Kostas Theodorakopoulos had to wait more than a year to get his full pension and searched his pension fund office dozens of times. “It’s an obstacle course, Witness the sixty-year-old nanny. Of course we get advance payments from the state to be able to survive every day, but it’s better to live with savings! » Inside the Social Security Bureau, files are piled up like a mountain.
A bill-paying reporter showed up with all her little pieces of paper to count with a public servant, calculator in hand, trying to estimate the Social Security entitlements the young woman could benefit from. If they remain frequent in Greece, scenarios like this will increasingly be a thing of the past: the government has accelerated the digitization of public services since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
As of March 21, 2020, schools and businesses have just closed, Therefore, the Ministry of Digital Governance has launched a platform gov.gr, which brings together 501 online services (sworn declarations, birth certificates, etc.). “Since then, digital services have continued to grow. There are now more than 1,315, and citizens are embracing them: 566 million digital transactions with the state in 2021, 6 times more than in 2020we at the Digital Governance Department rest assured. Between summer 2020 and March 2021, Greeks saved 75,000 hours they would have previously spent in public administration queues. »
“Customer System”
During the first lockdown from March 23 to May 4, 2020, the authorities dematerialised exit certificates by establishing an SMS system, a move welcomed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. At the start of the vaccination campaign, an app was launched that allowed people to book appointments and get certificates.
“The pandemic has become an accelerator for digital transformation as citizens need to stay safe and the country needs to continue to function as normal,” said in a recent interview Euronews TV Channel, Digital Governance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis.According to Eurostat, almost 20% of the working population in this country has neither the necessary skills nor access to the Internet (when the EU-wide average [UE] 10% in 2019), the bet was not won.
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