Information Technology and Communications

The Romanian ICT industry produces computing, data transmission and telecommunications equipment, software and services, with a positive growth rate.

Hardware manufacturers became again profitable by assembling equipment, mostly with cutting-edge components. Production quality, efficient assembling, smart design and good management contribute to the manufacturing in Romania of high-performance computing and data transmission equipment, which covers over 50% of the domestic market. Over 250 companies, many of them having the ISO 9001 certificate for this kind of activity, are producing about 50,000 PCs yearly.

The software industry, too, is growing at a remarkable rate, 4800 firms being currently active in the software and related services area, with over 35,000 employees. The software and services supplied are estimated at nearly 200 million EURO. The software industry has posted an exponential growth as big corporations are using highly skilled Romanians for offshore software development. This market segment occupies a significant share of the specialized IT workforce.

E-Government. Developing electronic links between the Administration, on the one hand, and citizens and the business environment is one of the main directions of the strategy on the Information Society in Romania. The Romanian e-Procurement system is a landmark in point of e-Government applications in Europe. Its success is proved by the total transaction value, over 1 billion Euro, with a savings rate of 21%. Usually, over 10,000 calls for tender are open, involving 800 public institutions and over 8,000 bidders. More e-Government projects have been launched, i.e. tax payment by electronic means and the digital signature for public administration services.

Education based on e-learning ensures broad access of students and undergrads to international communications and data exchanges. To reach this target, actions were financed and completed, computer-aided educational systems being introduced in high schools and universities. Most Romanian schools possess fully equipped computer laboratories.

At this moment, the IT services market - data transmission and Internet service providing, electronic commerce, value-added IT services, CATV Internet services etc. - is fully liberalized.

In Romania unauthorized access to private networks, hackers’ attacks, the spreading of computer viruses, and electronic fraud are punished by law. Laws on digital signature, e-commerce, personal data processing and privacy protection in telecommunications, and on the protection of individuals with respect to personal data processing and free circulation of these data were adopted in Romania, in accordance with EU directives.

Abuses.ro

The purpose of this web page is to allow all the interested persons to notify the authorities about apparently illegal actions in the Information Society area, related to: unauthorised use of personal data, in order to access certain services; spam; sending deliberate spreading of computer viruses; unauthorised data monitoring and storing activities; unauthorised operations within an information system; blocking certain services or servers by Denial of Service attacks. The confidentiality of all information is guaranteed.

Health portal

This system will help develop a new and modern health care system, available to all Romanians. The project proves the utility of the "one-stop-shop" in supplying all necessary information relative to the medical field both to patients and to medical professional.

Web portal for e-government services

This project refers to a portal of the one-stop-shop type, designed to provide access to e-government services, and ensure the exchange of information and electronic documents between governmental agencies. With the generalization of this system, bureaucracy will shrink, transparence will grow and interactive services will be developed.

One-stop-shop for the public administration

The project is designed to provide one-stop access to the most used forms citizens and the business environment need. The project is based on a gateway containing: public administration forms; laws and regulations defining/regulating the interaction between citizens, the business environment and the public administration; explanatory documents comprising instructions on how to fill in these forms; provision of public services ranging from registration, users registration, to processing of the received forms, etc.

As far as the electronic identification of civil servants is concerned, digital signatures and digital certificates are used to identify the employees; this application will supervise and manage the access rights to different applications or data systems; authentication in the communication process; communication will be encrypted and authentication will be needed to access e-mail accounts.

e-Job - Information system for job search and recruiting

This project is part of the "e-Government" implementation process, initiated in 2001 by the relevant ministry. The basic objectives of the system are: to achieve a virtual job fair where employers and job seekers should meet; to prove the need, benefits and efficiency of IT in the area of human resources.

Electronic public information services (Info-Kiosk)

Info-Kiosk is a geographically distributed system that can be accessed from anywhere in the country. It can be used through the specific Info-Kiosk interface and also through Internet browsers, its performance criteria ensuring reliabilty even at times of peak utilization. Under this project, 4280 info-kiosks are to be installed all over the country, especially in areas where the level of information is low.

Electronic referendum (e-Referendum)

e-Referendum is instrumental in Internet-based opinion surveys at national or local level. Moreover, it provides an excellent framework for wide-scale use of the Internet and electronic means. The system will offer the public a friendly and economic alternative to express their options on subjects of national interest.

