Deputy Prime Minister Kostis Hatzidakis presented a draft law with the title “Interventions for a More Citizen-Friendly State,” which mainly aims to reduce the burdens citizens face in their interactions with the public sector.
With 14 interventions included in the draft law, which will be posted for public consultation in the coming days, the government aims to deliver a significant blow to bureaucracy, with the common denominator being “ the fight against the deep state”, the minister said.
The 14 interventions announced by Hatzidakis were as follows:
Replacing supporting documents with a responsible declaration
Public sector abstention, under certain conditions, from claiming citizens’ property
Digital updates to citizens on the progress of their applications
Systematic monitoring of citizen complaints through the Integrity Advisor
The public sector refraining from legal action in court cases of particular social significance
Assignment to the Internal Audit Unit for compliance with court rulings
Mandatory publication of circulars
Digital information on service operating hours
Uniform interpretation of legislation by administrative bodies handling citizen objections
EFKA-style public sector transactions: issuance of certificates and attestations with full validity by certified professionals
Upgrading the role of notaries and operating them as a one-stop shop
Removal of mandatory topographic drafting for property transfer contracts in areas within urban plans with a certified implementation act
Option to pay inheritance tax during the transfer of inherited property
Authority for AADE (Independent Authority for Public Revenue) to finalize the transfer of foreclosed property
Hatzidakis stressed that “significant steps are being taken in the fight against the deep state. Specifically, the digital modernization of the state and the modernization of EFKA, where pension issuance has now reached German standards – pensions awarded within 60 days – the 1555 service, digital tools to upgrade health services, promotion of public sector evaluation, and the transfer of OPEKEPE to AADE.”
PS if state institutions are not digitally link with each other and civil servants keep on demanding “documents on paper” the government can initiate 1000+14 intervention until the end of the days…
One crash example is that when you go to a public hospital for “blood tests” on a digital prescription as outpatient you first go to office A where clerks do ‘whatever’ and give you bunch of papers, then to office B where they give you another bunch of papers and with them you go to office C for your blood test. In some hospitals, these 3 offices are in 3 different buildings meters away from each other and the patient has to cover them on foot. Why all the trouble? That’s THE bureaucracy…
Bureaucracy are also the mountains of boxes full of documents on papers in every state institution.
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When the UK was seriously trying to reform/improve its National Health Service (they have now given up, I think), the Thatcherite thinking was that multiple, piecemeal changes — promoting efficiency — would obviously work. It didn’t; the changes cost billions; and the NHS is now a disaster.
Interestingly, a physicist with an interest in public affairs decided to model the NHS and use the model to determine how reform could be achieved. His conclusion, which turned out to be precisely correct, was that you could not reform such a complex system: every small change you might make would make the system function even less well. Therefore, the only way to reform was to start again – to reinvent the NHS and make it more rational and efficient from the very first design stages. Complex systems are a law unto themselves, almost like living organisms.
The same conclusion applies to Greek bureaucracy. Its origins are chaotic, mixing up nepotism with job creation, corruption with public service, placing unskilled people into skilled jobs; and God knows what else. Of course, the cost of starting a complex system again is phenomenal; however, my view is that it is less than the obscene amounts of money being spent on useless AI centres and all the energy and water that they waste. Until governments understand that difficult problems require difficult (and costly) solutions, nothing will improve. I have no expectations that the Mitsotakis government will spend anything worth mentioning: they merely mimic the actions of solving problems, whilst having no interest in actually solving them.
EFKA pension issued in 60 days will be quite a stretch – mine took 60 months and the application involved completing 5 different forms all containing the same information in different formats. Even 60 days is hardly state of the art. My first UK state pension payment was paid into my bank account 10 days after my 65th birthday and no application was needed.