Frequently asked questions

No. It is a personal vision, written on my own initiative, not an official state project. If an institution would like to discuss these ideas, I am open to it: write to me. → Why I wrote this

No. I have no link to any political party. The bill I started from was voted for in the Senate by all political groups. The subject should not belong to anyone in particular.

I want to open a public discussion about what the Romanian state’s digital services should look like. I am not collecting signatures, and I do not claim that the solution described here is the only possible one. I have tried to put forward an option concrete enough to be discussed, criticised and improved.

From official documents: laws, government decisions, ADR reports, parliamentary files, other countries’ legal acts. Each chapter has a “What I base this on” section, and the whole research is described on the page What it is based on.

The bill prompted me to write this vision. We share the same goal, but I propose a different route: first we build and test, then we make it mandatory. → The point-by-point comparison

A law can provide the mandate and the money, but it cannot build the product. All EU countries that made a design system mandatory built it first. An obligation for something that does not exist will most likely lead to delays and exceptions. → Chapter 7

No. They will work the same way: buttons, forms and messages will behave in the same way. Each institution keeps its name, and each level of administration (central, local, prefecture) can keep its colour. → Chapter 3

No. The state’s symbols are set by law and remain untouched. The proposal actually starts from the Government’s existing visual identity guide and from the flag colours set by law.

Romanian remains the official language and the legal reference version. But some people living in Romania understand Hungarian, Ukrainian, sign language or English better. The law already requires, under certain conditions, the use of minority languages in public administration, and Romania’s interoperability law (Law no. 242/2022) requires multilingualism in digital services. If someone does not understand what they have to do, the service has not achieved its purpose.

That a website can be used by anyone: by someone who does not see well, who cannot use a mouse, who uses a program that reads the screen aloud, who has difficulty reading. It has also been a legal obligation for all public websites since 2018.

We take their good ideas, but we have specific needs: the CNP (Romanian personal numeric code), addresses with block and staircase numbers, diacritics, Hungarian, Romanian rules for institutions’ websites. And the American system is going through a governance crisis. The closest reusable code is that of the Republic of Moldova, which is already in Romanian. → What others have done

My estimate: about €0.5–0.7 million in the first 9 months and €1.1–1.8 million a year once the system is mature. That means about 6–9 euro cents a year for each inhabitant. These are estimates that need to be validated. → Chapter 7

And how much is spent today? Nobody knows exactly. Each institution pays separately for its website and its maintenance, and the costs are not added up anywhere. That is, in itself, one of the problems described in chapter 2.

A single example shows the order of magnitude. The government programme DigiLocal (Government Emergency Ordinance, OUG, no. 56/2024) has a budget of 200 million lei for 2024–2025, or about €40 million. The money is for town halls and county councils: software and, up to a limit of 30%, equipment. Each authority could receive at most 75,000–250,000 lei, depending on its type. By May 2025, the ministry had published two interim lists, with about 900 projects accepted. Each town hall buys its own solution. The state offered a visual model for the website, but not shared, ready-built building blocks.

The two sums cannot be compared directly. DigiLocal also pays for equipment, and a design system does not remove the cost of each website. But it shows that the state already spends large sums on websites, without shared building blocks that can be reused from one institution to another.

Not the town halls, from their own budgets. I propose a separate fund, from European money, following Italy’s model. There, with money from the recovery and resilience plan (PNRR), things worked like this:

• The amount was fixed and known in advance. Each town hall received a lump sum, set according to its number of inhabitants.
• The state offered the models for free. Website templates and themes for content management systems (CMS), ready for verification. Adapting them was as easy as possible.
• The money came only after the result. The town hall did the work first. Then an independent verifier, paid by the state and not by the town hall, confirmed that the website met the criteria. Only then did the town hall receive the money.
• There was a second chance, but not an unlimited one. If the verification found problems and the deadline had not passed, the town hall could fix them. If the deadline passed, the funding was withdrawn.

The result: almost 6,000 town halls aligned with the same model in three and a half years, as reported in December 2025, without a single fine. → What others have done

It would be, if they decided the standard. That is why I propose that companies contribute expertise, but without voting rights and without any advantage in public procurement. Everything is public, and experts declare their conflicts of interest. → Chapter 6

The proposal has clear checkpoints and stopping criteria. If the results do not appear, the programme stops or is rethought, before a lot of money is spent. → Chapter 7

Yes. In 2016–2017 there was a design guide in Romanian for state websites. It was abandoned at about 70%. From what I found, it had no institution to own it, no budget and no team. That is why the proposal puts continuity first.