The dialogue between Radu Puchiu and Nicușor Dan, held within the Digital Governance Summit organized by the Edge Institute, addressed three central themes for Romania’s modern sovereignty: defense capacity, the relationship with the diaspora, and strengthening the state through digital mechanisms. The discussion started from the country’s new defense strategy and how technology accelerates global changes, including through risks such as disinformation and information attacks.
Nicușor Dan emphasized the importance of an administration that works with consistent, structured, and easily accessible data between institutions. The current lack of coherence affects both the decision-making process and citizens’ trust in the state. He highlighted that Romania is relatively well positioned in the area of cybersecurity, but much weaker in the automatic detection of disinformation campaigns and in the coordination of institutional communication.
Regarding the diaspora, he insisted on the need for dedicated digital tools, such as a real-time map of Romanian communities, much more digitalized consular services, and periodic sociological studies that would allow for a real understanding of their needs. He emphasized that the diaspora is an opportunity for Romania, being made up of people who perform in competitive environments and can contribute to the national economy.
In the area of the relationship between the state and the citizen, he spoke about the need for a single, friendly digital interface, and a clear coordination of data between institutions. He acknowledged that digitalization is often blocked by administrative culture, not just technology, and that a change in mentality is needed to put the citizen at the center. He praised the example of Estonia and confirmed that Romania needs a clear strategy for the use of AI in the administration, adapted to the Romanian legislative and institutional context.
Finally, he explained the role of the Presidency in this effort: a place with more space for reflection, capable of generating coherent strategic directions for the Executive. The message conveyed to the public was one of trust and patience: technology is a tool that can improve people’s lives, and Romania has the potential to capitalize on this opportunity if it works consistently in this direction.
Photo Credit: Mihnea Ratte
Full transcript
The full transcript of the keynote 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.
Transcrierea completă a conversației: Nicușor Dan & Radu Puchiu, "Transformarea digitală ca vector al unității naționale: Apropierea diasporei și combaterea dezinformării"
Radu Puchiu:
Yesterday I saw the country’s new defense strategy approved. And everyone says that we are at an important moment, and the strategy mentions global, economic, political, demographic transformations, all accelerated by technology, at a pace that we have never seen before, as Robert Berza said earlier.
In a way, I hear two voices becoming clearer: a very optimistic one, which says that we can use the energy and creativity of Romanians, the strength of the global network in the diaspora and new technologies to make a leap in development; others, perhaps the most pessimistic, say that we will be knocked down by this technological wave and we will remain an aging society, with ankylosed institutions and always looking backwards.
In this context, I would like to focus our dialogue today on three areas that I believe will define Romania’s modern sovereignty: the ability to defend itself, the ability to keep the global community united, and the ability to protect its state, including in digital mechanisms. They are, if you will, three facets of the same thing: how Romania remains strong, united, and credible in a rapidly changing world.
And I would start from here, Mr. President: on this line between military defense, cybersecurity — you mentioned it too — digital infrastructure, infrastructure and information warfare, increasingly blurred. You mentioned disinformation, but in this world it is not just a media phenomenon, as we have seen, but also a tool of systematic attack. How do you see the integration of technology into the country’s defense strategy? I have seen its components, but I am curious how they combine.
Nicușor Dan:
First of all, in this interval of about 10 days that the strategy was put up for debate, I received a lot of suggestions, and many of the passages that are in the official strategy that will be presented to Parliament tomorrow come from this area and thank you for really having a debate.
Broadly speaking, the things that I said: you need an administration that works with data, very important, and to make decisions. This was probably the thing that bothered me the most during the time I spent here: that often the information you see from different areas is different or differs from one month to the next, and that’s not normal.
Precisely because there is no structure and collaboration between institutions so that the information you need to make decisions is put in a structured, organized and stable way. This is related to the functioning of the state. Another obvious thing is the interaction with citizens and the business environment, and the interface between the state and those who have to use it is often deficient. And this, if we talk about the national defense strategy, is correlated with people’s trust in the state, which is essential.
