A year ago, we launched Edge Institute, a think tank dedicated to the digitalization of public services, with a simple ambition: to take ideas to their logical conclusion, where they begin to produce real effects. Not through spectacular moments, but through accumulations, through decisions that, taken separately, seem small, isolated, but which over time can change the way the state functions.
In Romania at the beginning of 2025, digitalization was stuck between courageous statements, rare as well, and results that were difficult to feel in everyday life. The most relevant rankings were then (first image, DESI / European Commission) and are now (second image, OECD) proof of a great growth potential, always associated with the one in last place.
Source: European Commission, DESI 2024 (data from 2023)
Together with an extremely experienced board and a young team, trained in Europe and educated at top universities, we have outlined a credo: transformation always starts more simply, with people in clear roles and a mission they believe in. We started from a simple observation: change becomes visible when a concrete obstacle disappears. When a road no longer needs to be traveled. When an unnecessary interaction, at the counter, is eliminated. When the state stops relying on the citizen as its own courier.
For us, an example of such a “butterfly effect” is fara-hartie.gov.ro. And it is the theme of this anniversary article. This choice may seem like a strange one, unrelated to what Edge Institute has done this year, but please, be patient. And trust.
A year ago, “fara-hartie” did not exist. Today it is a digital vox populi, an open, imperfect, but functional tool that gathers real problems and exposes them in a way that can no longer be ignored. More important than the platform’s functionalities is the signal it sends: the direction can change with our help.
Such seemingly small developments only occur under certain conditions.
The existence of a Deputy Prime Minister with explicit responsibilities for digitalization has changed the dynamic. Clear responsibility creates space for action, and action produces results, even if, at first, they are limited. The Digital Nation report for the Edge Institute in October contributed to this discussion on governance, launching the explicit proposal for a “command center” for digitalization in the hands of a Deputy Prime Minister, a theme that simply did not exist in 2025 or 2024.
The Cotroceni Palace Summit established, not only by its title, but especially by its scope, governance as the main condition for accelerating digital transformation. This is the role we assumed from the beginning: a think tank that does not stop at analysis, but seeks to create the context for implementation, just as “fara-hartie” aims to do. We can either comment with humor on the uselessness of this project, or prove or not its usefulness. Everyone chooses what they want.
After all, if it still exists, we can choose to make it the place where our work can become reality, not just a well-written document about an absurd situation: the paper that proves to the state that you are not dead.
Or to become the platform that also provides simple solutions, immediately: no more need for a criminal record for the driver’s license file. The rule has already existed for a long time (see art. 6, para. (2^1), Order 268/2010 below). The official can request the criminal record on your behalf. In practice, you would bring it.
Then, this is where the small changes needed even when the administration builds modern solutions but does not carry them out, such as the personal example experienced at “Paşapoarte” on Friday, March 13, an unlucky day. If a child has an electronic identity card (CEI), a document that contains all the necessary data including those on the birth certificate, the latter would no longer be needed. This way, a new situation in which paper is decisive again can disappear. Of course, only if the Passport Directorate had readers for CEI, an institution that also belongs to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Moreover, why leave this project stuck only between problems of the past when we can protect ourselves from today for the future? I would like “fara-hartie” to be the place where we also signal new problems that the administration is just preparing to create for itself. Like, for example, the recent debate about archiving and electronic document management, where it is proposed to digitize documents, but keep them physically permanent. In practice, this doubles the costs, the efforts of the institutions and sends a clear message: paper remains the final reference. It was like “fara-hartie”, right?
Why do we insist on these types of examples? Such provisions can cancel out correct political intentions. Norms take years. The political agenda changes much faster. Between the two, many initiatives are lost. Tools like “fara-hartie” compress this time. They expose problems quickly and create continuous pressure for correction. Unless we choose, together and separately, to put this positive pressure.
There are other positive side effects. Mechanisms that already existed are starting to work better. CERB, conceived as a coordination council for debureaucratization, now meets almost monthly and is starting to take on concrete proposals, has a livelier agenda, precisely because there is an initiative like “fara-hartie”. The pace is clearly faster than in its first year of life, coordination is starting to have content. It is not a spectacular change. But it is a functional one. One that in the future can deliver programs with greater stakes and impact.
After all, the CERB has a reason to gather around a dynamic agenda. AtlasIntel data from November 2025 shows that Romanians suffer from digital optimism and that two-thirds of Romanians no longer accept being couriers between state institutions, a reality captured by 544 on a mostly red national map. In the next edition of the newsletter, we will publish wave 2 of the AtlasIntel study and detail the evolution of some indicators convinced that changes in expectations create pressure. At the same time, they also create opportunities.
It is precisely the context in which the role of society and organizations like Edge Institute is becoming increasingly concrete. “Fara-hartie” can remain a marginal project, generating occasional reactions on social media. Or it can become a real tool for public intervention. It depends on how much it is used to propose, monitor and correct.
The difference between the two scenarios is essential. And it depends on us and on seemingly small events, which are built over time, through accumulation.
After a year of Edge Institute, I can say that the balance sheet matters the least. For us, what is more important is to build together a context in which ideas are forced to pass the reality test. Some resist. Others do not. But this constancy is starting to produce effects. Transformation, whether digital or not, is built, step by step.
Small victories rarely make it to the feed, but they rewrite, over time, the way the state functions.
