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Building Romanian Regulatory Capacity Internews' implementation of the Romania Information Technology Initiative - Policy component continues apace, having completed two initial capacity-building workshops and one US study tour for Romania's newly created National Regulatory Authority for Communications (ANRC). Regulatory Principles Workshop The first workshop, held September 2002 in Bucharest, addressed the characteristics of a modern regulator and its working methods, key regulatory challenges and priorities, and pending tasks for each division of ANRC. Trainers included EU regulators and EU industry representatives, and the US perspective was presented by the FCC. The workshop results were:
In October 2002, all five ANRC division directors and the ANRC President completed a study tour to Washington, DC to observe how a regulator actually operates. The ANRC spent a whole day at the FCC reviewing the various functions of the FCC, which was followed by visits to the Virginia State Corporation Commission, the National Telecommunications Information Agency, the State Department, Verizon, Cingular, and the Washington DC Office of Cable Television and Telecommunications. These visits sparked extensive discussions on topics such as spectrum allocation, economic analysis, cost allocation, legal issues, personnel issues, public relations, and consumer awareness and protection, with considerable attention to the latter, a major challenge for ANRC staff. In their evaluation of the study tour, the ANRC highlighted the following as most immediately useful to their work:
The RITI-Policy Project staff will work with the ANRC with follow-on activities from this study tour. The ANRC noted that the full participation in the tour by the RITI Chief-of-Party, Mr. Jerker Torngren, made it easier for them to focus on important information. The ANRC expressed appreciation to the individuals they met who agreed to stay in email contact after their return to Romania. Romanian Private Sector ICT Industry Workshop A one-day workshop with representatives of the Romanian private sector ICT industry was held in Bucharest in September 2002. The purpose of the workshop was to help the Romanian ICT industry become more aware of the role of the ANRC and the industry benefits of supporting transparent licensing processes adopted by the ANRC. A consultative group was formed and is working on an informal basis with the ANRC. The RITI-Policy Project began on May 21st, 2002 and will run three years (Associate Cooperative Agreement No. 186-A-00-02-00101-00 under the dot-GOV Leader Award No. GDG-A-00-01-00009-00). |
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