Romania is a country of digital paradoxes: high connectivity, rapid adoption of technology, yet few skills, limited public services, and deep institutional distrust.
In this conversation, Bianca Oanea, Elena Calistru, and Răzvan Rughiniș discuss the role of media education, the limits of transparency without practice, the impact of algorithms on shared reality, and the need for a new social contract. From electronic identity and the digitization of important services, to universities, administration, and the European Union, the dialogue explores what is missing for technology to become a factor of cohesion and prosperity, not fragmentation.
The panel moderated by Bianca Oanea brought up one of the most sensitive topics of the present: the growing gap between how connected Romania is from a technological point of view and how prepared it is to use this connectivity critically, responsibly and for the benefit of society. Along with Răzvan Rughiniș and Elena Calistru, the dialogue explored not only what is not working, but especially what can be built, starting from education, data and public trust.
Romania is a special case: we have fast internet, a huge appetite for social networks and artificial intelligence and a remarkable capacity for technological adoption. At the same time, digital skills are unequal, digital public services are few and fragmented, and information polarization is growing. The fundamental question is not whether technology exists, but whether we know how to use it in a way that strengthens democracy and social cohesion.
Media education, the first line of defense in a digital society
Bianca Oanea started the discussion with the experience of the Center for Independent Journalism and the extensive network of teachers trained in media education. Thousands of teachers brought to schools not only definitions of disinformation, but also the essential questions that help students navigate an online space dominated by algorithms, biases and content generated by artificial intelligence.
The message was clear: digital literacy is not a luxury and cannot be treated as a one-time project. Without media education, freedom of expression becomes vulnerable, and critical thinking risks being perceived as an exception, not as a basic competence.
Elena Calistru: transparency without usability can do more harm than good
Elena Calistru moved the discussion from principles to concrete mechanisms. From her perspective, Romania does not necessarily suffer from a lack of public data, but from the way in which it is made available and used.
The first problem is the lack of real-time data. Transparency often works retrospectively: we find out what has been spent, not what is to be spent. Without this “timing”, citizens cannot intervene in an informed manner, and public debate remains delayed.
The second problem is the skills deficit. Access to data, without the ability to interpret it, produces confusion and polarization. Recent examples in the public space show how easily completely different realities can coexist when information is abundant but poorly understood.
Finally, Calistru highlighted an inconvenient truth: data is power. That’s why many institutions are reluctant to truly open it up. Publishing it is not enough; mechanisms are needed to translate transparency into accountability and a real transfer of power to citizens.
Digital entrepreneurship, an underestimated resource of Romania
Răzvan Rughiniș brought up the cultural and economic dimensions of digitalization. He recalled that one of Romania’s great success stories — high-speed internet — is the result of a large-scale local entrepreneurial effort, built by young people and teams from across the country.
In his view, the problem is not a lack of talent or ambition, but the difficulty of recognizing and supporting these initiatives at scale. Universities can play an essential role, becoming spaces for connecting academia, start-ups and industry, not just providers of degrees.
His optimism is grounded in reality: young generations are deeply globally connected, and technology can function as a factor of social and economic cohesion, not just as a tool for efficiency.
Where we should invest first: in the capacity of those who were not born digital
The question about investment priorities received an answer that contradicts the usual discourse. Elena Calistru argued that the real challenge is not with young people, but with older generations, who are coming into contact with the digital environment for the first time and tend to place a high degree of trust in the content displayed on the screen.
These generations vote more, influence family decisions and can become, without support, extremely vulnerable to manipulation. Therefore, investment in digital literacy must be transversal, not limited to school.
Services that create daily value generate trust
Rughiniș stressed that the acceptance of digitalization will not come from rarely used services, such as paying taxes, but from those services that bring frequent value to people’s lives. Education and health are the areas where technology can most clearly demonstrate its concrete benefits, through better access to information, continuity and reduced administrative friction.
Institutional inertia and the loss of a shared reality
A key part of the discussion was dedicated to systemic blockages. Elena Calistru spoke about the inertia of large organizations, where responsibility is diluted, and the goal becomes the preservation of the system, not serving the public interest.
