Electronic public services make a fantastic gift

The companies wanting to shift to e-business have to do it step-by-step and not all at once, or else the costs will be outrageously high, according to Hans Jarnik, Oracle vice-president, who granted an exclusive interview to Ziarul Financiar.

“I think the most important thing for a country such as Romania is to make the decision to build an industry of information technologies and at the same time be aware of that fact that actually building it is the key-element in order to shift to an IT society, ” Jarnik feels.

Romania must transform into a society of interaction, communication, education and administration, almost all of these done electronically.

To successfully achieve this goal, it must start with education first, Oracle vice-president states. Nowadays, almost every single educational subject prepared by world experts can be studied over the Internet and anybody can consult with top specialists.

“You no longer have to go to Harvard or Stanford, for instance. With the Internet at hand, the top experts of the world can be in your computer because you can “chat” with them. Education is now available for anyone who has a computer. This is where Romania should start from,” Jarnik says.

The next step towards an IT society is providing citizens with modern, electronic public services. A classical example is updating one’s driving licence. The traditional way of doing it forces one to lose at least several days to get the new document. This goes for passports, too.

“Wouldn’t it be nice if all those services were available electronically? To be able to change your passport not when the Government or the authorities say so, but one fine Sunday morning when you’ve got some spare time.

All this can be done by an Internet account and a banking one, on condition there are regulations on the electronic signature.” Which will enable you to get your driving licence delivered at home in just a matter of days.

Electronic access to public services will allow people to capitalise better on their own time. Now is the moment governments did citizens a fantastic unprecedented service.

The project of shifting to eGovernment and eEducation, announced by the Romanian Government, was also welcomed by the Oracle official. “First of all, if one wants to create an IT society, one needs people familiar with the new technologies, who know how to blend one IT solution with another.

To have these people one must see to their education. Three years ago, we started Oracle Academic Initiative and today we’re training more than 4,000 students together with 11 universities. We are hoping there will be enough projects in Romania to allow those trained in the country to use the knowledge therefrom gained, locally,” Hans Jarnik added.