E-government development in Romanian local municipalities: A complicated story of success and hardships

Abstract

Most public services in Romania are provided by local public institutions, especially town halls and city halls. Although Romania has produced a number of national e-government development strategies, in the end, their implementation will mainly be in the hands of local municipalities. This study aims to find out the challenges that IT professionals in local administrations face in digitalizing their institutions, their success stories and their opinions about online service delivery in the face of continuous technological change. The general sentiment is that e-government development is never a priority, especially at central level, and that essential national technological infrastructure is underdeveloped or non-existent. Because of these shortcomings, even online services that work well in a local context will be hard to replicate or integrate at a country level.