The challenges of digitizing the education system in geographic areas with development disparities: a case study of Oltenia county, Romania

Digitalization is an essential vector of global transformation, which, through the integration of digital platforms and artificial intelligence in education, is bringing about profound changes in teaching, learning, and assessment, as well as structural changes in society. Objectives: The objective of the research is to understand how a county with significant development disparities uses the opportunities offered by digitization as a solution for optimizing territorial management policies. The research identifies and describes the uneven distribution of investments and purchases of IT equipment for education, as well as highlighting patterns of spatial distribution of digitization in the education system. Methods: The research used data provided by the SICAP, the electronic platform that ensures the transparency of the public procurement process and procedures in Romania, which includes relevant indicators on public procurement in the education system, 2007–2024. Indicators such as the number of public procurement procedures associated with the digitization of education and budget allocations, broken down annually and by place of residence (urban/rural), were analyzed. Data processing was performed in Python/JupyterLab (Pandas, Matplotlib, Seaborn), and territorial distributions were evaluated in QGIS using choropleth maps and bivariate maps. Results: Disparities in the digitization of the education system in Olt County have a clear territorial structure, organized into clusters of advantages, concentrated in urban centers and more developed peri-urban areas, where infrastructure, educational resources, human capital, and administrative capacity are concentrated, and clusters of vulnerability, specific to peripheral rural areas. Conclusions: Spatial models offer an essential methodological advantage when analyzing regional disparities in the digitization of education, in order to understand "where" the phenomenon occurs and, above all, "how" it spreads and amplifies across the territory.