DIGITAL DIVIDE AND E-GOVERNMENT IN ROMANIA

This paper tries to measure the level of digital divide existing in Romania and also to verify its relationship with e-government. At country level, Romania is one of the least digitally developed countries in Europe, but is showing a sharp increase in the last years. At social level, based on data from public opinion surveys, digital divide is analyzed at two levels: lack of access and lack of knowledge. The results are similar to those in other countries: digital divide appears along the same dimensions: rural/urban, age, education, wealth and, to a lesser extent, gender. E-government services, while supposed to be at a decent level, are used only by a very small number of citizens, thus having no impact over the digital divide. Confronted with a serious divide, with great chances to grow, Romania has to promote policies designed to increase access and knowledge. Also, e-government is not possible, unless administrative culture and procedures do not change. Global divide Digital divide can be defined as the gap between those persons who are computer literate and have access to information resources like the Internet and those who do not. This digital divide is continually narrowing in terms of access to technology and communication, and also in terms of computer literacy. There are two types of digital divide: a global divide between countries and a social divide, inside each nation, based on certain socio-demographic characteristics (telecommunication access, affordability of services, income, skills or education). For the global divide we can see that there is a significant relationship between the wealth of a nation (expressed as GDP/capita) and one of the indicators for information society development, percentage of population online2