Cluj-Napoca sets out to improve functioning of local administration

By integrating new and innovative projects into its daily work, the Romanian city is embarking on a long journey of self-improvement

The Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca will never tire of self-improvement. Through its latest initiative, it will also become one of the first municipalities in the country to integrate an array of smart and citizen-friendly solutions that will improve the functioning of its local administration.

Learning from the experience of others

The latest project for the municipal administration of Cluj-Napoca’s local administration is Innovato-R – a key pillar of an overarching initiative meant to adapt the good practices of the Italian city of Turin’s local government and implement them into the local context. Its main parts constitute of the participatory development of projects dedicated to improving the performance of local government, reducing losses and capitalization of resources, increasing the quality of public services and others.

The approach, based on the concept of "Minimum Viable Product" (MVP), is transferred through Innovato-R to a number of different cities across Europe, including Paris (France), Murcia (Spain), Porto (Portugal), Veszprem (Hungary) and Rotterdam (Netherlands), who are also part of the project.

The local transfer proposed by the Cluj-Napoca City Hall concerns the construction of the Innovato-R Cluj-Napoca platform by adapting the city’s participatory budget framework to the central idea of ​​the project, namely supporting innovative solutions inside the city hall, for optimization, communication, quality and sustainability of processes of the public administration.

"I congratulate my colleagues who had the first proposals - I was glad to see that there is indeed a real potential for internal innovation in local government and I believe that this tool could be replicated in other institutions, as a means of to improve the quality of public services provided to citizens and to make the internal work of employees more efficient.

With the same legislation, the same resources and constraints, improvements can be made, our internal innovators have just demonstrated this. Some projects are being taken over and implemented, but some are already implemented and have created savings in internal resources," said Cluj-Napoca’s Mayor Emil Boc, upon the project’s announcement.