual libraries.Two recent decisions of the Executive from the year 2002, which had a strong impact as regarding theimpel of the Internet economy in Romania, refers to the development of the public procurementsystem by the help of the Internet6 and of the electronic system of tax collection and payments.The necessity of developing public procurement by the budgetary institutions only or mainly throughthe Internet, besides the expected direct benefits the bureaucracy and corruption reduction, the

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increased efficiency of the public acquisition process and the reduction of some costs will go to theimpel of the Internet users.

Also, the possibility of tax payment by Internet represents for sure, an e-government application.Governmental sources estimated that in no more than a year, when it will be finished the systemimplementation, 5 millions of Romanian people could pay their taxes on-line

7(even if now there are

only 3 millions bank cards users).The Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Romania and Bucharest city launched a specialinformation portal

8at the beginning of the year 2002, for the people who wanted to set up a company

or ask for the registration in the Commerce Registration Office from Bucharest of somemodifications of his companys setting up papers. On this site, there are not only informationregarding different procedures to be followed, but even application forms, which can be filled up on-line or manually, after printing them.In the e-government programme, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology wantsto install 3,000 multimedia centres for information, in order to make it easier for citizens to havequicker access at the public information from local and central administration. The majority of the

multimedia centres for citizens will be installed at the countryside for reducing the digital divide

among citizens who live in the urban area and those living in the rural one.Also, the Romanian Government strategy regarding the informatisation of the public administration

9

takes into account to invest 360 millions of dollars until 2004 for creating the premises for integratingthe Romanian Public Administration into the European one; this investments will sustain the effortsvia the e-society in Romania.

Difficulties and Solutions in the e-Government Implementation in Romania

Transition countries and generally, developing countries have to impel the on-line public servicesimplementation and computerisation of the public administration together with the Internetdevelopment. The e-government introduction supposes common difficulties for the transitioncountries, but there is no standard application formula of implementation, also depending on thedegree of economical development, culture or population mentality.

For the governments of the transition countries, the orientation towards e-government supposes theoverpass of more obstacles than in developed countries. This is the case of Romania, too. As aconsequence, in a first stage, the impact of the efforts of introducing on-line administrative serviceswill be smaller than in developed countries, for the greatest part of the population, because of thespecific conditions.We enumerate, as follows, some factors as the above ones, which show in fact, as clear as possible,

that the commendable approach of the Romanian authorities of implementing the on-line governancecannot lead to the desired results, but only in the conditions of the preoccupation for promoting the

new economy in general, when we can talk about e-Romania.1. The number of computers in Romania is small in comparison with the developed countries or even

comparing with the Central and Eastern Europe countries (as seen in Table 3). Anyway, agladdening signal can be considered the increasing rate of the number of computers, alsodetermined by the progressive reduction of the customs duty until their complete exemption,during the last years. Without major investments and continue efforts, it will be difficult to reducethe disparity comparing to other countries, in the conditions of some modest sums of moneyallocated for this domain in the past. Thus, the IT investments in the year 2000 represented 0.56%from GDP, or 7 Euro for each inhabitant. But, an ambitious programme started in the year 2001with a view to the use of computers in the educational system, will be concretised, in the followingperiod, in buying 500,000 computers, designated exclusively for the high schools, targeting that, atthe end, every high school will have a minimum number. Obviously, this initiative will notcontribute directly to the e-government development, but can indirectly have an important

contribution, depending on the measure in which the future highschool leavers will know manythings about computers and will be familiarised with the specific Internet problems.

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Country Expenses Country Expenses

Slovenia 123 Poland 46

Czech Republic 119 Croatia 45

Hungary 90 Bulgaria 13

Slovakia 60 Romania 7

Table 2. The IT expenditures per capita in the year 2000 (in euro), in the Central and Eastern

Europe countries.10

2. The low rates of Internet access. Internet is nowadays, especially in the developed countries, adaily presence. The number of people who use the Internet has increased significantly in the wholeworld, and there is an estimation of doubling till 2004.