At the same time, she drew attention to a deeper phenomenon: the fragmentation of public reality. The algorithms of digital platforms personalize information so aggressively that people in the same context can perceive completely different realities. Without a minimum of shared reality, democratic dialogue becomes almost impossible.
„Trust but verify”: încrederea se construiește prin instrumente de verificare
In the context of major public policy decisions and substantial budgets, Calistru stressed the importance of creating digital tools that allow for verification of how public money is spent. Without these mechanisms, the state remains vulnerable to narratives of distrust and manipulation.
International examples show that real transparency does not eliminate scandals, but makes them visible and manageable, giving society the ability to react in an informed manner.
A concrete step towards digital maturity
Asked what they would do to accelerate Romania’s digital maturation, the two guests pointed in complementary directions. Răzvan Rughiniș spoke about universities as innovation hubs and the chance to build and export Romanian digital products, not just labor.
Elena Calistru emphasized the role of the administration, which must provide clear verification tools, communicate more and respond directly to citizens. Only in this way can public trust in a digital state be rebuilt.
Conclusion: digitalization without education and responsibility risks deepening fractures
The discussion showed that Romania has the resources to become a mature digital society: connectivity, technical competence and solid civic initiatives. What is missing is their integration into a coherent framework, based on media literacy, useful data and verifiable institutions.
Without these elements, technology will not reduce polarization, but will accentuate it. With them, however, digitalization can become a real tool for social cohesion and democratic progress.
Digitalization of the Romanian state: between the will of citizens, institutional blockages and collective anger
What do Romanians think about the digitalization of the state? Why, although over 70% consider it beneficial, is the pace perceived as slow or very slow?
In this discussion based on recent sociological data (Atlas Intel), Robert Berza, Barbu Mateescu and Mihnea Măruță analyze the relationship between digitalization, trust in institutions, corruption, the need for change and collective anger in Romanian society.
A conversation about administrative capacity, institutional culture, national identity and the real options of the Romanian state in the 21st century.
Full transcript
The full transcript is available below. Minor errors may occur – we used Descript for video-to-text conversion and ChatGPT to remove speech tics, hesitations, and duplicate words. The original content, structure, and tone have been fully preserved.
Alfabetizare digitală, încredere și responsabilitate publică: cum poate România să-și valorifice potențialul digital cu Bianca Oanea, Răzvan Rughiniș și Elena Calistru
Bianca Oanea: I’m Bianca Oana from the Center for Independent Journalism and I’m competing with the smell of food waiting for us outside. The Edge Institute and the podcast are another product of Edge, which talk about change and the people who can make it happen. Some of them are here, in the room.
Here I represent not only the Center for Independent Journalism, which is an NGO with 31 years of experience, but also the over 1,500 teachers who took the media literacy courses and learned not only the definition of disinformation, slightly different from the president’s, but who also took the questions that should guide them to the classrooms of 300,000 students. Because, just as we don’t let children on the street without teaching them the colors of traffic lights, we can’t let them on the internet without explaining to them what’s happening there.
That the biases that we have — and we have — are also taken by the AI that they use so much. We are going and we are proud to do this and, together with the Edge Institute, we can go even further, where it is needed.
I was talking about change and there are people here from institutions who will not come on stage. They are from start-ups, they are from other organizations that are making progress in education, adding value, although it is a word that has been devalued, just like building resilience. But there are people here who are making change.
Two of them will take the stage at this moment. First, Elena Calistru, from Funky Citizens, who is now the president of the economic section of the Economic and Social Council, an activist who looked at budgets until they started to look better.
But there is still room. Răzvan Rughiniș, a professor at Politehnica, a man who co-founded Innovation Labs and with whose help over 500 start-ups have come to life and not only. Each one — I was talking to Robert Berza and Dragoș Stanca about the third guest — and then we thought: we don’t need him.
There are too many people here, besides the fact that we would like to talk as soon as possible, so that you can also enjoy socializing. But we know that you are people who make a difference and, if you have something to say, please speak up, ask us, or give your opinion on how change can be made.
Because Romania is a country of digital paradoxes: super connectivity, few public applications. Very high use of social networks and now AI; we are the first country in Europe to download ChatGPT, but few skills. How do we build this bridge between the positive and negative records? Is it possible? Elena?
