Ion Tăbârță, political expert, Institute for Development and Social Initiatives (IDIS) „Viitorul”
In 2020, the European Commission adopted its European Data Strategy. On November 25, 2020, the European Commission issued the Data Governance Act, the first proposal regarding the implementation of the Strategy. With the Strategy implementation, the EC is targeting to reach €829 billion value of the data economy in 2025 in EU from €301 billion (2.4% of EU GDP) in 2018.
StrategEast has interviewed leading experts from Eastern Partnership countries to hear about the role of the data economy in their home countries. Here are the answers from the expert on Moldova.
Does your country use data-sharing platforms and ecosystems?
On March 9, 2005, the Government of the Republic of Moldova approved the National Strategy on Building Information Society “Electronic Moldova”, which established the implementation of electronic government (e-Government) as one of its priorities. Officially, the e-Government process in the Republic of Moldova was launched on June 28, 2006, by the government’s approval of the e-Governance Concept. In accordance with this Concept, the Ministry of Information Development should create a government portal (www.e-moldova.md) to provide computerized public services. At the same time, the site www.e-moldova.md had to provide information on the activities of implementing the concept of e-Government in the Republic of Moldova.
However, the implementation of the e-Government concept in the Republic of Moldova until 2010 was a pilot and experimental project. The concept of e-Government began to be widely implemented in the Republic of Moldova with the launch by the government of the e-Government transformation project, carried out in 2011-2016 with the financial support of the World Bank Group. On August 18 of 2010, in order to improve governance through the intensive application of information technologies, the e-Government Center was created, a public institution subordinated to the State Chancellery within the government.
The e-Transformation process began in 2011 with the approval by the Government of the Republic of Moldova, on September 20, 2011, of the Strategic Program for Technological Modernization of Government. By another government decision of July 6, 2012, it was decided that the e-Transformation subdivision would be established in all central public administration institutions. The institutionalization of the e-Transformation subdivision within the central public administration is focused on the following 4 areas:
- General coordination / e-Transformation coordinator (Chief information officer);
- Technological coordination and in the field of information security;
- Data analysis;
- Project management.
Prior to these government decisions, which institutionalized the e-Transformation process at the level of the Central Public Administration; on April 15, 2011 the Open Data Portal was launched (www.date.gov.mda). This platform is a key one in the e-Transformation process and aims to facilitate citizens’ access to data from ministries and central public administration institutions. In this process, all central public administration authorities have designated the staff responsible for open data management in the staff.
The Government Data Portal gathers information from several information resources of public institutions (except for information falling under the legislation on state secrecy, or other special legislation), its objective being to provide the user with the information he needs. The Government Data Portal is an aggregation of three categories of data:
- Open data sets of ministries and central public administration institutions (part of the global Open Government Partnership initiative). Open government data is freely available to anyone, for use, without any restrictions or control mechanisms;
- Data with public access declared on the basis of a normative act. This information block offers users the opportunity to freely and directly search for public information about companies;
- Data with authorized access, which are intended for users, entities, in accordance with the legal provisions on data exchange and interoperability. The service offers the possibility to entities, which have a legal basis and purpose to process concrete data sets, to access data from state registers and information systems.
In order to facilitate the exchange of data between the authorities and to increase the efficiency and quality of public service provision, on January 7, 2014, the MConnect Government Interoperability Platform was launched (www.mconnect.gov.md). Using this platform, public authorities exchange data, without requesting them from citizens and the business environment, in the form of certificates, reports, etc. The legal framework of the MConnec platform on data exchange and interoperability has been developed in line with the European Interoperability Framework and respond to its recommendations.
In accordance with the Agenda for Sustainable Development of the World by 2030 adopted by the United Nations, the Government Chancellery of the Government, with the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), initiated in February 2016 the activity of mapping/inventory of the data system from Moldova. The following institutions from the Republic of Moldova are involved in mapping the data system: the State Chancellery, the National Bureau of Statistics, the Electronic Government Agency (formerly the Electronic Government Center) and the Institute for the Development of the Information Society.
On May 8, 2018, in order to institutionally strengthen data centers in the public sector and streamline the administration of information systems by the government, the Electronic Governance Center was reorganized into the Electronic Governance Agency (www.egov.md). For the period 2018-2023, with the support of the World Bank Group, the project Modernization of Government Services in Moldova was launched.
On July 27, 2020, in the context of the pandemic crisis caused by the COVID-19 virus, to facilitate the remote interaction between the government, the business community and consumers, the Ministry of Economy and Infrastructure launched the Roadmap for boosting the process of digitization of the national economy and development of electronic commerce. The content of the Roadmap stipulates that the Ministry initiates the following actions to stimulate digital interaction: Government-Business (G2B), Business-Business (B2B), Business-Consumer (B2C), grouped on 4 objectives:
- Facilitating remote interaction and promoting digital services for the business environment;
- Stimulating the use of e-commerce by companies and consumers;
- Simplifying customs procedures for online exports and stimulating postal and courier services;
- Promoting and attracting national and international e-commerce platforms to the country.
