ANIS: Who is responsible for digitization? The government program gave an answer, the first ordinance of the Government, another

Point of view elaborated by Corina Vasile, Executive Director, ANIS – Employers’ Association of the Software and Services Industry

The government program voted by the Parliament contains, for the first time so explicitly, an answer to a question that the industry has been asking for years: who is responsible for the digitization of the state? The answer on paper is a good one. However, immediately after the investiture, the Government’s first emergency ordinance gave another answer: the Authority for the Digitization of Romania (ADR) does not reach the Prime Minister, but remains at the Ministry of Economy, under the coordination of the Minister Delegate for Digitalization and AI. The same ordinance entrusts the coordination of the entire work apparatus of the Government, that is, exactly the structure in which the program wanted to move the ADR, to the Deputy Prime Minister, not to the Prime Minister. The difference is not one of nuance, and in order to understand why it matters, it is worth remembering where we start from.

Romania has had significant resources for digitization in recent years: about 4.5 billion euros through the PNRR, to which is added about 3.2 billion euros from cohesion funds.

At the same time, the Romanian IT&C sector produces about 26.5 billion euros annually, contributes directly 7% to GDP and generates about 26% of service exports. And yet, only 28.7% of companies integrate advanced technologies such as cloud, AI or data analytics, and only 30.1% of the population has basic digital skills (DESI 2026).

The figures put side by side show that Romania had money, has technology and has an industry capable of producing and exporting it. However, domestic adoption remains modest. The problem is starting to look less like one of resources and more like one of execution: who sets priorities, who links projects together, who imposes common standards, who follows dependencies and who is responsible for the final result?

This is where one of the classic problems of administration arises. The more responsibility is shared between several institutions, the easier it becomes for each one to deliver its own piece, and the project, seen as a whole, to be left behind. However, digitalization does not work in pieces.

A digital public service can involve infrastructure, interoperability, electronic identity, cybersecurity, procurement, data protection, financing and changing processes in the institution that uses it. If each component has its own manager, its own budget and its own calendar, without someone who can align all these decisions, the result is predictable: delays, systems that do not communicate enough with each other and projects that work technically, but do not change the experience of the citizen or the company.

A simple example is interoperability. One institution can digitize a form, another can build a database, and a third can have the necessary system for verifying information. If these systems are not designed and governed in a common architecture, the citizen ends up being the courier between them.

This is where the difference between funding digital projects and driving digital transformation can be seen.

When you have billions of euros, dozens of projects and several institutions involved, coordination is no longer a matter of organizational chart. It is the mechanism by which the investment is transformed, or not, into functional services, productivity and adoption.

Until now, ADR had, through its framework, the role of coordinating the implementation of strategies and public policies in the field of digital transformation. In parallel, Romania is working on a National Strategy for the Digital Decade and on a roadmap with measures, deadlines and responsible. The central problem, however, was how little real coordinating authority this institution had over the projects, budgets and institutions that must deliver together. That is why it matters that the new Government’s program proposed exactly a “single decision-making center for digital transformation”.

Specifically, according to the program, ADR would have passed into the Government’s Work Apparatus, directly subordinated to the Prime Minister. The President of the ADR would become the Chief Information Officer of the Government (GCIO), competitively selected, with a multi-year mandate and public objectives. Any digital project of the central administration would have needed a mandatory compliance notice, regardless of the source of funding, and the portfolio of these projects would have become public. A committee chaired by the Prime Minister was to meet monthly and make binding decisions for all ministries, published within 48 hours. Each ministry was to receive annually, through an independent audit, a public digitization score, and projects that do not comply with common standards would no longer receive funding.

On paper, architecture is the right one. But digitalization needs a real coordinator, which means more than a name on the organizational chart. It means sufficient mandate to coordinate institutions, visibility over the project portfolio and budgets, the ability to impose common standards, clear deadlines and the obligation to publicly report progress. Without these, effectively applied, we risk centralizing the organizational chart without centralizing responsibility and accountability.

ANIS has supported in its position papers exactly these elements: a single coordination function, legal mandate, sufficient decision-making rank, single reporting point, annual benchmarking, structured consultation with the private sector and a financial envelope dedicated to digitalization. The fact that many of them are now found in the government program is a good signal. Two things remained to be pursued: that these commitments be quickly transposed into law, not just in Government decisions that are easy to modify, and that the new mechanism receives the people, the budget and the continuity without which a single center remains only a label.

The first test came faster than we would have expected. Emergency Ordinance no. 40/2026, published in the Official Gazette on October 20, does not move the ADR to the Prime Minister. The ADR remains subordinated to the Ministry of Economy, Digitalization, Entrepreneurship and Tourism and passes under the coordination of a Minister Delegate for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence, who, in turn, carries out his activity under the coordination of the Minister of Economy.

Between the Prime Minister and the institution that should have been the “single decision-making center”, two ministerial levels thus appear. The ordinance says nothing about the GCIO, the mandatory opinion or the committee chaired by the Prime Minister, and the powers of the delegated minister are to be established by Government decisions, within 30 days.

