Digital Governance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis on Thursday presented the plans for the digitisation of the Greek state and the actions taken so far, during a discussion with Athens-Macedonian News Agency (ANA) President Emilios Perdikaris in the context of the Olympia Forum conference.
“We had a plan that was ready beforehand. A plan that was started by the prime minister in 2018, which was exceptionally complete and solid. We knew what we wanted to accomplish. The pandemic added the dimension of necessity,” Pierrakakis stated, adding that this was “only the start, many more things need to be done”.
The minister referred to the great number of digital transactions in the first half of 2021, saying that there were 150 million digital visits when in 2018 there were just 8.8 million. He noted that there was ample room to continue in the same way, “in which case, in a few years we will have succeeded in digitising the whole state.”
Asked what he considers to be his greatest achievement, Pierrakakis said cited the gov.gr portal, adding that this was “an umbrella under which everything ‘fits’, even the national vaccination system. So, gov.gr is the great digital transformation of the country in the field of digital public services.”
Finally, replying to a question from Perdikaris about the prospects of electronic voting systems, the minister said that this is not a technological issue and that the pairing of technology and democracy should not be the first step. “The first thing you must do is to digitise the state, step by step, improve services and build up people’s trust in these systems,” he said.
SOURCE: AMNA
