Regional Digital Corridors national workshop (Bucharest, Romania)

On September 20, 2024, the Danube Engineering Hub cluster, in collaboration with the Bucharest Technical University of Construction and the European Digital Innovation Hub - Wallachia eHub, organized a national workshop titled “Digital Regional Corridors in Romania” at Blejoi City Hall.

This event provided a unique opportunity for representatives from local governments, state administration, academia, and interest groups to focus on developing innovation ecosystems for smart cities and to analyze future challenges.

The national workshop was part of the PilotInnCities project (Pilot-based Innovation Ecosystems for Smart Cities), an innovative initiative coordinated by the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic and implemented by a consortium of 11 members from six countries in the Danube region.

The main partner, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, represented by Mr. Miroslav Scheiner, the consortium coordinator, presented the project’s general framework. He was joined by Prof. Dr. Florin Băltărețu from the Technical University of Construction Bucharest and Prof. Dr. Irina Gabriela Rădulescu from the Danube Engineering Hub cluster, who highlighted the project’s objectives and indicators.

Nearly 30 guests, including official representatives from local authorities, companies, and academia, attended the event both onsite and online. They discussed topics related to networking, developing a smart and innovative ecosystem for smart localities, coordinating localities using agile piloting, and the digitalization of local administration in Romania. 

An interesting topic of the event was the concept of a regional digital corridor, initiated and developed by the European Digital Innovation Hub - Wallachia eHub. The coordinator of the digital hub, Mr. Costin Lianu, presented the synergies between this project and the Wallachia eHub project.

Additionally, companies present at the event offered software and digitization solutions for public authorities.

The workshop concluded with a round table discussion titled “Smart Public Administration Based on Digital Technologies.” During this session, representatives from public authorities and participating companies shared their perspectives, leading to the outline of a project idea aimed at interconnecting localities in the region. This project will focus on implementing action plans at local, regional and national levels in the future.