When it comes to Digital Transformation and AI, can Romania bridge the gap between potential and execution?
Romania has all the ingredients needed to become a regional hub for technology development, digital transformation, data infrastructure, and artificial intelligence.
It has talent, complex projects, and exposure to frontier technologies, niche solutions, and deep tech. What it lacks is cohesion. Unfortunately, no one has a clear mandate to connect the dots.
What we see at Connections is that direction is built project by project — through solutions that work, through standards that raise the level of knowledge and understanding of information technology, and through people who learn how to deliver mission-critical software.
I don’t believe Romania has a talent or technology problem. I believe it has a governance and continuity problem that breaks the link between potential and execution.
That link is also weakened by institutional fragmentation, where no one is truly accountable for ensuring real interoperability. It is further disrupted by political cycles of four years or less, which often reset digital transformation initiatives that would normally require five, six, or even seven years to complete, ultimately eroding the human capital built around them.
A sector-wide digital transformation project within public administration can easily take longer than the mandate of the political decision-makers overseeing it. This naturally creates challenges around ownership, continuity, and budgeting. That misalignment is one of the main reasons why digital transformation projects fail.
What else is preventing Romania from turning its digital potential into execution?
Another challenge lies in public procurement, where price is often rewarded more than capability, creating bottlenecks along the way. In many cases, cost remains the primary evaluation criterion, while quality inevitably comes at a higher price in a fair and competitive process. As long as procurement is driven mainly by price, the lowest-cost solutions will continue to win, often at the expense of quality.
In our view, several measures could significantly accelerate digital transformation across both public administration and society as a whole: a reform of public procurement, a government authority with real decision-making power over digitalization — whether a Deputy Prime Minister or a dedicated digital transformation leader — and the development of a coherent public digital infrastructure.
I would argue that the state is not slow because it lacks technology. It is slow because it has 40 different technologies that do not communicate with one another.
Three priorities that could help Romania take digital transformation to the next level:
If Romania wants to achieve a level of digitalization that matches both today’s realities and the current pace of technological progress, its top priority should be the creation of a unified public digital infrastructure. This should be supported by clean, accessible public data through Open Data initiatives, as well as a rapid and large-scale increase in digital literacy across the public administration.
The next stage should be far more ambitious: Romania has the potential to become a regional hub for GovTech and sovereign AI within the next five to seven years, shifting from being primarily an importer of expertise to becoming an exporter of know-how to the European Union and beyond.
Several practical measures are already within reach of policymakers and could significantly accelerate the development of a modern and resilient digital infrastructure: strengthening digital identity systems, expanding platforms such as ghiseul.ro, creating a Center of Excellence for Applied AI in the public sector, and reforming public procurement so that technical capabilities and expertise are evaluated before price.
How can Romania build a coherent direction in research and development, and what role does Connections want to play in that journey?
Romania is neither the United States, with its vast pool of private capital, nor China, with its scale and centrally coordinated direction. A more realistic path would be to become a regional fast follower, drawing inspiration from countries such as Estonia, Portugal or Israel — nations that have successfully built competitive advantages around e-government, cybersecurity and deep-tech.
One of the missing pieces in Romania today is a genuine public-private partnership model. In technology, the relationship is still largely transactional: either the state builds infrastructure on its own, or it procures solutions from the private sector. What is largely absent is long-term collaboration around innovation, experimentation and capability building.
We also need a stronger societal and institutional focus on retaining top talent and using major public projects as technology laboratories. Large-scale public initiatives can become the first real testing ground for innovations developed in universities, research centers and private-sector R&D environments.
This is where Connections sees its role. We aim to act as a bridge between research and execution, transforming ideas and emerging technologies into practical solutions for GovTech and sovereign cybersecurity.
Our ambition is to package innovation into solutions that can be deployed at scale, with clear business outcomes, and ultimately become a preferred regional technology partner not only for clients in Romania, but across Europe and neighboring markets.