Communication minister:14,000 acquisition procedures were cancelled in the national electronic system. People in ministries have started to fear DNA

Out of 20.000 public acquisition procedures launched in the national electronic system within six months, 14,000 have been cancelled after various contestations have been submitted, Romanian Communication minister Gabriel Sandu declared on Thursday. According to him, ministerial staff started to be afraid to sign contracts, so that the press would not report negatively on it and avoid landing a file with the National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA).

„We are interested in how many papyruses and other small details are bought instead of seeing the final result. We fail to get access to EU funds because every technical sheet is contested. It’s no need for me to say this, there are European funds worth millions of euros which remain unused”, Gabriel Sandu mentioned on Thursday, during the Communication Day 2010 conference.

Communication Minister: When we launched eRomania, the whole industry should have stood up

The Communication minister also talked about the eRomania strategy, restating this was not just a website worth 500 million euros.

„eRomania is not just a 500 million euros site. It is a strategy to interconnect small information islands in the present administration. 20 years after, we’ve got nothing. We need another 20 years to interconnect all these systems or to erase everything that has been done so far. When we launched eRomania, the entire industry should have stood up, should have known that this is a ground for the years to come”, the minister said.

The eRomania strategy intends to lead to the creation of a national e-governance system, through which the authorities promise the interconnection of the central and local administration and computing all public services for people and companies. For 2010-2013, the authorities have estimated the allocation of 500 million euros, with money coming from both European and public funds. In an interview for HotNews.ro from the beginning of May, Toma Cimpeanu, E-Romania team chief in the Communication Ministry (MCSI) has estimated that an additional 500 million euros will go in this system during 2014-2017, without things stopping here.