ROMANIA: Development of the Digitization Strategy for the Romanian Court of Accounts - identification of competencies in order to facilitate the implementation of the Digitization Strategy

The Romanian Court of Accounts has the ambition to continue to provide audit evidence in a clear and usable format for Romanian citizens and their elected representatives by increasing the degree of use of digital solutions in the operations of the Court of Accounts in order to provide timely and accurate information without using ambiguous specific terminologies.

For these, we are increasingly digitizing and automating the processes and methods of data collection, qualitative and quantitative data analysis, and communication with the public. In addition, we also include the training of auditors' digital professional skills.

The Romanian Court of Accounts wanted to carry out a digital transformation of the institution due to its focus on providing results at higher standards, in terms of:

• compliance with business vision and legal regulation - lack of tolerance for deviations;
• IT services available for all employees, capable of addressing all aspects of business operations by supporting business activities as described and providing the necessary capability;
• optimum response time to all requirements and maintaining some operations transparent for the public and citizens;
• cost optimization.

The result of the analysis of the level of maturity and digital skills for RCoA employees and the distribution of participants by areas and functional positions occupied were the following.

The graphs below show the number of respondents in relation to the number of completed questionnaires, but also the geographical distribution of the respondents on the submitted and completed questionnaires.

The level of digital skills in Data usage, information, and documents in digital format for RCoA employees.

The results referring to the level of digital skills in the use of data, information, and documents in digital format for employees of the RCoA, as well as the analyzed areas such as: management of data, information and documents in digital format, creation, evaluation and management of documents in electronic format and management of open-data are shown in the images below.

The level of skills regarding communication and sharing of resources in digital format.

The analyzed areas: communication and sharing of resources in digital format within our institution and Communication and sharing of information with citizens, audited institutions, and other public institutions are shown in the graphs below.

The level of skills regarding emerging technologies (cloud computing, big-data & data analytics, artificial intelligence, internet of things, block chain, green digitalization) used for digital transformation has been shown and explained in the graphs below.

Regarding "Data and information security level” questions were asked about the Protection of devices and personal data as well as their confidentiality, and were shown in the graph below.

The digital transformation of the institution is not just a new technical exercise, but a transformation of the way the RCoA is organized to perform more focused audits and of better quality, and the way the decisions are made and implemented.

In the context of the vast organizational and informational structure, the new digital strategy must not only theoretically specify the adaptation and improvement of the way internal activities are carried out and in the audit sector, the volume of data to be analyzed and the complexity of the processes.

Even if the staff of the Romanian Court of Accounts has obtained a good level of digital skills, these are only minimal skills, but the basic skills for public functions in the digital age and more advanced activities cannot be performed with current skills. This requires a development program based on digital skills that should address the entire organization.

The IT Department of RCoA was identified as not having enough staff, for all activities and for the future digital transformation. In addition, the IT staff does not have the necessary level of training to perform all tasks.