Romania’s Minister of Digitalization, Sebastian Burduja, says that the Republic of Moldova is “light years” ahead of Romania in terms of digitizing public institutions and that it has achieved this thanks to a World Bank program that has been implemented for 10 years.

Sebastian Burduya stated on the air on Digi24 that the Republic of Moldova is ahead of Estonia in terms of digitalization of state institutions.

“Light years (this is the Republic of Moldova, compared to Romania, from the point of view of digitization of the state – no). It will surprise you, it is over Estonia, and it is not me who says it, international assessments say it. The decisions of our brothers along the Prut River are better than the Estonian ones,” Burduya said, News.ro reports.

The Minister of Digitization explained that he visited the Republic of Moldova to take an example of this country in terms of digitization.

“I was in Chisinau for a month, a month and a half of my mandate, I signed a joint commission together with Deputy Prime Minister Yuriy Tsurkanu, an exceptional person, a real specialist and an unsurpassed professional. Through this joint commission, the Republic of Moldova will provide us with the solutions they have developed and which took 10 years, almost free of charge,” Burduža said.

When asked what exactly Moldovans do, Sebastián Burduya replied that almost any service can be accessed online.

“First, they can do almost any government service online: register vehicles, pay taxes and fees, various petitions, responses, etc. When their ANAF accesses their data, they receive a notification via SMS, but they can also receive via WhatsApp, Telegram or other services that the state has accessed their data. We adopted this model and incorporated it into the Cloud Decree. To return, in order to provide security and confidence to Romanians that their data will be much better protected than now, when a public institution accesses their data, it is written in the order, there is a log, like them and Moldovans, an indelible log , in which I, as a citizen, will know as soon as the institution accesses the data, I will know when, why it did it and on what legal basis,” added Sebastian Bourduya.

However, few Moldovans have access to online services, Burduzha also noted.

“They succeeded because of a very well-designed World Bank program, with a handful of people and with the political will for continuity, with all the problems they had, with all the instability from one government to another, for 10 years, they gave the maximum important for digital transformation states and results are visible. “Unfortunately, what is the problem in Moldova today, with a population of 2 million citizens, approximately 200,000 use these services,” said Sebastian Burduža.