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This article explores, in a comparative manner, the state-of-play of digital transformation of public administration in EU Member States. Using a specific methodological toolkit that combines policy and statistical analysis for each EU Member State, this article evaluates the investments in the digitalization of public services, the use of broadband, the access to digital public services, the number of e-government users, the level of digital public services for citizens and businesses and open data. In our analysis, we will argue that the gaps and discrepancies in the field of digitalization of public administration, correlated with the indicators monitored in the Digital Economy and Society Index, have conditioned the EU Member States to design specific actions, measures and investments related to the national context. Points for practitioners The gaps and discrepancies concerning the digitalization of public administration are analyzed and evaluated in relation to the state-of-play of digital transformation of public administration in EU Member States, correlated with the objectives and funding allocated to the digitalization pillar of the NRRP. The digitalization gap is measured by identifying and evaluating quantifiable indicators. Evaluations regarding the pillar of the digital transformation of public administration at national and regional levels are available, allowing comparative analyses to be carried out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research background: Technological changes are one of the reasons for the resizing of jobs. Demographic change is affecting the labour market, both locally and regionally. Thus, together with technological changes, they lead to changes in the level of education of graduates. The process is accentuated by globalization. There are changes in the labour market that require people with higher skills. Purpose of the article: For Romania, the analysis of the level of education of graduates at regional level, depending on the county, is presented in this article. In the paper, depending on the level of education, the evolution at county level of the number of graduates is presented. At the same time, the evolution of the total number of graduates for the levels of primary-secondary, vocational, high school, post-high school education, respectively for the level of university education, is analyzed. Methods: Thus, following the analysis, it is observed that, at national level, the number of graduates decreased. Also, for certain levels of education and only for some counties, the number of graduates has increased. Findings & Value added: The radiography performed is important for the regional needs’ analysis of the labour market. Thus, following the analysis, it was found that most graduates of tertiary education are from university centers: Bucharest, Cluj, Iași, Timiș. Graduates with a high level of knowledges, skills, and competencies have higher opportunities and abilities to identify and occupy a job.

Research background: In the context of globalization, education processes are of great importance for the development of urban communities. Identifying the needs of the labour market should be the goal of any organization that provides education and training. Purpose of the article: Globalization leads to the emergence of new specializations and qualifications. In order to facilitate the acquisition of competencies and abilities specific to new qualifications and specializations, it is necessary to involve education and training providers. Methods: The article analyses the evolution of the employment rate, respectively of the unemployment rate. Urban communities need to respond to new societal, economic and environmental challenges. Findings & Value added: One of the major problems of urban communities is the risk of poverty and social exclusion. Thus, for the Member States of the European Union, the article presents the comparative situation of people at risk of poverty and social exclusion. For the Member States of the European Union, the evolution of the participation rate in education and training programs is followed in this article. The article also presents an analysis of the level of education of the urban population. Due to urban concentrations, the launch of new products and services is much easier.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant changes to the daily lives of citizens, their interactions with their communities, the nongovernmental sector and the public administration, as well as threatening the continuity of the civic initiatives they had developed. This paper draws on the scientific literature on public participation and uses qualitative methods of inquiry (semi-structured interviews) to explore how external factors, in this case the COVID-19 pandemic, affected the public participation of citizens organised in civic initiative groups in Bucharest, Romania. One key contribution of the study pertains to the interplay between practice and the conceptual level of public participation. In this respect, the results showed that many members of civic group perceive it to be genuinely contradictory in practice in their definitions of public participation. However, their ideal visions of public participation in genuine democratic politics are markedly collaborative. The research showed that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on civic groups has been quite limited, adding obstacles to public participation but also enabling opportunities. In particular, it can be concluded that the pandemic has exacerbated pre-existing challenges. It should also be noted that co-creation of public services can be defined by a certain level of continuity, especially in the case of civic groups that were involved in co-initiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the data from an online survey and a focus group, the article explores the public participation of citizens with a focus on participatory planning processes. The exploratory research tackles participatory initiatives and interactions between