Elena Calistru: Through practice. Because, in addition to the fact that I’m obsessed with budgets, I’m also obsessed with the fact that there’s not enough transparency. And I’m going to, no, like all the ongists, I have to whistle a little in church and say that I think we have enough data. Not enough, not enough, but we have enough data. What we’re missing are, from my point of view, three elements.
First of all, let’s have real-time data. Because what we’re doing now — and I’ll use the budget example — is a kind of archaeology. I mean, we’re publishing data on what budgets have been spent, not what budgets we’re going to spend. Basically, it’s like, I don’t know, I was in traffic this morning, and if Waze hadn’t taken me on a faster route, I don’t know if I would have arrived on time.
But it would have been, using this structure, as if the GPS had told me where I was an hour ago. So, somehow, we’re missing that timing piece, and I think that’s one of the reasons why we have this kind of disconnect.
The second thing is related to competence. Because it’s useless to have access to data if you don’t know how to use it. On the contrary, it can generate a lot of noise. And, please, I don’t know if I should also mention the fact that yesterday we had this anniversary or commemoration, I don’t know how to call it, of the first round of the canceled presidential elections last year. And I think that’s a very good example of what too much information means and the different realities that people who are exposed to that information have.
Without competence in reading that data, we could do worse.
And the third element that I think we’re missing is thinking about these things in terms of power. Because having data means power and that’s why I think many institutions are trying to somehow guard their data. Because, in fact, just the transparency put there, on the website, doesn’t guarantee that there will be accountability and that there will be a transfer of this power.
And from there I think we need to work on how institutions let go of power a little bit, understanding that they’re not going to… believe me, nothing bad will happen to you.
Elena Calistru: Or, at most, we will all learn some lessons and learn to use. So, drawing a line and adding up, I think we are missing this piece of practice and understanding that just publishing data will not help us. On the contrary, sometimes it might even hurt us.
Răzvan Rughiniș: Since you have addressed the immediate, operational issues, with which I share this urgency, I will allow myself to move on to the discussion about mentality, and not in the way it is usually discussed.
Because, when we talk about entrepreneurship, we generally have a kind of distrust. And we were talking about high-speed internet: this is a success story of an entrepreneurship made by young people, by people from all the cities of Romania, who established a quality standard that, after that, companies could no longer ignore. The benefit of Romania’s digitalization today is the result of the largest entrepreneurship exercise in Europe.
It’s something we can’t embrace enough. The change in mentality must come from understanding that there are two Romanias: not necessarily a rural one and an urban one, but one of distrust in who we are, in very small ambitions, in this desire to always see commas after these ambitions, and another Romania, which we also see in this room.
I am the university’s partner here. There are people from Timișoara, Cluj, colleagues from Bucharest, both from the University of Bucharest and from Medicine, who embrace any initiative to go beyond our role simply as a teacher, of managing the ambitions of young people, and to put today’s young people from the faculties in contact with a vibrant economic environment, in which we can build together much more than the countries around us, to burn stages.
I am also an optimist, fueled by concrete evidence, day by day, of another generation. Our generation in schools today is a globally connected one. It is true, polarized, with people who perhaps only want a level of comfort, but also extraordinarily ambitious people. And there are indeed 20-year-olds in this audience who, alongside business leaders, are trying to put their shoulder to an ambitious Romania, a digital Romania, in which technology will be a unifier, a driver of cohesion.
Bianca Oanea: Ok. What do we invest in first?
Elena Calistru: Capacity. I’m going to be very antipathetic about this, or, well, the opposite, let’s say.
I don’t think the problem is with young people when it comes to education. I think a lot of the problem is with older generations, who are encountering this tool for the first time and weren’t born into a digital world. They believe, to a very large extent, that if something is on a screen, it is very often true.
We are reaching out to the younger generations because it works, because we say to ourselves: “ah, but at least we are investing in the future”, but also because it is, in fact, simpler. The younger generations listen to us more. I think the challenge is to go and create capacity in other age segments as well.
And that is very, very difficult. But I remind you that, usually, the older generations are also the first to vote a lot. That older generation is also the one that will now retire — we will have the first big wave of decrees — and the slightly older generation is also the generation that, usually, deflates the children and dries them up as quickly as possible: “come on, go, if you can, do high school abroad, leave here, mom, leave, leave, leave”.
