A bright outlook on Romania’s development to become a digital society
Cross posted from the Microsoft Europe Skills and Education blog
By: Sanda Foamete , Academic Program Manager, Microsoft Romania
In July 2011, Romania’s first Digital Agenda conference highlighted the importance of getting every European citizen online and equipping them with the right digital skills. The conference identified key challenges to internet inclusion covering issues like broadband investment, open data, and e-government.
Commissioner Neelie Kroes discussed ways of implementing the Digital Agenda in Romania. Access to broadband and technology remains problematic in Romania. Connecting people and communities together is still a working progress. Digital development is critical to effective national development, therefore sustained commitment is strongly needed to ensure that people have adequate e-skills to use smart devices and online services.
EOS, IREX and Microsoft have been working together to bring e-skills to Romanian citizens through multiple projects showing outstanding results.
Microsoft’s Partners in Learning Program aims to help educators and school leaders connect, collaborate, create and share, so that students can realize their greatest potential. In partnership with EOS, the Partners in Learning Program Romania has provided 42,000 teachers with ICT training and online resources, over the last 8 years.
In addition, Microsoft and EOS ran a program to help rural and disadvantaged communities get the skills they needed to pursue social and economic development. Since 2004, the partnership between Microsoft and EOS has trained over a quarter million Romanians to use the resources, broadband and e-services developed especially for the program.
According to Gabi Barna, EOS Director,“Despite Romania’s less developed infrastructure, our mission is to inspire and enable people use the improved services e-government platforms and other digital services on offer. Together with the 102 e-centres EOS has assisted across Romania, we are both working to reach challenged communities and the geographically isolated to help these people go digital.”
Ms. Barna highlights an example of how e-services have benefited rural communities.“Farmers in rural areas have used telecentres to learn about e-services that would allow them to then apply for specific agriculture government subsidies through the APIA (National Agency for Payments in Agriculture). The usefulness of the support they receive at the telecentre also demonstrate to farmers that ICT is now part of everyday life, that business today is almost impossible to manage without basic ICT skills”
According to Paul André Baran, Director of Biblionet in Romania for IREX who works with EOS on the initiative for farmers, more than 17,000 farmers have benefited from this work.
This collaboration between EOS, IREX and Microsoft highlights the potential of a ‘Digital Alliance’ within Romania. Such alliances facilitate interaction between governments, civil society and businesses by linking efforts and contributions for greatest societal impact.
During our meeting with Commissioner Kroes, we engaged her views on building a ‘Digital Alliance’ in Romania and we are grateful to have her support and endorsement. The Romanian President and Romanian Prime Minister were told by commissioner Kroes about our initiative of building the ‘Digital Alliance for Romania’. Furthermore, associations close to the policy makers, interested to build Romanian digital society, also gave very positive feedback. “We will now find solutions to build this Alliance. Now that it is linked to the Digital Agenda objectives, we have better chances to succeed. I have the vision that the Digital Alliance for Romania to be our national response to the Digital Agenda for Europe – Pillar 6: Enhancing digital literacy, skills and inclusion. We simply need our figures to get higher on the European digital scoreboard “Gabi Barna says.
Indeed, there will be a follow-up to the Digital Agenda conference in September with a working group on the ‘Digital Alliance’, where EOS, IREX and Microsoft will be participating along with Mr. Emil Zahan, Chief of Staff at the Minister of Communications and Information Society. The next step is to really integrate the work of the ‘Digital Alliance’ within the ‘Improving eSkills’ chapter of the Romanian Digital Agenda and to increase the citizens participation in the next generation of e-government services.
Read the full article reasearching Romania's digital revolution on Commissioner Neelie Kroes blog.
Special thanks to Gabi Barna EOS Director and Paul-André Baran, Director of Biblionet for IREX for their ongoing collaboration and their kind contribution to this post.
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