Background and feedback on the national situation regarding

=> In  the three “Going Really Local”, the 7 Pillars of the DAE  were covered. In terms of indicators, Romania is lagging behind in most of the chapters, mainly those related to Broadband and e-commerce. The prospects of development, in a context of economic crisis are quite limited. The government representatives promised to address most of the challenges and that they will make the necessary efforts to improve these conditions.

=> Related to broadband, the main challenges stem from the difficulties to cover the rural zone as well as issues related to spectrum. While is the urban areas we are on top place s in Europe regarding speed, the national coverage is reduced. The absorption of the Structural funds is an important issue, biased in a way by the political process. The government announced a broadband plan of 84 million euros from these funds. The local authorities are split between the tendency to invest in BTP, more visible in a pre-electoral year than in infrastructure, while showing a high interest in the benefits of the digital.

=> The government announced also a cloud computing strategy, in a context where some big multi-national companies: Microsoft, Cisco, IBM, Oracle were associated to the event and presented their could solutions for the local authorities.