So, somehow, I think that there we need to work a little on the cynicism — attention, built over time — of the generation that wasn’t born with a mobile phone in hand and on the patience we have to not go after everything that’s most interesting and colorful and beautiful.
Bianca Oanea: Răzvan, in the hall I saw three young people from Constanța. They have a start-up on AI. Together with Robert Berza we met, they were at Innovation Labs, they took some place 3. Now they want to open an office in Abu Dhabi.
You have about 500 such stories. Can the state make a similar intervention?
Răzvan Rughiniș: Without a doubt, by providing the role of mediator, of arbitrator, in a market of great ambitions. Because we have these entrepreneurs from student ages to people in their 40s and even 60s. That’s what’s spectacular. There’s no age at which you can be creative.
Răzvan Rughiniș: There are ambitious people across the spectrum and the opportunities are numerous. To complete the point of view, this time a little closer and anchored, I think that the electronic identity card is an opportunity. We need an electronic identity on top of which, after that, to build numerous other services and I would insist more on the fact that it is not these services that we use once or twice a year, such as paying taxes, that I believe will lead to the acceptance of digitalization in Romania, but especially educational services. Access by parents, grandparents to forms of visualization of school performance, of school activities, will create a type of value of technology in the lives of families. The second, without a doubt, the medical system.
We end up in the hospital much more often than we pay taxes. Creating value as often as possible in everyday processes will also increase the population’s trust in technology.
Bianca Oanea: That means… whose job is that? Because we, at the Center for Independent Journalism, do this, for example. Elena at Funky does, there are many organizations, but they need support and a little courage and on the other hand, so that critical thinking doesn’t seem like a super exotic thing, but that’s the first line of defense. Education, in which, indeed, we invest trust and in which, yes, it’s very good that there are many NGOs that do things, not just us, but they also need something more, a…
Political desire, of a political will, of a continuity that manifests itself and so on. I mean, ok, Elena does it, you do it, the students do it, we do it. Where does the thread break?
Răzvan Rughiniș: If we have an entrepreneurial attitude and understand that the first version of the prototype will never be the one that will dominate the market, and we understand that we are here, first and foremost, because we believe in the value of technology as a vector of prosperity and social cohesion, we will not stumble at the first political obstacles.
There are still politicians today who can discuss a digital signature, who understand what these cloud infrastructures mean, what they mean for the costs and for the prosperity of this country. We need to arm them with the arguments for them to move forward and, to the extent that they are present in the community, to create these bridges between the human resource, also praised by our previous speaker, known beyond the borders of Romania in the technology area, and these opportunities that, I hope, each political actor will open in their limited area of impact.
Bianca Oanea: Elena, what else would connect us? What would connect the competencies? Because, yes, I look at a man in the room and I know that it can be done, I mean, no one needs to teach him, we don’t need to give him any more dough, I think that everything he had to take knows that it can be done. But there are one or two in a ministry, in a direction and so on. I mean, he is further from one competency or another.
What else can we do? How can we keep the pressure on, Elena?
Elena Calistru: Now, because I spend quite a lot of time in a European institution, what I could tell you is that it’s not just in Romania that we have this problem. And I don’t know if this is good news. You choose whether it’s good news or bad news.
I think there is a lot of inertia in the administration and I also think there are a lot of people in the public system who have been ripped off, like that, over time. A lot of people come with enthusiasm and a desire to do something. I don’t know if there is anyone who, by default, comes and says: “oh, I want to go and do nothing or do harm”. I doubt it. I mean, no, maybe, I’m not saying no, but most likely many came thinking that maybe they can change or it wouldn’t hurt to know that they did something good.
But I think there’s a lot of inertia in large systems, and, well, now, so that I don’t give a complete reality, but I’ll tell you that I read this fabulous book called The Unaccountability Machine, which tells the story of how, in recent years, as these large systems have evolved, the main purpose of systems, of organizations, has become just to preserve the systems. And it’s kind of natural. It’s an evolution that, again, many organizations are encountering.
And then what I think we need to do is, from time to time, shake ourselves up institutionally. And this is also done politically, when governments are renewed. Let’s use that period of shaking up precisely to open a dialogue with society, in its broadest sense, and then try to, rather, gather answers to what can be done, not to what cannot be done.