If we talk about the security area itself, we have the cyber area, in which, in my opinion, the Romanian state is quite good. But technology is advancing and we must advance with it. And there is the area of disinformation, in which we are still not good. We do not have those mechanisms for automatic detection of disinformation campaigns, and the way in which state institutions communicate in relation to, so to speak, the communication landscape, is not structured at all.
These are the things I see.
Radu Puchiu:
Indeed, I think I resonate a lot with the idea of trust, because it is attacked first and foremost and has been attacked for many years. We look at citizens and I think everyone is hearing more and more often that there is disinformation and that it affects trust. What are one or two concrete directions that Romania should follow to protect people? I think everyone feels the need for protection against the waves of online manipulation. They need to be protected somehow, but obviously without stifling innovation or internet freedom. Agreed. How do you see these directions of action, if they will be caught in the strategy?
Nicușor Dan:
What is disinformation, actually? It is a deviation from a reference. The question is: what is the reference? Because, normally, things are said. In theory, in a democracy, people say things and a political leader appears who has the trust of the citizens and says: “It’s not like that.” Or a press trust appears who has the trust of the citizens and says: “It’s not like that.” And the disinformation disappears. People are aware.
The problem is that we no longer have the reference. Or it is much diminished. Who has the trust of the citizens to say: “It’s not like that”? This is not about technology, but about the trust that the state authorities and the media — which is also responsible — must regain from the citizens. And it is a process that will take time.
If we come strictly to the technology area, here, as I was saying earlier, you need to detect a disinformation campaign in real time, automatically, because you don’t have enough people to collect all the things that can be said. So don’t give a campaign time to become, for a significant part of the population, a truth. That’s one thing.
And, again, as I was saying, to manage that in the communication of state institutions — which must tell their truth — this communication is coordinated and has an impact. At the moment, I’m coming across it absolutely randomly: a statement from the Ministry of Defense I don’t know if it reaches one, two per thousand of the population.
Radu Puchiu:
Romania has the largest diaspora community in the European Union. For many of them, the connection with the country was made more through social networks and online conversations, and less through efficient digital services, as you also note. How can the digital area transform this reality into an opportunity? Can we talk about a “new union” of Romanians in the digital age?
Nicușor Dan:
In 1999, President Constantinescu proposed to me to be Secretary of State for Romanians in the diaspora. I was an NGO worker. I was talking about modernization, all sorts of things. And I refused. I said I wanted to stay in the mathematics area. But I said that it would be very useful to have a tool — a digital tool — through which we could have a real-time map of Romanian communities in the diaspora, possibly with some attributes of each of these communities. I think it is time to do this.
It is time for the Romanian state to periodically conduct complex sociological studies for Romanians in the diaspora, precisely in order to better understand the concrete needs of this community. I make a parenthesis, because you asked me: as I wrote in the strategy, Romanians in the diaspora represent an opportunity for us. They are people who have performed in a much more competitive environment than the one in Romania. Having a permanent dialogue with them, offering them the opportunity to invest in Romania or have economic ties is a great opportunity.
Strictly at the level of services that we can offer, consular services are by far the most important. Because, no matter how many consular points you open, they will still be far from many of those in the diaspora. And then, the more you manage to digitalize, the shorter their time and the more you gain their trust in the state. This is very important.
Radu Puchiu:
Exactly on this trust: what should they see concretely to gain trust, to believe that something is really changing in the relationship with them?
Nicușor Dan:
Up until now, they have seen politicians in electoral campaigns. They should see people from the administration — from embassies, from consulates — who are concerned about their problems in real time. They should see, and here we are moving away from the technology area, a structure adapted to their need to have Romanian language and culture courses for their children. Again, related to that digital map I was talking about: I did not see any overlap between population density and the language and culture services we offer.
Radu Puchiu:
The first and only time we met — I admit that I was working in the government at the time — was at a discussion about open data. And I remember that you insist on their role in transparency. With today’s perspective, how do you see this role of digitalization?
You mention data as important at the state level, but translated into technical language — traceability, interoperability — it may not mean much to people. How do we make it clearer what the state is doing? How do we make it clear that we are not being shuffled between institutions? How do we make sure there are not dozens of platforms? And how does data help in this area? What are the main obstacles that you see and that need to be eliminated?
