Romania is digitized through GovItHub

The magnitude of bureaucracy in Romania is well known to Romanians, being one of the thickest in the European Union. As a result, the GovItHub initiative comes to expedite the digitization process of the national administrative apparatus, proposing a platform aimed at bringing together volunteers and scholarship holders from the IT field, and enabling them to work together to improve the IT infrastructure of public institutions.

Obviously, the use of volunteers and scholarship holders involves a considerable reduction in the cost of such an implementation, an implementation that will nevertheless take account the most modern principles in the field, such as: Open Source, Mobile Ready, Cloud Enabled, Security & Privacy. In other words, the GovItHub proposes a program aimed at achieving maximum performance at minimum costs.

Fortunately this somewhat utopian ambition has already succeeded in delivering palpable results, its success transcending Romania's borders in the sense that the merits of the program were recognized through an important award received at the Webit International Festival, one of the most important IT events in Europe. The ceremony brings together top private entrepreneurs, European decision-makers and successful startups, registering over 5000 participants each year. The prize received GovItHub was for Best Innovation through Legislation in CEE, an award recognizing the most effective policy decisions that stimulated innovation, the business environment and digital economy.

Unfortunately, the political changes that took place in Romania since the beginning of this year, de-stabilized the initiative to a certain extent, causing the scholarship holders involved in the project to resign at the beginning of 2017. Now, the possibility of reconciliation between them and Romania’s new political class exists, but if this does not happen alternatives will be sought, including reaching out to investors in order to support the project or even accepting private initiatives aimed at continuing this digitization process.    

Sources:

http://ithub.gov.ro

http://www.parlamentor.ro/youth-parlamentor/programul-guvernului-ciolos-govithub-a-castigat-premiul-best-innovation-through-legislation-in-cee-7546?cfcc