It is recalled that the process before going digital was particularly time-consuming, involved several services and multiple queues
Digital birth declaration is now well established, with 96% of providers who have access to the app digitally declaring the birth of a baby in one go at the maternity ward without any hassle for new parents. Specifically, the figures of the Ministry of Digital Governance show that from February 17, 2020, when the pilot operation of the application began, until February 28, 2023, a total of 248,599 digital birth declarations have been registered. In fact, in March 2023, 5,975 birth declarations were made digitally.
The graph (fig. 1) shows the digital declarations of birth during the period March 2022 – March 2023.
In fact, out of a total of 131 entities that have gained access to the birth declaration application, 126 make use of this application, i.e. approximately 96% and in particular 88 are public hospitals and 43 are private clinics. It is worth mentioning that the remaining 5 institutions which, although they have gained access, have zero entries in the birth declarations to date, are all Health Centers, in which no birth has occurred to date.
It is recalled that the process before it became digital was particularly time-consuming, involving several services and multiple queues. For this reason and as the Minister of Digital Governance, Kyriakos Pierrakakis has pointed out, the priority given and the choice of simplifying and digitizing the declaration of a child’s birth was made apart from semiological reasons because “it was one of the most labyrinthine. We will continue to simplify and digitize the administrative procedures in order to create a modern and functional state”.
According to the data, from the geographical distribution of the digital birth declaration in the 13 regions of the country for the period November 2022 – March 2023, it follows that 45% of the digital birth declarations are recorded in the Attica Region (fig. 2).
In terms of birth certificates, a total of 7,443 birth certificates were issued in March 2023. Of these, 6,015 were issued by the relevant registries of the country, 54 by the special registry office in Athens and 1,374 by Greek consulates abroad.
Performance of AMKA – Insurable capacity of children
From March 1, 2022 until March 31, 2023, there is generally a steady increase in both the AMKA yield for newborns and the number of newborns’ registrations in the EFKA registry. Throughout the time period, high rates of provision of these two electronic services are observed.
In fact, in March 2023, 91.19% of the total granting of AMKA to newborns in the country was done automatically through the digital birth declaration, while the corresponding percentage of newborn registrations in EFKA is approximately 86.29% in the same month.
By 31 March 2023, a total of 329,495 child benefit applications were submitted to OPECA, of which 207,445 applications were submitted through the electronic birth declaration application, i.e. approximately 63%. Specifically for the period November 2022 – March 2023, the percentage of requests submitted by the birth declaration subsystem, on average, is approximately 73.18% and rises in the month of March 2023 to 72.99%.
Please note that of the total birth allowance claims submitted through the birth declaration subsystem in March 2023:
– 4,774 were approved automatically, without citizen intervention
– 292 remained pending
– 124 were rejected because one or more criteria were not met, while for
– 38 requests there was a failure to create a request (e.g. due to a technical problem during the call).
Comparing the above data with the overall situation of the requests of the previous months, it is found that in the month of March 2023, as in the previous months, a high percentage of automatically approved requests is recorded, reaching 91.32%. The percentage of pending requests in the same month is of the order of 5.59%, while the percentage of requests for which the request creation failed is of the order of 0.73%.
As of March 2023, the main reason why birth benefit applications submitted by the birth declaration subsystem remain pending is that the household does not meet the income criteria (40.48%), followed by the fact that no found a cleared tax return for the year 2022, with a rate of 21.11%.
Source: Skai
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