Information system regarding the implementation phase of e-Europe and development of IT

The project is a program product, which allows collection, storage and utilization of statistical data in the IT area. This project was achieved with support from the National Institute of Statistics. The final results are presented as charts and tables, accessible to a broad public.

e-Tax - Tax payment by electronic means

The system is an extension of tax payment by electronic means, based on utilization of credit cards.

e-bills - Web-based system for loading suppliers’ bills

This is is an acquisition system using Web technologies for loading suppliers’ bills on-line. It is a dedicated system for the business environment.

e-Market - Virtual market

The e-Market electronic commerce project is designed to: demonstrate the necessity, benefits and efficiency of modern technologies in the Romanian economic environment; develop a virtual market for products and services that allows buyers and sellers to meet, negotiate and perform commercial transactions, based on Web technologies; provide equal opportunities and transparent information for all the players in the economic environment; ensure acquisition price optimization by matching supply and demand; reduce marketing and distribution costs; secure continuous accessibility to a virtual business frame and high-speed access to information.

The statistics supplied by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology attests to continued development of the IT sector. As regards the .ro domains, the number of users has increased with every passing year. Technological parks host tens of IT companies. The software park of Galati, for instance (a location for 50 IT companies) hosts Microsoft, Oracle-HP, Sun, and IBM excellence centers, technological presentation and transfer centers, and software development labs manned by local specialists.

Romania and Japan were awarded the Global Excellence in IT Prize for the "e-Government Initiatives" by WITSA (World Information Technology and Services Alliance) at the IT World Congress.

The 53 WITSA-member national associations vote Romania’s e-Government initiatives as being the best.

There are 250 research centers where 30,000 young people complete their studies each year, 5000 of whom are certified IT engineers. The number of Romanian graduates specializing in this field is five and seven times larger than in Russia and India respectively.

BitDefender - the Fastest Reaction in 2004

During the International Virus Bullectin 2004 Conference, the Antivirus Test Center Institute of Germany made public a Report on the speed of reaction of the major antivirus producers worldwide. The analysis shows that the Romanians of BitDefender TM (products of the Romanian Softwin Company, data security division) hold the fastest average reaction time as to viruses newly emerged in January-September 2004: less than four hours.

The latest versions of the BitDefender TM suite dedicated to Mail servers (Linux and Exchange 2000/2003) include new facilities: Drop and REJECT options; quarantine of the entire message (not jut the infested items); better AntiSpam technology; new administration interface based on the Internet; Watchdog module designed to monitor BitDefender modules and service. so that they can be automatically protected against various attacks; option update pushing, etc. Thus, the network administrator can benefit by the latest virus signatures pushed to their servers by the BitDefender TM update servers the very second an emergency update emerges (as well as in the case of an extremely dangerous, fast-spreading virus). Under the circumstances, the anti-virus will be updated in real time, reducing to a minimum the danger of a new virus infestation.

At the end of 2004, in Romania there were 13 million telephone users, the digitalization rate exceeding 80% at national level. One of three Romanians owns a mobile telephone; there are now over 1000 TV cable networks, and over 27 million Euro has been transferred on-line in one year.

International transport licenses are afforded on-line, and public procurement is made on www.e-licitatie.ro. Romania signed new cooperation agreements in the filed with Turkey, Israel, Indonesia, South Korea, Canada, Great Britain, France, Egypt, and China. By extending the www.e-licitatie.ro public procurement system, the urban population may pays an official visit to 63 taxes on-line. 360,000 electronic auctions have been conducted through www.e-licitatie.ro. Computer-assisting equipment is being installed in rural post offices. The strategic partnership has been signed between the relevant ministry and the Oracle company, and three Oracle support centers have been set up for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The five-year "Partners for Education" Program has been launched with a USD one million budget. The municipality of Brasov has become a software park. 23 of the 38 banks operating on the Romanian market possess 31 on-line instruments that are audited in terms of the security of the information systems. In 2004, the first standard of information systems security ISO 17799 was adopted, used particularly by banking institutions. The www.orda.ro portal has become operational, allowing for checking the legality of computer programs, audio-visual works, and phonograms.

Zapp launched in Romania the EDGE technology. RCS&RDS took over the Internet PCNet provider.

In November 2004, the law was passed on the temporal brand and the one on processing personal data and protecting privacy in the sector of electronic communications. The first two 3G licenses were granted to the Mobifon and Orange companies.

In December 2004, Romtelecom started the project "The Optical Fibre Ring - the Communication Channel between Europe and Asia."

Source: ROMANIA - FOCUS
Released by the Foreign Languages Press Group