AGERPRES has announced the signing of a funding agreement for the project 'Digitisation of the archive of the National News Agency AGERPRES for the purpose of preserving and making it available as a public service for the benefit of citizens, research, public and private entities,' SMIS code 349517.

The agreement was concluded with the Authority for the Digitalisation of Romania, acting as Intermediate Body for the 2021-2027 Smart Growth, Digitalisation and Financial Instruments Programme (PoCIDIF), the National News Agency said on Tuesday.

The project will be implemented from 28 September 2026 to 28 September 2029 (36 months), with a total value of 7,529,934.73 lei and 100% non-reimbursable funding, of which 5,643,633.30 lei will come from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and 1,886,301.43 lei from the national budget.

'This is the first European project in which AGERPRES moves from the position of partner to that of coordinator and beneficiary. In recent years, we have worked alongside European news agencies on projects funded by the European Commission. Now we are taking the next step: assuming leadership of the entire project and responsibility for seeing it through to completion, with concrete results,' said AGERPRES Director General Claudia-Victoria Nicolae.

'The AGERPRES archives will no longer remain locked away in the Agency's metal filing cabinets. We are opening them up to the world in digital format, so that the public can discover Romania's history through the images and texts collected by AGERPRES since 1889, the year the Agency was founded. It is the memory of a country, preserved in documents and images, a record of its time and a testimony to the transformations Romania has undergone. We have a responsibility to carry this memory forward and make it accessible to everyone. At a time when we are increasingly faced with the question of what is real and what is not, these documents become more than an archive: they become evidence of their time and an important reference point in the fight against disinformation and fake news,' the AGERPRES Director General stressed.

Director General of the Intermediate Body for the Promotion of the Information Society (OIPSI) Ana-Maria Busoniu underscored the need to implement the project.

'The project 'Digitisation of the archive of the National News Agency AGERPRES for the purpose of preserving and making it available as a public service for the benefit of citizens, research, public and private entities,' MySMIS code 349517, is an example of the use of European funds for digitalisation and the preservation of Romania's historical memory, with the aim of making it accessible to everyone while also providing modern tools to combat disinformation. We support the need to implement it and hope that the results will become a benchmark digitally transformed public service,' said Ana-Maria Busoniu.

The AGERPRES historical photographic archive contains approximately 4.5 million images on glass plates, film and slides, produced between 1927 and 2003. These are supplemented by an extensive archive of news stories transmitted over the decades on paper, via telex and by fax. Most of this heritage exists only in physical form, where it is exposed to deterioration, and cannot be accessed by the public.

The project's objective is to create a public-interest digital archive accessible to anyone with an internet connection: citizens, researchers, teachers and students, newsrooms, public institutions and companies.

By the end of the implementation period, the project will digitise and publish on the archive platform 100,000 photographs and 100,000 texts of historical and heritage value. Three software platforms will be developed: an archive and viewing platform for historical images, a platform for verifying the authenticity of images using artificial intelligence and blockchain and the 'Story of the Day' platform, which digitally certifies journalistic content.

The project will create three new digital public services: archive storage and management, online public access and digital content certification. The entire system will be protected by dedicated cybersecurity infrastructure. The digital archive aims to attract at least 12,200 users per year by the end of the implementation period and approximately 68,000 users per year during the sustainability period.

AGERPRES provides the public with information about the project through its own channels: the news feed, the agerpres.ro website and official social media pages. These activities involve no additional costs from the project budget, while European funding is directed entirely towards digitalisation, infrastructure and services for the public. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Daniel Popescu; EN - writing by: Adina Panaitescu)