Figure 1: The number of persons who use the Internet worldwide, in 1999 2000 and

estimations till the year 2004, in millions of persons.11

On this background, we ought to remark the fact that the Internet access is still a problem in Romania.According to some estimations

12, in the year 1999 only 3% from the countrys population had Internet

access (mainly by the help of the Internet-cafs or from offices), in comparison with 10% in CzechRepublic, 11% in Hungary or 60% in the European Union.In this context, the increase rate of the Internet subscribers can be encouraging: 39% per year, the

rapid growth being suggested by the following figure, too:

163

209

258

310

358

398

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

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Figure 2: The Internet subscribers evolution in Romania, in thousands persons.

13Legend: * Estimations

A cause for the reduced Internet access degree is related with the still prohibitive price of the dial-upconnections, even with the substantial price reduction made by RomTelecom from the 1st of January

2001, for the local Internet suppliers (Internet Service Providers) telephone numbers. In the conditionsin which until 2003, until the opening of the fix telephony market towards competition, RomTelecom

will be the only national operator of fix telephony RomTelecom being situated in a monopolyposition on the market this allows to keep the telephone impulse price at a relative high level.A statistic made at the end of the year 2000 in Romania

14shows that from the Internet users, only 31%

obtained through Internet information about events, 23% were reading daily news, 7% used Internetfor obtaining stock exchange information and 4% used the banking services by the help of the Internet.

3. The access degree relatively reduced at the telephonic services (the fixed telephonic lines),especially at the countryside, or even in the cities. Thus, presently, 40% from the Romanianvillages are not connected at the fix telephonic network. As a consequence of this fact, e-administration can be implemented firstly, only in bigger communities. The next table shows, in acomparative way, the analysed elements: the number of computers, fix telephone lines, as well asthe number of cellular telephones and Internet users from the Central and Eastern Europecountries.

CountryNumber ofcomputers

Number of fixtelephone

lines

Numberof cell

phones

Number ofInternet

users

Population(millions)

IT Expendituresin GDP (%)

Czech

Republic 138 378 280 92 10.3 2.74Hungary 113 386 250 89 10.1 2.50

Romania 25 173 90 33 22.5 0.56

Slovakia 86 336 220 49 5.4 N/A.

Table 3: The number of computers, fix telephone lines, cell phones and Internet users for

selected Central and Eastern Europe countries (for a thousand of inhabitants), in the year

2000.15

4. Up to now, the hardware and software equipment of the public administration institutions wasachieved by no coordination or coherent strategy. As a consequence, even in the same institution

there are communication and interoperability problems, generated by the application andequipment heterogeneousness. The incompatibility of the software solutions used by different

6785

120

170

250

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

1998 1999 2000* 2001* 2002*

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public administration institutions makes the natural approach of integrating them, to create anational system, to be difficult but imperative necessary at a certain moment.

5. Even if the law of the electronic signature was promulgated in July 17th

2001 , it is still notfunctional yet the infrastructure which is supposed by its application.

16The existence of the

electronic signature is, from a juridical point of view, the point of departure for citizens relationswith the public administration on the Internet.

6. The reduced degree of electronic commerce development:17

Only recently, in the second half ofthe year 2001, was promulgated the electronic commerce law, which is expected to contribute atthe e-transactions boom. These, even if apparently had no connection with the e-administration,practically, the first beneficiaries and users will be mainly those who already knew what Internetmeans, being convinced by its utility, who already used it and will use it again with more easiness.In the on-line Internet transactions in Romania, a major obstacle is represented by the lack of theon-line convenient modalities of payment, not from the banking infrastructure capability for usingthe card on Internet payments point of view, but especially because of the reticence from theRomanian banks who issue cards, in assuming the inherent risks in the domain. In consequence,

even the name electronic commerce is inadequate in Romania, if through the Internet is realised

only the contact between the buyer and the seller and generally the payment is still made in thetraditional manner.