citizens, public administration, and professionals that aim to improve the well-being of citizens in their cities of residence. The research employed a theoretical view of collaborative public participation, one that is not, however, confined to a dualistic approach, but one in which the citizens value the existence of intermediary actors or structures to guide public participation. Moreover, adversarial potential in participatory planning processes is not excluded, especially as participation involves a diverse network of actors. In the context of a significant consensus regarding the importance of citizen participation in all stages of decision making, the article shows that there is, however, a low level of information regarding participatory planning processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an account of the transformational capacity of Romanian public administration in relation to four main aspects: (1) human resource performance and integrity; (2) territorial, functional and institutional decentralization; (3) public policies and (4) capitalizing on the digital and innovative component. The Romania case study highlights the gradual transformation of public administration in the last 30 years, as a reaction to the emergence of economic, social and political crises. For an imperative and irreversible change, we have identified directions for capitalizing on opportunities and good practices in the matter, in the context of the intensified integration process in NATO and the EU. We have analyzed the strategic documents on strengthening and accelerating the transformation of public administration and highlighted the need for the interconnection and interdependence of its four pillars to meet the specific objectives of Horizon 2030. For decision-makers, practitioners and researchers, this article aims to stimulate and contribute to the dedicated public debate and consultation of coherent, predictable and sustainable legislation and practices in the matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to conduct an analysis regarding the professional training process of the public personnel from the Romanian public administration, in the 2020-2022 period. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the field of professional training has experienced a series of emerging changes, that had a major impact on the management of the professional training, in general, and training processes, in particular. The research method used consists of an opinion survey, conducted with the self-administered questionnaire, designed by the authors, based on the main studies and researches in the field. The questionnaire was sent to public institutions in the central public administration, under the subordination/ coordination of ministries. 239 respondents agreed to participate in the study. The research revealed that the public personnel from public administration prefers the professional training process to be conducted in the classical and mixed systems (blended learning). In addition, benefits of the training process in the online system which can be developed, in order to optimize this type of training, were identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This present research brings into focus the figure of the prefect and wojewód seen at the crossroads between career public servants representing the interests of the Government and political agents, appointed and dismissed at the whim of the Prime Minister. This paper approaches the issue of the holder of the prefect's office in Romania and Poland employing a prosopographic analysis and applies a Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) on select items in order to identify the general trend and particularities of their profiles. This institution was structured and articulated at the confluence of some administrative and political actions and integrated in the national institutional framework as a key actor, which continues to connect the institutional capacity of the state and the political capacity of the Government. Moving beyond the legal framework and institutional design of each country, we look at the profile - involving educational, professional and political affiliation - of the people actually appointed to this position in order to ascertain the weight of each of these factors when called to serve in office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research is an exploratory study aiming at presenting the measures taken by the European Union to support the creation and development of clusters and to analyze Romania’s position in relation to other Member States in terms of key factors impacting cluster development. Impact factors on the development of clusters, such as digital skills among the active population, the degree of development of innovative companies, the number of applications for obtaining patents per one million inhabitants, the degree of development of clusters and the share of GDP in expenditures for research, development and innovation (%) were considered. The study highlights that Romania ranks last in the European ranking, due to the lack of incentives to promote the emergence of strong innovative clusters, underfunding of the innovation system and the absence of a legislative framework to support small and medium enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to the involvement of public administration (PA) as a catalyst for economic development, today we are witnessing the need to enhance innovation in PA itself, with a commitment to maximizing efficiency, effectiveness, performance, and to improve quality of public service. In PA, the emerging theory of innovation represents a combined effort between conventional organizational innovation tools such as strategic planning and modern ones such as Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and e-governance. With regard to this challenging situation, this paper seeks to present a substantial literature concerning the theory of innovation, New Public Management (NPM), ICT, and e-governance. Furthermore, using a qualitative approach based on centered semi-structured