Posts Tagged ‘European Union’

A common cause of project failures in Romania

decembrie 27, 2007

During the communist era, the “langue de bois”, that lacks accuracy and precision, was the main cause of project failures in Romania. This situation isn’t corrected, and probably this is mainly due to the external pressures over the scientific researchers. The principle „Publish or perish” means that the Romanian researcher has to write the scientific papers in English, in order not to „perish”. Unfortunately this creates a gap between what the young and performant Romanian scientific researcher does, and what is already deposited as science in the Romanian language, with a clear ontological representation. There is a lot of talk here in contemporary Romania about implementing the  Knowledge Society in Romania. But how could there be a real ‘Society of Knowledge’ in Romania, without the ‘technical writing’ of thorough protocols about the inner workings of that ‘Society of Knowledge’ in the Romanian language? Let we first analyze the causes of the failures of three very costly previous projects of modernisation that were implemented in Romania.1.In the decade 1970-1980, the World Bank pumped about 10 billion dollars in order to modernise the Romanian industry. The final results showed a very poor technical performance and a total lack of economic efficiency. The reason for this failure could be finally traced in the lack of knowledge of the elementary principles, mainly in neoclassical economics. 2. After the change of the political regime in Romania in the year 1989, the George Soros Foundation  for the Open Society in Romania pumped a lot of private money into the projects of many Non Gouvernamental Organizations in Romania, projects that were written in English language, to teach the lessons of democracy to the Romanian population. Finally the philanthropist George Soros admitted that it was a total waste of money on the inefficient Romanian NGOs for the democracy, because the results were not seen in the education of the population in the real spirit of democracy. No such projects involved writing simple but clear texts in Romanian language explaining the targets of  those projects for the Open Society in Romania. Also the philanthropist George Soros never instituted a prize for a clear text in the Romanian language about the scope and goal of  the Open Society in Romania. 3.The project PHARE RO for the Science and Technology Industrial Park “Tehnopolis” in Iasi (University Innovation Center and Business Infrastructure Development Park for SMEs and Private Investors, within the UNISPAR Programme), for incubating SMEs specialized in IT. In this technology park, with a very vague strategic planning, if at all, –the planners never even pretended they have previously performed a SWOT Analysis–, between the years 2000-2004 were pumped about 7.5 million euro from public money, mostly PHARE money. The Romanian observers consider it another example of useless waste of money by theEuropean Union in Romania. We have to underline the detail that the Romanian specialists at the Tehnopolis- Iasi were schooled in France, so not in the Romanian language. The particular reasons for the three failures are multiple, but the main common cause could be identified in the fact that in all three cases there was a lack of ontological representations in the Romanian language for the inner workings of all the three failed projects. Starting from here, let we consider the industrial SMEs with the standardized and complete environmental management in the Romanian economy as a system that should itself be managed. A SWOT Analysis applied to this system shows that the main weakness of the system is the lack of ontological representations for the ISO 14000 family of standards in the Romanian language. If we proceed in our project of implementing the industrial SMEs with the standardized and complete environmental management without correcting this weakness, and to make the existence of the correct technical writings of protocols, tutorial and standards related to the ISO 14000 area a Strength in the industrial SMEs system in Romania, the result will be the same as in the three failed projects presented at the beginning of this article. Why did it take such a long time to recognize this common cause of the failure of some modernization projects? One of the reasons is ideological. During the communist era, the “langue de bois”, that lacks accuracy and precision, was the main cause. Why does continue this state of facts even after the communist era? Because there are, we have to admit, some weak points in the Romanian Language, due to the historical peculiarities of the development of Romania. For instance, the modern Romanian language was created only in the 19th century, and also only in the 19th century it was written the first grammar of the Romanian language. The century of the Enlightenment did not exist in Romania. In the 18th century, the use of the Romanian language as an official state language was forbidden by the Phanariots (the foreign overlords in Romania), who tried to generalize the use of the Greek language in Romania. As to the favoring the Greek language in Romania against the use of the Romanian language we can quote from Encyclopædia Britannica an unusual laudative analysis which goes against the fundamental rights of the Romanian people: „It is necessary, however, to credit the Phanariots with a quite genuine devotion to the cause of learning and education, which they alone were able to provide inside the oppressed Christian ghetto. The advantages they obtained from the Porte (the Turkish government) for building schools and for developing Greek letters in the Romanian principalities of Moldavia and Walachia that were entrusted to their rule came to play a substantial role in the rebirth of Greece.” This quotation shows that in the European West the real problems of the Romanian language as a conceptual tool to integrate the Romanian population in the modern world are not really understood. Let we notice that „the rebirth of Greece” also meant „the death of Romania”. All this was ended by a popular revolt of the Romanian people in 1821. Only after that popular revolt were created the first schools in the Romanian language as an educational system. So the common traceable cause for all the three failed projects presented above is the lack of exhaustive and clear explanatory technical protocols in the Romanian language. This situation is still perpetuated today, because there is no official and recognized profession of „technical writer” in the Romanian language. Why is it so? No official person in Romania answers that question, no one in a position of power in Romania even wants to listen that question. Titus Filipas