E-administration as a way of increasing the managerial capacity in public sector

Abstract

This paper deals with a developing concept, that of public sector reform, and explores it within the boundaries of e-administration practices. International competition and internal raising expectations have lead governments across the world to reconfigure their relationships with the surrounding environments. In doing so, they mostly switched to a newer paradigm, based not on affirmation and mechanical theories, but on the concept of a living, biological system. Following this trend, many governments and their subsequent organizations choose to become flexible and decentralized, to recognize once again the importance of horizontal collaboration and internal partnerships and to value information. In this trend, ITC represents one of the modern instruments that may help implementing democracy and developing current public services as well as educational systems. Fully aware of the need for a revolution in the organizational culture of public administration and of a transition towards a horizontal, service-oriented administration with intensive information exchange among all its partners, Romania has adopted the European vision on e-government and e-governance, preparing itself for a complete transformation that the new technologies both produce and allow. In this context, 'The Government's Strategy concerning the National Action Plan e-administration', enacted in October 2001 by the Romanian Parliament supports the European idea of getting the governance closer to its citizens. As this vision is described within the paper, the authors will analyze the Romanian solutions to increasing administrative efficiency. In doing so, the most relevant scientific contributions to defining the 'e-administration' concept are to be summarized and implications of its content, exercised against a Romanian background.