interviews, this article illustrates the current activities conducted by the Lebanese government, specifically the Office of Ministry of State for Administrative Reform (OMSAR), compared by data gathered from platforms and databases from Romanian PA such as Ministry of Communication and Information Society, OECD, DESI index, and Eurostat on ICT and e-governance at European level. The paper results reveal the significant effect of innovation in Romanian PA paving the road toward facing the challenge to achieve its digital 2020 agenda and contributing to transparency, efficiency, effectiveness, community participation, and development of public service. However, Lebanese PA should join and shake hands to strengthen the adoption of innovation in its public corridors and should cross the notion of "still born" application of ICT to a fruitful implementation contributing to strategic innovation in public services and improved PA efficiency and performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early 2000s brought over an intrinsic change in the way businesses operate. Many organizations experienced a fundamental transformation in the way people connect, work and co-create value for the business and the wider scope of stakeholders. This transformation was supported by the rapid development and implementation of collaborative technology, as well as by a major metamorphosis of working styles: remote work (tele-work), alternative employment, dual carriers (double employment) and many others. Corporate Japan has also experienced a major shift from the traditional physical office-based, life-time employment to a wide variety of working agreements and collaboration styles. This paper analyzes how digital technology has eased cross-divisional collaboration and value co-creation at NTT Communications, a subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Corporation, the largest telecommunications company in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper analyses the leadership styles practiced in Romania's Prefectures Institutions and the impact of gender on it. The purpose is to analyze if the leadership practiced by civil servants from top management is the effective one as well as if female leaders are perceived as being better leaders than men are. The main objective of the study is to establish which are the leadership styles practiced predominantly and the differences between men and women when occupying leadership positions. The methodology of research consists of an opinion survey conducted in the 42 Prefectures (the institutions that represent the Government in each County) of Romania using a questionnaire. The questionnaire measured two types of effective leadership behaviors: transformational and transactional and one ineffective style, namely laissez-faire (Howell, Avolio, 1993). The research revealed that the leaders from the studied institutions are presenting mostly transformational and transactional characteristics and lower scores at the passive leadership behaviors, which makes them effective leaders. A direct relation between gender and the leadership styles practiced could not be established due to the fact that the civil servants considered that men and women behave almost the same when occupying the same leadership position. The study also revealed that the majority of the respondents (over 70%) did not have a preference regarding leaders' gender. Even if the research did not show that women are better leaders than men, the fact that they are perceived as being transformational leaders leads to the idea that female leaders are effective leaders capable of making public institutions more modern, resilient and performant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The civil servants' training process plays a key role in developing the public employees' skills and broadening their vision. The present paper seeks to examine the perception of Employment Agencies' civil servants regarding the effectiveness of training programs, measured through their impact on the number of projects initiated and implemented under Sectorial Operational Programme for Human Resources Development 2007-2013. The role of training programs in enhancing civil servants' innovation capacity is also investigated. The methodology consists in an analysis of 253 projects financed by the European Social Fund (ESF) during 2009-2015 and an empirical research using a representative sample of 337 civil servants who attended EU funded training courses in project management. The conclusions of this paper indicated a direct relation between the number of projects developing training courses in 'project management' and the number of projects initiated and implemented annually by the territorial Agencies for Employment. Moreover, a positive correlation between the training programs and the innovation capacity of civil servants from County Agencies for Employment was also identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shale gas involves a technology which is a controversial method of energy production mainly because there are uncertainties about the possible environmental and human health impacts. The article aims to identify the level of knowledge in relation to the impact of environmental risks attached to shale gas exploitation in the academic and scientific community. It does so by employing the expert elicitation approach which has the benefit of quantifying the judgment of individual experts. We have revealed a consistency among researchers in assessing the level of uncertainty of the main environmental risks and a preferred policy option in dealing with uncertainty, a vow for improved transparency, openness and ease of access to information. Shale gas policy-making in Europe needs a science- based approach as science informs policy by delivering objective and reliable knowledge. The article concludes that developing a comprehensive approach based on scientific data and an appropriate regulatory framework will provide a path forward for the future development of contested policies like shale gas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]