Ciprian Ciucu announces free partnerships with private companies to digitalize Bucharest City Hall services

Bucharest Mayor Ciprian Ciucu has announced that he is in talks with several private companies willing to support, free of charge, the digitalization of services provided by Bucharest City Hall. The mayor says Bucharest is “seriously behind” in this area, while the institution has limited capacity to draw up specifications for the procurement of digital services.

Ciucu intends to propose to the General Council of Bucharest, by the end of this year at the latest, the transparent establishment of partnerships with interested companies. According to the mayor, the companies have offered voluntary assistance because they believe the local administration needs support.

The mayor criticizes the fragmentation of the existing IT systems under the municipality’s authority. He says the applications are not integrated, are sometimes duplicated and costly, while each district uses its own solutions.

Efforts to increase administrative capacity are being hampered by the fact that the project to reorganize Bucharest City Hall has been challenged in court for more than six months. Ciucu compared the situation with the period when he led District 6, where digitalization projects were implemented and several operations were simplified. In Barcelona, the mayor was shown a platform from Abu Dhabi that integrates more than 1,100 public and private services.