Nicușor Dan:
There are two questions. One is about the interface, which is extremely different from institution to institution. A citizen who has a problem to solve does not have the instinct — statistically speaking — to go to the institution’s website to look for the information they need. A friend calls, after all. Here I believe that, starting from a sociological study that identifies the main processes accessed by people and companies, we should offer an infrastructure, a unique and friendly interface for this type of questions or problems that people have to solve.
And on the substantive side, a correlation of information in a way that makes it available between institutions. At the moment, speaking very roughly, everyone organizes for themselves the way they structure their information. That is why it is important — as has been said so far — to have a vision at the top that is then followed by each of the sectors.
Radu Puchiu:
I dare a short answer because you mentioned Estonia. Estonia has a strategy for artificial intelligence, including one used a lot in public administration. Do you see it as helpful for our administration?
Nicușor Dan:
Of course, yes. Of course — obviously customized to our administrative and legislative system — but obviously there is a need.
Radu Puchiu:
In the Edge Institute report, which you mentioned and which Robert Berza also presented earlier, the idea appears — also mentioned in the OECD reports — that Romania can accelerate its development only through a coherent digital strategy and not through digital islands. A single command center is mentioned, as close as possible to the prime minister, precisely to create this coherence that you were talking about. Do you think that Romania would need such a central structure in order to stop wasting digitalization in institutions that each pull in a different direction?
Nicușor Dan:
Without discussion. I mean, theoretically, it exists. What does not exist at the moment are the coordination attributions. As I was saying earlier, each sector has the freedom to organize its information, processes, interfaces, as it wishes. So yes, without discussion.
Radu Puchiu:
How do you see the collaboration between the president, the presidency and the executive in strengthening leadership here? Because it is important. Today’s message is very important, but I think it must be continued.
Nicușor Dan:
There is a certain frustration with this position, that it is semi-executive. That, in a general sense.
Without a doubt, there is an influence that the president can have. We have to recover, in a medium time frame, a lot of processes that we did not define very well many years ago. And then no one in the Executive has this time to reflect. There is pressure on each member of the Executive, on issues that are 90–95% urgent, responses to the same kinds of things that are happening.
Fortunately, this position — of president of the Presidential Administration — does not have so many urgent needs. And then there is a little more time to build here. This is how I see the discussion between the president and the Executive: the president has the space to produce some things and give them directly to the government for implementation. And that is why, for any issue in which you think we can influence the Executive, we are at your disposal.
Radu Puchiu:
One of the main problems, beyond technology, is that the culture of the administration must be changed a lot, which is one in which the state is in a superior position to the citizen. We want to change this, and technology helps to change this relationship. But precisely because it changes this relationship between the state and the citizen, it is also one of the elements that blocks digitalization. And I was thinking about what would be the role — or what could be the role — of the presidency, which has this luxury of time or of things being done more solidly, to center digital services on people, not on institutions. How do you see the role here?
Nicușor Dan:
I’ll tell you how it happened in the city hall. We ordered a service to integrate all the flows, and people came — a company won a purchase — and they did this whole thing. I think it took about a year and a half until we convinced each department to switch, to change their routine and to enter the new system, which made their work easier. Because at the beginning it was a process that took time: switching to the new way of intra-institutional communication.
At the moment, as has already been said here, the problem is defining how the institutions collaborate with each other and, including, what are the elements of subordination on certain decisions. I think that is important and I think we need to focus on this issue. And, within a few months — obviously, in discussion with the government — let’s manage to define how we will act in the future. I think that here the role of the presidency, in this reflection process, can be important.
Radu Puchiu:
In conclusion — and thank you once again for accepting this format — if there was one priority message that you would convey to Romanians, to citizens, through this forum, what would it be today? Related to digitalization, related to what the future holds? I think a lot of people are a little scared of technology. What message are you conveying to them?
Nicușor Dan: In general, the fact that we are trying to work for them, which is not obvious as a message, but I hope I have time to prove this. Regarding technology, the message is that it is a tool that can greatly help our lives, that Romania has potential here and that all of us, together, will manage to exploit this potential to the benefit of everyone. So, in short, a request for trust and time in which to prove these things.