Many of the answers you get even now, in Brussels, for ridiculous things — for example, at a debate I said, yes, wouldn’t it be nice to have a keynote speech? “Oh, we don’t usually do that. Okay, but is there something preventing us from doing that?” “I don’t know, but we didn’t usually do that.” And then we have our colleague Săse, who works, we always have to work.
Elena Calistru: Colleague Săse, yes. But I think this is important: let’s ask ourselves, especially in these big places, in big organizations, where responsibility is diluted, what can be done, not what can’t be done. It’s a pretty small difference, but I think it gives us a much simpler path.
Checked some small changes there — I saw them too. I mean, I’m optimistic because I’ve seen things change. That with the budgets: when I started, now, I don’t know, it was 2011, so 14 years ago, we were actually transcribing from PDFs into Excel so we could do visualizations on the budgets.
Now all that data is public on TransparentaBugetara.gov.ro. Tinerii — there’s a guy in Sibiu who created Transparenta.eu — it’s a site that’s based on this data and you can see the budgets of all the communes in this country, beautifully visualized and I don’t know what.
All these things happened not in a very, very long time. Things happen, it’s just that someone has to do institutional trolling, from my point of view, and someone inside the institution has to think about what can be done. And at that time Radu was in the institution. He knew what could be done.
Bianca Oanea:
That is, the citizen should be empowered to ask questions on 544, and the state should answer them, practically, which would improve things a lot.
Răzvan, you wrote, you published in 2023, at Humanitas, the book Digital Society: Masters, Citizens or Slaves. How can we remodel the social contract a little so that citizens can gain autonomy and be much more engaged, let’s say, with the state, that no Romanian has escaped so far?
Răzvan Rughiniș: First, as long as we discuss the three paradigms, we are often coupled to the American definition of Europe, which is not, in any way, a truth: America innovates, China copies, Europe regulates. This, believe me, does not reflect the reality of a Europe with a critical sense, which tries to balance, first and foremost, citizens, an inclusive society that should, through technology, increase both the power and the rights of citizens.
We are aware that there are imperfections, but there is an intentionality behind all the regulations that we often don’t see. It is very helpful to see not only what the rules are, what the recipes are, but also what the reasons are.
I believe very much in the European vision. There is a medium and long-term thinking of Europe that we make too little effort to explain.
Răzvan Rughiniș: I believe that there is an intentionality and competence far beyond what, as a press, as a social environment, we reflect from the vision of Brussels and we fall too easily prey to marketing slogans coming from overseas or disinformation campaigns from China, which does not make it as visible, but controls many of the technology platforms that shape the definition of reality that today’s young people take from these Chinese algorithms rather than from the social environment of Europe.
Bianca Oanea: Some of them don’t take them, some of them even ask questions and we’re really learning and taking this further and we’re going to try to go to the mayor, where the first users are, because we’ve gone very far.
You both talked about this Brussels that is both scary, sometimes guilty, and a generator of change. Who else can we blame, Elena, for the fact that things aren’t moving?
Elena Calistru: One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot lately has to do with the fact that we no longer have, including us here in the room — if you’re sitting like I am, with your back to the window — it’s impossible for me to know whether it’s light or dark outside. And if all the blinds are drawn tightly, it’s possible that, if we’re all looking at our phones, the algorithm could be so personalized that it would deliver a different reality to each of us, even though we’re here, in the same country, at the same event, with the same interests.
And I’m very concerned about this: that we no longer have a shared reality, a common reality. Not necessarily a common vision of how we want to solve problems, but for us all to know or for us all to agree that there is light outside, I think we should be able to.
And here comes the guilt of this fact that we don’t even see through to the end, namely the piece of social media and algorithms, in which we can’t even begin to dig very well, because we don’t fully understand how it works, nor what the limits are, and so on.
And I think that there, rightly, many of us understand, including our rulers, who have been trying to find solutions lately: to regulate, to make, to “break the heads” of social media platforms. But there it seems to me that the thing we can really do is to better understand our role at the European level, to tell those in Brussels more loudly that we want to explain to them what we have learned from the equivalent, for a democracy, of a near-death experience — what we experienced last year, that we were in clinical death for democracy, with the elections canceled — and to try, somehow, to use the strength that the European Union has to negotiate with these platforms, in order to at least regain the possibility of having a common reality.
