CRPE carried out the Romanian chapter of the wider Inclusive Digitalisation in the European Union (IDEU): Shape the Digital Transformation in Europe crowdsourcing campaign, part of a process running across six EU Member States. In Romania, over 400 citizens shared their experiences with digitalisation, highlighting issues such as limited digital inclusion, difficult-to-access digital public services, unequal digital education, limited opportunities for older adults, challenges for small businesses, or the gender gap in ICT. Through a two-step process—identifying obstacles and then prioritizing or refining them—CRPE gathered structured citizen input, which was further complemented by stakeholder interviews, public debates, and real-life case studies on digital inclusion.

Romania and the EU Digital Decade

The European Union’s Digital Decade sets an ambitious vision for Europe’s digital transformation by 2030, with targets covering digital skills, business digitalisation, public services, and cutting-edge infrastructure. These ambitions reflect the EU’s commitment to a competitive, secure, and inclusive digital society in which citizens have the skills they need, businesses adopt advanced technologies, and public administrations offer accessible, fully digital public services. To implement this common framework, every Member State, including Romania, was required to adopt national roadmaps outlining how they will contribute to the EU-wide goals.

Romania’s 2024 Digital Decade Roadmap falls significantly short of the EU’s ambitions. Independent assessments, including CRPE’s analysis and the 2025 Digital Decade national report, highlight that Romania set notably low targets, particularly in digital skills, business adoption of cloud/AI/big data, and key areas such as digital identity and e-Health, which are missing altogether. These weaknesses are especially problematic given Romania’s already deep digital divides: rural communities, older people, and those with lower levels of education remain far below EU digital-skills averages, increasing the risk that the country will fall further behind in a decade defined by rapid technological change.

Capturing citizens’ perspectives through crowdsourcing

To capture these perspectives, CRPE carried out a two-step national crowdsourcing campaign between May and November 2025, gathering input from over 400 people across Romania. Participants highlighted a wide range of issues, including limited digital inclusion, slow or difficult-to-access digital public services, unequal access to technology in schools, too few teachers trained in digital skills, limited learning opportunities for older adults and people left behind, challenges for small businesses in adopting new digital tools, and the need to significantly increase women’s opportunities and participation in ICT professions.

Digital shortcomings for which we sought solutions

• Formal education does not sufficiently prepare students for the digital era
• Lack of ICT programmes for adults and seniors
• Shortage of ICT specialists
• External migration of IT professionals
• Regional disparities and excessive concentration of digital infrastructure in urban areas
• Underrepresentation of women in the ICT sector
• Discrimination and lack of inclusion in the digital environment
• Insufficient and difficult-to-access digital public services
• Lack of coherent public policies and sustainable investments in digitalisation

National-level recommendations

Based on citizens’ input, stakeholder consultations, and CRPE’s analysis, a set of policy recommendations was developed to address Romania’s digital divides and to better align national efforts with the objectives of the EU Digital Decade. These recommendations target both structural reforms and practical measures, aiming to ensure that digitalisation is inclusive, accessible, and sustainable.

1. Integrate digital skills across all levels of formal education, embedding digital literacy and basic ICT competences in all school subjects and strengthening digital components in vocational and technical education.
2. Institutionalise mandatory digital pedagogy training for teachers, through initial and continuous professional development programmes focused on practical classroom use, digital assessment tools, and student-centred learning approaches.
3. Prioritise investments in school infrastructure, particularly in rural and disadvantaged areas, by ensuring access to well-equipped IT laboratories, reliable connectivity, and individual digital devices for students.
4. Develop community-based digital hubs in libraries, schools, and cultural or community centres, offering access to devices, internet connectivity, and personalised support for adults and seniors in acquiring digital skills and using public e-services.
5. Improve the quality, usability, and accessibility of digital public services, applying user-centred design principles, continuous monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, and maintaining assisted or offline access options where needed.
6. Actively address the gender gap in ICT, through early STEM promotion for girls, mentoring and scholarship programmes, and leadership and career development initiatives for women in the digital sector.
7. Increase transparency and public accountability in the implementation of the Digital Decade by establishing a publicly accessible national dashboard presenting up-to-date data on targets, indicators, milestones, progress, and responsible institutions, with clear comparability to EU benchmarks.
8. Establish a clear and coherent national governance framework for digitalisation, defining roles and responsibilities across public institutions, including designated Digital Decade focal points in each relevant ministry and public agency, with formal coordination and reporting obligations.
9. Strengthen coordination between national and local authorities, ensuring municipalities and counties play an active role in digital policy implementation, particularly in areas related to public services, digital inclusion, and community-based skills initiatives.
10. Use the 2026 milestone to revise and strengthen Romania’s Digital Decade National Roadmap, setting more ambitious and EU-aligned targets, introducing clear interim milestones and measurable indicators, clarifying governance arrangements, and establishing a credible implementation timeline

EU-level recommendations

At European level, the findings point to the need for stronger coordination, transparency, and support mechanisms to ensure that the Digital Decade delivers inclusive outcomes across all Member States.

1. Strengthen EU-level guidance and oversight of national Digital Decade roadmaps, ensuring greater ambition, coherence, and comparability across Member States, particularly in areas related to digital skills, inclusion, and gender equality in ICT.
2. Improve reporting standards and transparency across Member States, including for DESI, by clearly documenting and making public the methodology used to produce country assessments, the types and sources of data collected, and the institutional arrangements behind national reporting, in order to enhance comparability, credibility, and public accountability.
3. Expand EU support for participatory and citizen-driven digital policymaking through dedicated funding lines, technical assistance, and methodological guidance for crowdsourcing, co-creation, and user-testing of digital public services.
4. Introduce stronger EU-level incentives to address digital inclusion and gender gaps, linking progress in these areas more clearly to EU funding priorities, technical assistance instruments, and peer-review mechanisms.
5. Facilitate structured peer learning and exchange between Member States by supporting EU-level digital forums and thematic networks focused on digital governance, inclusive service design, skills development, and workforce retention.

CRPE reports on Digital DEcade

The report “Voices on Digitalisation – What 400 Romanians told us through a crowdsourcing campaign” is available in english language. 

Other reports include:

Romania’s Digital Decade 2030 Roadmap: Building coherence, collaboration, and accountability – the first independent analysis of Romania’s Digital Decade roadmap.

Bridging the digital divide. Examples of good practice for inclusive digitalization – which maps good practices in digital inclusion from both public institutions and private initiatives. The report aims to encourage stronger cooperation between authorities, businesses, and civil society organisations.

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The project is coordinated by the European Citizen Action Service (ECAS), a pan-European organization based in Brussels, and is implemented together with: ODRAZ (Croatia), ProInfo (Bulgaria), Democracy International (Germany), Science For You – SciFY (Greece), Fundación Cibervoluntarios (Spain).

Implementation period: June 2024 – May 2026

The IDEU project is co-funded by the European Commission through the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme (grant number 101147200).