Spring 2026 brought a set of student oriented events, enhancing our collaboration with TEDIHT – The European Digital Innovation Hub in Transilvania and Babeș Bolyai University – Faculty of Mathemetics and Informatics. The second event of the Hackathon: Solutions for the Digitalization of the Public Sector series, focused on matching the mentors with the teams that take part in the project! TEDIHT team, in the ABC Incubator building, hosted it and it turned out into a vibrant networking afternoon. Representatives of the public administration sector were also present since they are the topic owners of the three challenges launched to the student teams.
The Challenges of the Hackathon
The hackathon aiming to support the digitalization of the public sector has been structured on three main topics or challenges. Each challenge addresses a different area relevant for the current public administration: helpdesk for the citizens, document inspection and archiving, parking management. These resulted from the pain points analyzed together with the beneficiaries, local Romanian public institutions.
The final list consists of:
- Intelligent HelpDesk for Public Institution Employees – proposed by INCDTIM – National Research and Development Institute for Isotopic and Molecular Technologies from Cluj, coordinated by engineer Oana Raița, Senior Researcher II.
- Intelligent System for Document Inspection and Archiving – proposed by UTCN – The Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, coordinated by Ovidiu Stan, PhD senior lecturer.
- Intelligent System for Managing and Monitoring Parking Subscriptions – proposed by UBB – Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, coordinated by Darius Bufnea, PhD, Associate Professor.
The Teams and the Multidisciplinary Support
An impressive number of 16 teams were formed out of 60 enthusiastic students form the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics from Babeș-Bolyai University. They were briefed about the requirements and they need to come up with practical solutions and its presentation, by the end of April.
According to the known technologies and the insights, they can gather from the main beneficiaries, the students will have to develop specific prototypes. In order to achieve this, each team got a bonus tech mentor from the companies that are members of Transilvania IT Cluster.
In addition to the technical mentorship, all teams benefit of marketing mentorship from our colleague Diana Roșca, Marketing Manager at SOFTECH software development. Her involvement includes supporting the participants in structuring their ideas and clearly communicating the solutions they develop.
The Target-Market Product Fitness Dilemma
During the mentorship provided to the hackathon teams, our marketing department delivered a road map on how to build a solution that resonates with our target audience.
Our rep pointed out that applications often fail in practice because:
- They are built based on what is thought to be useful, NOT on what people actually need
- There is confusion between who pays and who uses the product
- There is a lack of understanding of how the product is actually used
From our hard-won experience at SOFTECH, in the market, those who understand the user come out on top!
What impressed us was that some students were already aware of the different roles that an app development team has to take into consideration:
- Beneficiary: the organization or individual that benefits from the project
- Client: the party that purchases or funds the solution
- User: the person who actually uses the application
We had interesting discussion on why it is important to differentiate clearly these roles. The highlighted aspects were:
- The importance of building apps for users, not for the client
- The priority of creating a seamless and enjoyable user experience
- The urge to increase product/app adoption
The key-objective in this process is to optimize the end-user experience so that all parties benefit to the maximum of the produc or solution to be deployed.
Next, we clarified how to build a user persona and how to follow the customer journey. On the following weeks we tried to decompose the customer’s journey, starting from what triggers them, how he searches for a solution, what are their thoughts about various steps, how they find resolution and what feedback can be collected.
Partnerships and Fan Gallery
Truth to be told, this initiative is one in a long series of public-private collaboration between the IT community, the academia and the public sector in Cluj county and North-West Region of Romania.
Our company has been a constant partner for the local universities providing tech mentoring for almost 15 years and hiring opportunities, an enthusiastic member of Transilvania IT cluster and low profile supporter of The European Innovation Hub in Transilvania. On the business side, we have also tried to help public institutions with tailored solutions when the opportunity was there.
In the case of TEDIHT Hackathon Series: Digitalization of Public Sector, SOFTECH is also a sponsor of the event, alongside Axion International Partners and Jackdaw Studio. We provide mentorship and really fun prizes for the teams.
What is Coming Up Next?
The third hackathon event: Solutions for the Digitalization of the Public Sector: Demo Day is just around the corner. Demo Day is the final event of the “Solutions for the Digitalization of the Public Sector” hackathon, during which the amazing 16 participating teams will present the solutions they have developed.
Each team will have 10 minutes, structured as follows: 3 minutes for the solution pitch, 5 minutes to demonstrate its functionality, and 2 minutes for a Q&A session.
The audience will have the opportunity to vote for their favourite solution in each challenge, and the projects will be evaluated by a jury based on criteria such as relevance, degree of innovation, and applicability.
The event will provide a platform for presenting and evaluating the proposed solutions, fostering dialogue between the teams, the jury, and the audience.
It will be held of April 30, at ABC Incubator, in the presence of all those involved!
Fingers crossed for everyone and may the best teams win!