Press review – January 14, 2021

Approximately 65.000 students enrolled in pre-university education units in the country are at risk of not completing the average in the first semester, due to the impossibility of access to technological resources - the main factor, to which are added other reasons such as non-participation in classes or various medical situations, according to the Ministry of National Education.

At the level of Timiș county, their number is almost 2.000, most of them being in the urban area. Compared to the previous school year, the number of students from Timișoara who are at risk of not completing the average in the first semester is three times higher. A first solution proposed by the management of the School Inspectorate of Timiș County aims at discussions with the representatives of the school units and with the families of the students in this situation for the efficiency of didactic interventions to support the educable.

The competent ministry has already announced that the period for concluding school situations from the first semester will be extended, extending to eight weeks from the return to classes in the second semester. Also, where appropriate, averages may be completed with two grades, regardless of the number of hours allocated weekly to each discipline.

The general school inspector of Timișu says that 47,23% of teachers in the county expressed their desire to be vaccinated. The percentage is not yet well defined, as the staff survey continues until tomorrow, January 14.

According to the general school inspector Marin Popescu, 47,23% of a total of over 9.000 teachers and education employees want to be vaccinated so far.

"From the survey we have, a percentage of 47,23 percent of fellow teachers want vaccination. The reporting has not ended and will be completed on January 14, and the reporting will be sent to the Ministry of Education", says Marin Popescu, the general school inspector of Timișoara.

Marin Popescu says that at the inspectorate level, an information campaign is underway for teaching staff, through meetings with health specialists.

"The County School Inspectorate is launching an information session for colleagues. The first meeting took place with the doctor Virgil Musta and the directors of the educational units. Meetings with epidemiologists, DSP experts and family doctors follow. We want a safe return to school and that's why we want to inform. Teachers are not required to be vaccinated. We vaccinate with the community and family in mind. Any teacher is an added safety factor for the educational environment where he/she goes. Schools were safe units because the rules were followed. After the walls, the rules are no longer respected," declared Popescu.

In Timiș there are 6.671 teachers, 795 auxiliary staff and 1.698 employees in the education system.

Less than half of pre-university teachers want to be vaccinated, Minister Sorin Cîmpeanu announced in an interview on Antena3. He explained that the percentage of those who want to be vaccinated in pre-university education is almost 50%, while in the university system it has exceeded 60%.

"As I said, I asked a question about the availability of vaccination with a final answer on the afternoon of January 15. Before I came to your show, I followed the current situation. Almost 50% of pre-university education staff want vaccination. Close. And the university system in Romania has already reached 60%, with the exception of teaching staff who are also doctors, who have already been vaccinated, so obviously they no longer have the availability of vaccination because they have already been vaccinated."

"We specified that these answers that we want from the 340.000 employees in the education system do not represent a legal obligation to vaccinate, but we are interested in being able to plan the number of doses needed for vaccination," Cîmpeanu also said

"In absolute terms, you should know that there are 200 thousand people from the education system who have already declared that they want to be vaccinated", according to the minister.

"As we enter the second phase of the COVID-19 pandemic and as the number of cases continues to rise around the world, we must make every effort to keep schools open or prioritize their reopening." , UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said in a statement issued on Wednesday.

She points out that "closing schools must be a measure of last resort, after all other options have been analysed", given the serious consequences this closure has on children. "Children's health, development, safety and well-being are threatened. The most vulnerable among them will bear the brunt."

Despite overwhelming evidence of the impact of school closures on children, and despite a growing body of evidence that schools are not fueling the pandemic, too many countries have chosen to keep schools closed, some for nearly a year.

The consequences of the school closures, which, at the height of social distancing measures caused by the pandemic, affected 90% of students worldwide and left more than a third of schoolchildren without access to distance education, have been devastating.

Estimates show that the number of children who do not participate in education will reach 24 million, a level not seen for years and for which we have fought hard to reduce.

Children's ability to read, write and do basic math has suffered, and the skills they need to thrive in the 21st century economy have diminished.

Children's health, development, safety and well-being are threatened. The most vulnerable among them will bear the brunt.

Without school meals, children go hungry and their nutrition suffers. Without daily interaction with their peers and with reduced mobility, they lose physical fitness and show signs of psychological distress. Without the safety net that school often provides, children are more vulnerable to abuse, child marriage and child labour.

The largest website for the sale of drugs, counterfeit documents and fake currency, hosted by DarkNet, was dismantled, and its alleged administrator was arrested, the prosecutor's office in the German city of Koblenz announced on Tuesday, reports AFP.