A minister dedicated to digitalization can be a win: the field gains a voice at the Government’s table. But a minister delegate who works in the coordination of another minister, with the budget provided through his ministry and with attributions still undefined, does not, by construction, have the authority to impose binding decisions on the other ministries. This was exactly the problem that the model in the program wanted to solve: the coordination of digitalization above the ministries, not from within one of them.

The Government decisions of the next 30 days therefore become the decisive moment. They can reconcile the two models, for example through an interministerial committee for digitalization headed directly by the Prime Minister, with binding decisions for all ministries, with the minister delegate in the role of operational coordinator and with a mandatory ADR opinion for any digital project of the central administration. Or they can enshrine an architecture in which digitization becomes a sectoral domain again, coordinated from a line ministry, that is, exactly the situation that brought us here.

Between the programme and the ordinance, several decision-making centres now coexist: the Prime Minister, to whom the programme is given political coordination, the Minister Delegate for Digitalisation and AI, the Minister of Economy, Digitalisation, Entrepreneurship and Tourism and the future GCIO at the helm of the ADR (assuming that it will be a GCIO competitively selected according to the government programme). Without a clear delimitation of the powers and executive authority, there is a risk that the digital transformation will become everyone’s responsibility and, simultaneously, no one’s. Also, essential aspects such as the mechanism for selecting the future chair of the ADR as GCIO, the duration of the mandate, the professional criteria and the guarantees of independence necessary to ensure the continuity of the reform beyond political cycles remain unclarified. The ordinance does not clarify any of these aspects.

At the same time, the proposed model concentrates both coordination and endorsement functions and major implementation responsibilities at ADR, which raises legitimate questions about the separation of roles and control mechanisms. Many of the announced reforms depend on legislation that has not yet been adopted, insufficiently detailed funding and an administrative capacity that needs to be strengthened. Added to this is the lack of clear accountability mechanisms for institutions that do not deliver results and the absence of a permanent framework for consulting industry in defining digitization priorities. In the absence of these clarifications, there is a risk that the ambition of the reform will exceed the actual execution capacity, and the multiplication of coordination structures will not automatically translate into accelerating the digital transformation of the state.

There is also an economic reason why this discussion matters. For a company, the lack of state digitization means time and cost. It means how long it takes to set up, authorize, report, verify or exchange data with a public institution. It also means how predictable the framework in which you operate is. A delayed project in a ministry is not only the problem of that ministry. The cost spreads to the companies waiting for the service, to the institutions that continue to work manually and to other projects that depend on the same infrastructure.

Coordination thus becomes a problem of economic productivity.

The same applies to financing. The PNRR has created an exceptional period, with money dedicated to digitalization. After this window closes, the prioritization of projects will have to be done within a normal budgetary framework, where competition for resources is much tougher. That is why ANIS proposes a dedicated multiannual financial envelope and coordination that tracks progress beyond political cycles. In this case, a coordination center also has the role of saying what comes first, which project depends on another, what infrastructure needs to be reused and where an investment produces a cross-cutting effect. The government program takes up the idea of a multiannual financing mechanism, which is an important step. To matter, the mechanism needs a publicly assumed amount, source and timetable.

Equally important is consultation. Industry can contribute data, implementation experience and a realistic assessment of costs and bottlenecks if it enters the drafting process early enough. Once the architecture of a policy is already contractually and budgetally established, the value of this expertise decreases drastically. The programme promises transparent consultation with the business environment ahead of tax and regulatory changes affecting the IT sector. The same principle should be extended to the architecture, standards and prioritisation of the state’s digital projects, through a structured mechanism, not through one-off consultations.

Integrated responsibility means, after all, some very concrete questions: who decides, who prioritizes, who can unblock, who follows the budget, who reports and who responds when the deadline is missed. The government program offered answers to some of them, and the Government’s first ordinance already calls into question the first ones. The last one remains the reality test.

Romania already has measurable targets for 2030: 40% adoption of advanced technologies, 50% of the population with basic digital skills, and ANIS also proposes the target of 300,000 ICT specialists. A KPI that no one institutionally assumes, however, remains only a number in a document. The promised public digitization score for each ministry is a step in the right direction, provided that it measures results for citizens and companies, not just projects launched and money consumed.

At this point, the challenge is no longer just defining the direction, but building the institutions and mechanisms that turn ambition into results. And success will depend on answering three simple questions: who decides, who executes and who responds when things don’t happen. The first answer will be given by the Government decisions to be adopted in the next four weeks. In the absence of clear answers, there is a risk that digitization will benefit more coordinators than ever, but less responsibility than it needs.

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The Employers’ Association of the Software and Services Industry (ANIS) is the representative association of the IT industry in Romania. ANIS has over 150 member companies, is a promoter of digitalization and has been representing the interests of the IT industry for 25 years, being a credible dialogue partner that can contribute to the creation of public policies that facilitate the capitalization of technology for socio-economic development. For more information, go to the Association’s page – www.anis.ro.