7. The statute of the IT specialists working in public administration institutions. In October 2001, onthe occasion of the first national conference regarding the information technology in publicadministration, were discussed specific problems which are usual for the IT specialists working in public administration, in the intent of finding solutions. With this occasion, it was raised the

problem of a differentiated treatment of the IT specialists working in public administration incomparison with those from the private sector. In this context, the participants called the attention

of the responsible authorities upon the migration phenomenon of the best IT specialists from thepublic sector towards other sectors of the economy, where they receive more money, or towardsforeign countries.

8. The age barrier and the reticence of some people with a view to the Internet and maybe the

computer use, in general. Thus, for instance, a training programme in the e-commerce domainlaunched by Carnegie Mellon in Romania failed, because no chairman or general manager wasinterested to attend the course. What is suggestive, but alarming in the same time, is that more people who were contacted, persons in leadership positions, asked if there is any possibility to

receive the diplomas only, without being forced to attend the courses.18

9. The low degree of penetration of the Internet economy, in any form. In a pool effectuated inyear 2000 by Roland Berger & Partners among 145 companies from 9 representative industries inCentral and Eastern Europe, it resulted that less than half from the Romanian analysed companiesdeveloped a web page from more than two years, comparing with the Czech Republic, Hungary or

Slovakia, where more than 60% from the questioned companies had web sites before 1998. Alsorelevant is the fact that the number of Romanian Internet addresses was in 1999 only 36,274.

In these conditions, at least in a first stage, the interpersonal relations, the direct contact between

citizen and public servants will be difficult to replace. Abroad for instance, population is alreadyaccustomed with distance financial services, including home banking, and generally uses theelectronic mail and the Internet more often.

Perspectives of e-Governance in Romania

The future success of e-government in Romania, in our opinion, depends on many factors, like theincrease number of the Internet users and that of personal computer owners, eventually together withthe reduction of the telephonic call prices for the Internet dial up connections (connections at theclients own house) but only together with promoting the advantages of the on-line services among

citizens.Also, the authorities could learn from the developed countries experience. A study made in the year

2000 by the consulting group Gartner, at the Cisco Systems initiative, in order to evaluate the stage of

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the Internet economy in the European Union, shows that the Internet economy increase in EU and issupplied by the following factors:

19

! information spreading about Internet and education;! the market economy;! the legislative and settlements framework;

! the telecommunication infrastructure;! the penetration level of the access equipment at the Internet;

! the due payment system.The development of the IT domain in Romania is sustained by the EU finance, too. Thus, by theTechnology of the Informational Society Programme, the European Union set up priorities for thefinancing programmes in the year 2002, among some others, the following:

! systems and services for citizens (total budget 51 million euro), following the final beneficiary thecitizen, but companies and public institutions, too;

! essential technologies and infrastructure (concentrating a budget of 142 million euro), taking intoaccount the development of technologies, of the integrated systems and of the networks, both for

industry and for infrastructure;!

new work methods and electronic commerce/trade (having a budget of 38 million euro) aiming atencouraging the IT development for supporting the European labour.

In our opinion, the lack of computer and Internet use abilities is one of the main hindrances of ourpopulation and one of the impediments in the development of the informational society in Romania.Whether abroad, the percentage of those who can use computers, use the Internet, use bank cardsregularly or take advantages from the on-line bank services is consistent, in Romania the situation is

different. Besides the fact that the Internet access is difficult or the computer number is still small, wehave to be aware of the fact that the skills in this domain come with the time.

In a few years time, for sure, e-tax, e-billing, e-auctions will sound more natural for many people.But, the approach of e-government promotion can only have success in the conditions of the preoccupation for a new economy promotion, in general; it is as clear as possible that the e-government application is connected at what is called the Internet revolution.

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