Three and a half years later “more than 220 major projects have been auctioned for a total amount of 2.3 billion, more than 400 million in aid, more than 700 million in PPPs and within the next six months we will have another 600 million in tenders” said the Minister
Speaking at the Digital Economy Forum organized by the Association of Informatics & Communications Enterprises of Greece (SEPE), the Minister of Digital Governance, Kyriakos Pierrakakis, referred to the latest “3.5 years of intensive cooperation” and events which he characteristically commented “it is very interesting how one can” process them “to move forward”.
Mr. Pierrakakis referred to his belief that “informatics and technology can have the greatest possible social contribution, the greatest possible impact to change and influence the problems of society” and the preparation that preceded his assumption of his duties as a minister both in terms of “field” and “horizon”. “The field is what was done well and what was not done well. Systems that had worked: Greece had the legacy of Taxis, it had the legacy of prescription, many other systems. And in many things we had failures too, like everyone else. And of course the horizon in the sense that it was enough to see what had happened in other states and learn from the mistakes of others – this is the most intelligent way to learn, from your own mistakes is the most effective. The most intelligent thing is to learn from the mistakes of the others” pointed out Mr. Pierrakakis.
Referring to the government’s choices, the Minister of Digital Governance noted that gov.gr was created in the first 9 months of government while there was a reversal of strategy, starting “from the need we wanted to serve. I think the definition of the problem was conquered, which was that Greece was a bureaucratic country and we can use simple digital technologies to make it less bureaucratic”, adding the corresponding competences to the portfolio of the ministry to have access to “all the Registries of the State between them, to make them talk” to each other.
Taking stock, Mr. Pierrakakis referred to “three main developments in this field of digital public services. First of all, we counted them, that is, we made an assessment of how many these services are, we did not know until 2019. First question “as we once did not know how many civil servants there are in Greece”, first question to my colleagues “how many are the services provided by Digitally public?”. The answer is “we didn’t know”. We actually counted how many of these services there were and found 501. We’re adding two on day one: disclaimer and authorization. Today it is 1,500. So step one is tripling the services. What did the tripling of services produce? Up to 100 uses. We had 8.8 million digital transactions in 2018, we have 1 billion digital transactions this year. You divide it by the population and it captures the queues you avoided. And that in itself is the magnitude of this whole reform.”
Furthermore, 3.5 years later “over 220 major projects totaling 2.3 billion have been auctioned, over 400 million in aid, more than 700 million in PPPs and within the next six months we will have another 600 million in tenders” underlined Mr. Pierrakakis, adding that all these projects were recorded “from the first day of 2019”, in the “Bible of Digital Transformation “, to the implementation of which the Recovery Fund contributed decisively. “We started doing what is described as a gap analysis, that is, what is the gap per ministry, per service” said Mr. Pierrakakis, continuing, “then the Recovery Fund came, the coronavirus allowed us to finance all the necessary and to enter the realm of the desired. In other words, with projects that talk with the future, not only with the needs of the country that we had in our hands at that moment”.
At the same time, as the Minister of Digital Governance saidreforms have been made in telecommunications, where there is also “the double image”, i.e. “in mobile telephony we should be somewhere around 25th in the world, while in fixed line we should be 93rd-95th”. “In mobile we have done the most innovative spectrum auction in Europe and certainly one of the most innovative in the world through the creation of Phaistos and how we are investing in 5G. In fixed we started from 270 thousand Fiber to the Home lines at the end of 2019 to be today 1.15 million, from a denominator of 4.8 million potential lines that will be covered until 2027 by private investments and by Ultra Fast Broadband. And there we run fast. And that’s where competition in Technology comes into the equation. And there we see Starlink now starting to broadcast in our country and being regulated by EETT” emphasized Mr. Pierrakakis.
Regarding “space” he commented that it is used “in an earthly way which foresees and mandates that we have microsatellites and secure government communications and to use them again in the daily problems we have in our country, such as fires. And there is a very large program of the Recovery Fund.”
Referring to the coronavirus crisis, Mr. Pierrakakis pointed out that “it was one of the best versions of the Greek state, which I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to see and participate in. Whether it was the Health system executives, whether it was the IT people – they are all here, my partners, the Civil Protection executives, the Army executives without whom we could never have run the logistics. As far as running the algorithms, consulting firms that helped us, how we took vaccine distribution from five points to 440. How we all had to become more experts in that and in operations research.”
“The needle is moving and moving at the fastest speed it has ever moved. It is an unexpected reform not in terms of its direction but in terms of its speed and acceleration,” said Mr. Pierrakakis characteristically of the progress that has been achieved, adding that “the issue is that this infrastructure reform can continue regardless of the political cycle in the coming years, this will be the greatest possible conquest of all of us.”
Read the News today and get the latest news.
Follow Skai.gr on Google News and be the first to know all the news.
I have worked in the news industry for over 10 years. I have been an author at News Bulletin 247 for the past 2 years. I mostly cover politics news. I am a highly experienced and respected journalist. I have won numerous awards for my work.