The alleged operator of 'DarkMarket', a 34-year-old Australian, was arrested this weekend at the German-Denmark border and is currently in pre-trial detention.

The release states that "more than 20 servers from the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine" were confiscated.

The platform was dismantled on Monday after the servers were shut down, according to the Koblenz prosecutor's office.

He conducted investigations for several months together with the central criminal investigation service in Oldenburg. Police officers from several countries, such as the United States, Great Britain, Denmark, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, also contributed to the investigation.

According to the investigators, DarkMarket was, 'undoubtedly the largest market in the world on the DarkNet, with almost 500.000 users and over 2.400 sellers'.

"In total, at least 320.000 transactions were carried out" on the platform, with the cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Monero, and the total amount could amount to 140 million euros.

DarkMarket was 'mainly used for the sale of drugs of all types', but the platform also sold 'fake coins, stolen or forged credit card data, anonymous SIM cards' or computer viruses, states the German prosecutor's office.

At Western University, classes will be face-to-face when the state of alert is lifted.

The rector of the University of the West Marilen Pirtea says that, according to the legislation, Romanian higher education is designed this way and that online teaching was adopted as a solution for an extreme situation, namely the pandemic.

The Polytechnic of Timișoara could keep the option of broadcasting online courses, but only in large amphitheatres, if the university professors want this.

The enthusiasm for digitization shown at the beginning of the pandemic seems to have subsided - we hear less and less about the "digitization opportunity created by the coronavirus", and the big digitization projects, with a few exceptions, seem to be placed at the bottom of the list of priorities of the moment.

In reality, the situation is blocked by the lack of several essential laws, based on which digitization could be imposed, uniformly, at the level of the central and local administration, with propagation in the economy.

If these laws were to be approved, then not only would the Romanian taxpayer's dream come true, but the immediate opportunity offered by Brussels, which requests that at least 20% of the funds allocated through the National Resilience Plans, could be spent on digitization component. It is about tens of millions of euros. money which will be available starting this year, provided we advance projects...

1- An Interoperability Law - the only one that can compel institutions to stop holding data captive

"We were talking about electronic identity. With some difficulty, this project was started (ed.: it's about the Centralized Software Platform for Digital Identity - PSCID). It is a reference project for Romania's digital transformation process. It has a delivery term of 2 years, but important: there will be intermediate deliveries, so certain components of the PSCID could be operational earlier.

Why interoperability is important - this project aims to create an interoperability node, which would work as an "automatic gateway" to all national public registers and which would allow the exchange of data between institutions and public authorities. It would ensure communication between public IT systems for the efficient provision of services electronically.

2- The electronic signature: today we see it, and it is not

In the legislative priorities chapter of his parliamentary mandate, Sabin Sărmaș also mentions: the full operationalization of the Electronic Signature Law, a new archiving law and the regulation of the way in which software is delivered for the public sector.

Clarification: although there is a general framework provided by GEO no. 38/2020, the Electronic Signature Law is only half functional.

At the inter-institutional level, for better or for worse, no one complains. However, in the relationship with the taxpayer, the public authorities and institutions were obliged to issue administrative documents until the summer of 2020 to establish the type of electronic signature required for a certain service provided. Something that some institutions either forgot or did not communicate publicly.

3- The small revolution in public procurement and the specific problem of IT services

"We made only one notable progress - the dynamic procurement system is being implemented in SEAP, I think it will be ready by the end of January. It's a bit of a revolution – there will be a pool of service providers. Companies or institutions will have a framework contract, based on which they can add or remove suppliers, depending on the evolution of the project", Sabin Sărmaș states.

The problem of purchases of services IT is that they are treated the same as any other in the conditions where the technological advance in the field is unprecedented elsewhere. The procurement process is cumbersome, rigid, bogged down by objections just like highway construction, so that the purchased systems are often outdated by the time the contracts are signed.

Romanian students who have to go to universities abroad and need a vaccine must contact the Ministry of Health to be included in the second stage of vaccination, considering that the legislation regulating the order in which the social categories are vaccinated is in currently working at the Ministry of Health, Prime Minister Florin Cîțu stated today in a press conference at the Victoria Palace.

"I repeat, the second stage, that list grows every day because there are more priorities that we see, this may also be a category that we will selectively include for the people who will enter the II- a, a decision has not yet been taken, I recommend those who are in this situation to talk to the Ministry of Health, they are the ones who make the Government Decision", said Florin Cîțu.