Statement by H.
E. Mr. Zsolt Nagy
Minister of Communications and Information
Technology
Romania
Mister Chairman,
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am honoured to represent Romania at the
second stage of the World Summit on the Information Society.
It is a pleasure for me, personally, and for the entire
Romanian delegation to be here, in Tunisia – a country whose
generosity made it possible for us to meet and debate
topical issues on how to turn the virtual information
society into a real one.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
"All human beings are born free and equal
in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and
consciousness and should act towards one another in a spirit
of brotherhood. [... ] Everyone has the right to life,
liberty and security of person. [...] Everyone has the right
to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes
freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek,
receive and impart information and ideas through any media
and regardless of frontiers" These fundamental rights are
stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; here
and now it is high-time to reinforce this statement.
The Romanian government strongly believes
that today people have one more unalienable right: the right
to information, the right to be able to access information
and to use it for personal fulfilment and for a greater
good. We, as government, should provide all necessary tools
for granting people the opportunity of making the most of
the modern information and communication technologies.
We are all here today because we must
define another important birth certificate for a new
society. Romania is here because we are fully aware of the
shift our world made and of the high speed journey we need
to make towards the Information Society.
The ICT sector in Romania has reached a
development rate pace that most of the countries are only
hoping for: 21%. Today, Romania boasts figures like a 4
billion euro ICT market, 115,000 .ro domains, 24% internet
users, 2,500,000 PCs registered. By encouraging the wide use
of information technologies and consolidating the ICT
industry the Government steadily pursues the aim of
increasing the competitiveness of the Romanian economy and
of improving the efficiency of the public administration, to
the greater comfort of the citizens. You may see samples of
the results of these efforts at the Romanian stand. Romania
is present here with over 75 representatives, the second
largest delegation at WSIS, not only for presenting the
successful projects, but also to receive a worthy
recognition of our endeavours: a World Summit Award for an
e-learning solution, developed by a private company in joint
venture with the Romanian government.
The mission of the Ministry of
Communications and Information Technology in Romania is to
create the proper context for the development of the
Information Society. And we do so by designing and
implementing projects to complete the transition to the
information society and to ensure a transparent,
equidistant, safe and open frame that shall provide better
public services to the Romanian citizens through ICTs.
For the next three years, among the
priorities of the Ministry of Communications and Information
Technology there are: the implementation of the ICT in
the public administration; to render the public
administration efficient and flexible; to support and
develop ICT projects for the SMEs. The implementation of ICT
under the conditions set by the open standards and the
interoperability of the local and central public
administration is a major task.
Another important goal is to expand
the access to communications services all around Romania
by setting up Public Access Points that should allow access
to the public network of telephony (PSTN) and to Internet in
the localities with poor communications facilities.
Mesdames et messieurs,
Au mois de septembre 2006, Bucarest sera
la ville hôte du XIème Sommet des Chefs d'Etat et de
gouvernement ayant le français en partage. Le Sommet a comme
thème «Les technologies de l'information dans l'éducation ».
Ce sera une occasion de plus pour la Roumanie de partager
son expérience dans le domaine des TIC.
Thank you.
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