In the more than 10 years since the launch of the e-government process, the institution responsible for this platform has achieved several achievements, such as MConnect, MPay, MPass, MLog services, Mobile Signature, MCloud and the portals www.servicii.gov.md and www.date.gov.md. There are also services that, for the time being, cannot be considered successful, for example e-Procurement and MTender, which were to transform the public procurement process from public money into a transparent electronic format.
Currently, the Electronic Governance Agency is carrying out the following types of projects:
- Government for Modernization;
- Government for Citizens;
- Government for Business;
- Government for Government;
- Government for the International.
What are the perspectives of data economy in your country, can it bring economic benefits to businesses and citizens?
Although the Republic of Moldova has made significant progress in the digitization process in the last 10 years, there are still several issues to be overcome. This requires joint action and efforts by government, civil society, the private sector and development partners.
In the economic field, the advantages of digitization are not used enough, both for objective and subjective reasons. Objectively, we list the following main issues:
- There are constraints and insufficient information on Government/Business/Consumer remote interaction methods;
- In environment small and medium enterprises we observe a low level of information about the opportunities offered by online commerce to access for the consumers direct and fast to goods and services. Consequently, there is a low level of investment in this branch of the economy;
- Custom procedures and taxes are too complex and dissuasive to promote e-Commerce and e-Export.
Subjectively, a very important, even crucial, aspect in the digitization and transparency of the economy of the Republic of Moldova is represented by the interests of the political factor and its interference in the economic field. Certain groups, in order to be able to extract political income, are not interested in economic processes in the Republic of Moldova to take place in a transparent and fair manner. This explains why several digitized services (such as e-Procurement and MTender ) fail to function in the organization of public procurement.
Regarding the mapping of the data system, several problematic aspects are also attested. For now, the data collection process, processing and reporting them as required indicators was realized by institutional entities of the central government. At national level, at the level of local public administration, especially in rural localities, there is a reduced capacity for monitoring and evaluation and a lack of capacity for analysis and interpretation of data.
At the same time, the legislative dynamics, partnerships and projects (increasing in number) in the level of public authorities regarding the monitoring, analysis and reporting of the data system require qualified and stable human resources in positions and attributions. In the Republic of Moldova, human resources in data systems face two major problems: insufficient resources and lack of training. Institutions in e-Transformation services, in most cases, do not have statisticians or data analysts, but data operators and network administrators.
The creation of competencies in this field requires professional training courses for staff, necessary for the production, analysis and presentation of data. At the moment, these training courses are carried out in small numbers due to the financial-budgetary limitations, but also due to the low offers of this type of courses at national level. In general, in the Republic of Moldova there is no systemic approach in vocational training with data, both at the level of heads of institutions and at the level of employees, which jeopardizes the process of data systematization. Therefore, existing human resource capacities undermine the possibility of expanding the area of data exploitation and use.
The process of collecting, producing, disseminating, storing and analyzing data requires an infrastructure of tools and technological resources. The infrastructure of information and communication technology that ensures connectivity and data processing capabilities in the Republic of Moldova is uneven, and the digital divide between urban and rural areas is significant. In this context, following the mapping, it was found at the country level the need for actions to involve relevant partners in strengthening the governance process through partnerships.
It is important to note times involved in the data ecosystem such as academic environment, private sector, local government, civil society, to undergo a process of information and knowledge on objectives of the sustainable development. This process is necessary for the establishment of functional partnerships beyond traditional participants such as ministries and agencies of government, between public authorities, manufacturers and data holders and other actors interested in the collection, processing and use of data. It is also necessary to integrate statistical information and data into the justification of medium and long-term development plans, which lead to an adjustment and alignment of the legal framework on data and statistics to new concepts of data systems. Therefore action is needed in the formal education and information about literacy in the data (on literacy), it is absolutely necessary to enable skills and allow efficient and in full volume data in decision making.
At the same time, it is important for local development to involve and include local authorities in collecting and reporting data at the local level to diversify the ways and means of dissemination (online databases, interactive maps, infographics that facilitate the visualization and understanding of data), but also for the use of data in substantiating future decisions. In this sense, it is very important to mention that at the level of leadership of the Republic of Moldova, presidency and government, the importance and advantages of the digitization process were realized. Thus, President Maia Sandu during her recent visit to France, during which she met with her French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, discussed support from France in transforming and modernizing the public service in our country, including locally, through digitalization and transparency.
In conclusion, after over 10 years of digital modernization, the Republic of Moldova, with the help of development partners, has managed to achieve remarkable successes in implementing e-Transformation and e-Government. However, there are still enough problems to be overcome. These problems are so objective, such as lack of finances, insufficiently developed infrastructure, inadequately trained staff, the gap between urban and rural areas etc. But also of a subjective nature, namely the interests of some political groups, interspersed with the economy, not to allow transparency of public finances determinate by the digital modernization of the Moldovan economy.
