The desperation of the technology industry in Romania has reached the ears of Nicușor Dan. Companies produce top prototypes, but the state does not buy them. “How can we help this country, because it is very difficult to help it?”

More than 50 startups and technology companies gathered on Tuesday at the Cotroceni Palace, as part of the DeepTech Romania Forum. The entrepreneurs presented autonomous drones, nanosatellites and artificial intelligence solutions, but the conclusion of the event was a bitter one: the Romanian state finances the research, but fails to purchase the resulting products. President Nicușor Dan promises better collaboration, while experts demand the urgent modification of the military procurement law.

• The event was organized by Techcelerator and ROTSA – the Romanian Association for Startups in Technology and hosted by the Presidential Administration, and the president Nicușor Dan also participated in part of the discussions, even taking direct questions from the representatives of the companies.

Although the topic was varied, a red thread of the discussion emerged more and more strongly throughout the event: how can small companies that even invest in research and development and even have innovative products “help” the state and be noticed by key institutions.

“How can we help this country, because it is very difficult to help it”, asked one of the entrepreneurs in despair. Then, one by one, other similar questions followed.

The state finances the prototype, but the Ministry of Defense does not buy

However, the discussions at the DeepTech Forum began with a harsh observation made by the man who practically ensures the financing of research projects in Romania: companies produce innovative products for nothing, which reach the functional prototype stage, if the state and its ministries do not buy them.

Adrian Curaj, president of UEFISCDI – the Romanian Financing and Innovation Agency that administers 80% of Romania's competitive development budget – says that the chain breaks at the end of the project.

“Romanian research can. We have tools, we can invest up to 10 million euros in a project that results in a functional prototype. We will all applaud that it is amazing, but the end will be that it reaches a technological threshold and is not taken further”, explained Adrian Curaj.

He gave a concrete example of the lack of coherence between ministries.

“For nothing, I have a functional product and technology that can be manufactured in Romania, if the one who is the beneficiary, let's say the Ministry of Defense, does not buy. It is a major challenge. We can close this chain with public procurement of innovation. We can cover all the way, from need acquisition to purchase, in one procedure. In this way, we no longer lose years in public procurement”, said Curaj.

Courage's intervention, although it depicts a gloomy landscape, was appreciated and caused applause in the room among the many entrepreneurs and representatives of the private sector.

Adrian Curaj emphasized that Romania has already missed strategic opportunities in the area of ​​dual-use technology (dual use), civil and military.

“We missed the chance to develop under the SAFE program a strategic testing and certification infrastructure. It is essential for entrepreneurs to be able to test and certify products here. We have to decide strategically: do we play with the idea of ​​providing technologies or do we just buy from others?”

Asked by the moderator what ingredient institutions lack when discussing “active and dynamic partnerships with the entrepreneurial environment”, Adrian Curaj answered briefly: Predictability.

Nicușor Dan: “You are doing very interesting things for which the state did not have an ear or a hand”

Arriving in front of the tech entrepreneurs, President Nicușor Dan declared that at the moment, both the economy and especially security “depends on technology.

“Anyone who doesn't invest in the security area, in the technology, will be left behind much more than they would have been left behind 20 years ago,” Dan said at the start of his speech.

He believes that it is the duty of a state at this time to strengthen any collaboration with the private party.

“You are doing many very interesting things for which the state often did not lend an ear or lend a hand. We need to see what is not working in the chain from research to the product. We need to see how the Romanian state can help you”, said Nicușor Dan before receiving questions from the audience.

Tech entrepreneurs' dialogue with the president: “How can we help this country? It's very difficult”

The dialogue with the entrepreneurs revealed some of the frustrations of the private sector. A representative of a medical company gave a concrete example: their system for calculating the quality of doctors' examinations in real time is present in dozens of private hospitals, but only in one public hospital.

“How can we help this country, because it is very difficult to help it?”, he asked.

“That is one of the purposes of this meeting, to facilitate a discussion, of course, fair, clean, between the representatives of the private environment and people imported from the public administration”, answered the president Nicușor Dan.

A similar question came from a company specializing in cyber security: “How can the presidential administration help us to be able to reach state companies and be able to provide the resilience that Romania needs on the cyber security side?”.

Diplomats, as “sales agents” for Romanian tech

Another company, Zeta from Cluj Napoca that develops AI solutions that already has a number of clients abroad, says it would like more help from Romanian embassies abroad to be able to sell to other countries.

“We already have some clients abroad, but what we have seen, at other companies similar to ours, for example from Israel or from Great Britain, they use and are promoted a lot by the embassy of the respective countries in order to be able to sell in other countries. I mean, we have even seen examples where the UK embassy works almost like a sales agent for companies from Great Britain, and we would be interested to find out how the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could do the same for Romanian companies, become our sales agent with quotes strictly,” said the company representative.

President Nicușor Dan confirmed that such an approach should be “a normality” and that this will be emphasized even more in the mandates of the new ambassadors.

“It's a normality that I said at the annual diplomacy meeting. Now, as you know, a significant number of diplomats will be replaced because the four-year term has passed. The answer is not for now, but for September one of the important duties or important tasks, if not the most important, of our diplomats in certain areas will be to help Romanian companies,” said President Nicușor Dan.

Solutions for unlocking government procurement

Florentin Timoianu, lawyer at KPMG Legal, presented the conclusions of an analysis on the access of small companies to the defense market. The analysis proposed several changes in legislation, but also in the approach of the institutions regarding the purchase of high-tech products of the last generation.

One of the proposed solutions is to define needs by performance, not by products.

In other words, the state should not auction an already existing product, but formulate functional requirements and operational objectives. Thus, companies can come up with innovative ideas to solve the problem.

Another change would require institutions, such as the Ministry of Defense for example, to use competitive parallel development mechanisms. That is, the contracting authority can appoint two or three companies to develop a solution in parallel. Even if the initial investment is higher, the state is guaranteed to select the most suitable option at the end, says the lawyer.

Another change aims to speed up procedures.

Timoianu says that technology evolves faster than bureaucracy.

“Classic procurement procedures involve a very long period of time from the moment they start to the moment they are completed. During this time, technologies develop, and technologies that were modern and new, current, at the time the auction began, are already outdated at the time it is completed”, explained the representative of KPMG Legal.