I think that if we don’t have that, we can’t be a community. And, as much as we like it in our bubbles, in our lives, among friends, family, and so on, unfortunately, at some point that shared life hits us. If you end up, God forbid, in the emergency room, you end up in the public health system.
We all walk on public streets. That’s why I think the algorithm and everything that comes from this virtual, online reality can be a culprit for us as long as we don’t fully understand the impact it has on us.
Bianca Oanea:
Now I want to be an advocate for myself, for my organization, and for all those who believe that freedom of expression is the guarantee of all other rights. It must be defended and we must invest in education, the only thing that could take us — certainly not in a five-year term, in no one’s term you can see the results — but in ten years it could bring us the most consistent growth in Gross Domestic Product.
It is the best investment we could make and it creates cohesion.
Răzvan Rughiniș: Social cohesion. So coherent public information, shared by the entire society, creates social cohesion. An education system that gives citizens the chance to contribute to a new social contract in a changing reality, I believe, are unfortunately underestimated drivers of this prosperity through social cohesion, through living together.
Bianca Oanea: These people here are very ambitious and they want digital consensus by 2030, which is tomorrow, let’s say. If there were – and this is also a question for each of you, so that we can free up space for the break – if you were to take one step, what would it be and who would it be addressed to? Civil society, the state, the private sector?
Răzvan Rughiniș: You seem more determined, Răzvan. I, beyond the position on the Edge board, for which I thank you for your energy and ambition, believe that each of us must look at our area of impact. I think that universities have transformed tremendously. They can be such a hub for connecting an extraordinarily competent and ambitious private environment, which has cultivated extraordinary expertise in recent years, with a much greater dynamic, which can serve not only as a source of inspiration, but also as an actor present in promoting some of the projects currently on the benches of universities.
Trust me, technology has been democratized. The kind of access that young people have to free digital infrastructures is so great that, with just a little bit of support, with the right partnerships — either licensing an application, or research — we can talk about a Romanian IP, we can talk about another kind of ambition of a Romania in which we not only export IT work, but export Romanian IT product, a digital product maintained by Romanian companies.
Elena Calistru: I think we should, somehow, build consensus at the administration level, if we take it from this governmental perspective, which I think we all look at, because it is the missing link.
I think we should go — and keep this in mind, so I can remember to read in Russian, but I’d rather use the English version — to trust but verify, as Reagan used to say during the Cold War, borrowing an old Russian proverb, when it came to disarmament negotiations and so on.
I think that, in fact, this state should give us the opportunity to trust it, offering us those elements through which we can verify. And it seems to me that this is a moment in which digitalization is all the more essential.
Don’t forget that if we make this effort, at this moment, to allocate 5% of GDP for defense — and I’m going back to budgets, I’m very sorry to leave you with this thought — it’s a huge amount of money.
You realize how easy it is to instrumentalize the allocation of this money. How easy it is to build, in a country that does not trust the way public money is spent, in a country where corruption really exists, in a country where public procurement, with all the SEAP — well, the SICAP of life — are not yet open enough.
How easy it is to build a narrative like: “they spend money on weapons, yes, yes, but let them get rich, let us know who gets rich, let us know who steals from us”. It seems to me that we are making ourselves vulnerable, that we risk becoming our own useful idiots, if we do not understand that, in this world, we must provide that framework in which at least this national effort to defend ourselves, in some super complicated moments, is not done to the letter from the perspective of transparency, participation and generating trust that that money will be spent properly.
And here we have the example of Ukraine, with this ProZorro platform. Because, guess what, including the corruption scandals there, in Ukraine, are visible precisely because there were platforms through which someone could verify what happened to that money.
So that’s where I would go: to build those tools or try to convince the governors and the government, mainly in this area, that they need to provide the tools through which they allow us to trust them, giving us the possibility to verify.
Bianca Oanea: To communicate a little more, to respond to citizens and not just to journalists or NGOs.
Bianca Oanea: Let’s understand that only in this way, only by communicating, can we avoid falling into the trap. Thank you.