The Need and Future of Digitalization in Romania - a Delphi Method Research

Our research objective is to find the level of understanding and the vision about digitalization in Romania among key decision makers in national and local public institution. The purpose of our research is to find the future directions of public policies, the institutional bottlenecks and assets in the sphere of digitalization in Romania. We used the Delphi method, using a back and forth set of questions thru a set of ten key decision makers with high impact on public policies and three with high responsibilities in Digitalization. We use two rounds of Delphi questions applied, with one updated semi structured interview guide. A content analysis was applied. The major findings are: (a) The decision makers we investigate have an unclear view about the needs of digital transformation in Romania. Most of them when talked about the needs for digitalization in Romania refer to EU digital policies and the need for a more transparent and fast servicing public institutions; (b) The vulnerability of strategic infrastructure in case of digitalization is a powerful reason to procrastinate the digital transformation; (c) Decision makers think that EU policies will force Romania to implement digital transformation even the public institutions will not act; (d) Most of them think that the government should have the initiative to digitalize Romanian society (both public and private); (e) All of them think that the bottleneck of digital transformation is mainly public servants; (f) The myth of Romanians who are IT experts, more above the EU media IT literacy is a fundamental perception of all key decision makers. There is a link between digitalization of states and those of companies inside the states. Better digital private companies are better digital public institutions are (in the same state). The digital transformation in Romania it is done in waves, it is not a constant public policy preoccupation, and the effect of no digitalization of Romania society is not understand in depth. The digital literacy of key decision makers is medium and affect public policies in digital dimension.