The CEO of Information Society S.A. describes, in an exclusive interview in netweek, the big bet that the executive “arm” of the Ministry of Digital Governance is facing: this year, along with celebrating 20 years of operation, the company is launching a hundred small, medium and large projects, with a total budget of €2.5 billion – roughly the total budget of all the projects it has implemented since its foundation…
By GIANNIS RIZOPOULOS
These days, what you most often hear about in the Information Society S.A. ecosystem, the buzzword to use the international term, is undoubtedly the word “new”: new logo, new projects, new systems, new hires, new partners, new equipment, new goals, new resources, new offices (located close to Neos Kosmos, on the Kallithea side of Syggrou Avenue) – the new sign was even expected to arrive on the day right after the interview!
However, the new era dawning for one of the two executive “arms” of the Ministry of Digital Governance (the other one is GRNET) is accompanied by very important challenges and big bets that Stavros Asthenidis, CEO of Information Society, and his partners need to win, so that the country can take advantage of its last chance (cross our fingers!) to “get aboard the train” of development… I press “Record” and ask him the first question:
How big is the challenge that you are facing today?
The programme agreements that are active at the moment and already signed amount to approximately €2.5 billion, along with SYZEFXIS II, which alone amounts to €600 million. This is the largest project that has been implemented and is in the roll-out phase, after 10+ years. We hope to overcome the problems that have arisen globally in the logistics sector and the processor shortages – we are missing some critical components for the data centres in Athens and Chania (where Disaster Recovery is located), which are expected at the end of November. The goal is for 10% of the agencies to have entered the system by April, so that the rest can follow at an accelerated rate by the end of the year.
Other than the much afflicted SYZEFXIS?
The remaining €1.9M concerns a multitude of projects – more than 40 will come out in the upcoming months, but in total there are many more, around 100, because we have projects that are already in the tender process, others that have just been contracted, e.g. the HNMS project concerning the nationwide development of meteorological stations (with a budget of €12.5M) – it just came back from the Court of Auditors, we will sign the contract with Space and the implementation will begin. Many such projects have already started being implemented… We also have temporary approval for the important project of tele-trials (e-Justice, in Wind and Space, with a budget of €200M) for the Ministry of Justice. A very important project, which will enable remote hearings, with the aim of minimizing the costly transfer of detainees from prisons (most of them); special areas will be created in courthouses for this purpose. The project will be combined with the electronic case list for trials, which will also greatly reduce traffic.
At the moment, active contracts add up to a budget of around €840M, with VAT. The Codification Portal, a platform for better lawmaking and preparatory legislative work, has also been signed, while the Enterprise Agreement for the software is in the implementation stage, which allowed us to exit the piracy “blacklists” and facilitated (as was a prerequisite) the arrival of significant foreign investments in Greece. There are many smaller projects, with a budget of €2-3M, such as the Information System for the Exercise of Activities & Control (also a prerequisite of the memorandum agreements), while we also “performed” the contracts for a large part of the vaccination process, such as vaccine logistics.
What about the “classic” projects? HRMS, ERP?
HRMS, the Human Resources Management System, has been awarded to the association of 01 Solutions – Byte, with a budget of around €7M, as has the project of the Army Equity Fund; the very important project of ERP has been awarded to the association of Unisystems – PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the project of the Hellenic Data Protection Authority, the Media Center is under temporary approval, the project for the Anti-Money Laundering Authority (concerning “black money”), the project for the Coast Guard are in the tender process, many more PPPs and other supporting projects… Also, the big project on Interoperability is in progress, which we hope will be finished soon – the Evaluation Committee is running a little late, as over 18 proposals were submitted… I hope that by mid-November the Committee’s work will be finished there as well.
We also have the consulate project, for which the evaluation has been completed and it is in the awarding phase, the PSAPE (Information System for the Licensing of RES Projects) is under evaluation, as is Gov Hub, another project for the Certification of Museums… These are all mixed projects – NSRF, national PIP and a couple from the Recovery Fund, initially included in the Public Investment Programme, which are transitioning, for example, tele-trials are a NSRF project. In fact, in planning the tenders for the upcoming months, we have included a series of important projects related to CRMS, the platform for providing services to citizens and businesses, with a budget of approximately €60M + VAT, which will be submitted to public consultation until mid-November and which will “envelop” gov.gr – in essence, it will bring it under its umbrella, with the aim of providing much more.
What about the Recovery Fund?
In the Recovery Fund, all the projects that have moved forward and which we are responsible for putting out to tender, amount to approximately €2.5B, with VAT. There are always agencies with requests… now it seems reasonable, but two years ago it was not! This is yet another large gamble that we have won so far: we proved ourselves worthy of the expectations – everyone who participated in the work did it so as to take the company to where it was and where it should be…
In these projects, the whole market must have a role and it does! The challenge is so great and the funding available is so large that the whole market will be involved. No one is going to be left out, on the contrary – the human resources in the market are not enough!
Which projects do you consider as flagship projects?
Certainly, e-Justice and CRMS, Hybrid Cloud and the digitization projects, e.g. the records in the Health and Justice sectors, as well as the Land Register, which is not ours, but it is also a large and important project. All these have a huge impact on the market (financial as well, as they add up close to half a billion euro), on the operation of the State and on society! Should you digitize, for example, the Urban Planning procedures? But if your house’s record has not been digitized, what would be the point? Now, everything will come together…
Do you think that public bodies will be able to take advantage of all this, in terms of culture?
They will get into the culture! This is not everything, after all – apart from what we do, the ministry provides for training and familiarization actions, reskilling – resources are also available in the Recovery Fund. After all, thanks to the new systems, services do not need to interact with citizens – a lot is now done digitally, through gov.gr, without human intervention. I believe that the real reform happening right now in the Greek State is the digital one, and this is fully credited to the ministry’s leadership. Two years ago, would you have ever expected that all of this would be done digitally? And this proves that – apart from the fact that the conditions were ripe – there is now a will and a plan!
Kyriakos Pierrakakis did something smart, which none of his predecessors had done, either in this ministry or in other ministries with this competence: they never took a moment to consider simple solutions – he had said so even before he took over: What are the things we can do quickly, so that citizens can benefit in their daily lives? Sure, big projects are useful and infrastructure is necessary, but they take time – for the people, the first question to ask is “what can I do immediately?”, starting with solemn declarations, powers of attorney, signature authentication… You save a lot of time and money!
Do you have enough resources? Is there something that scares you?
In the past two years, the company has significantly increased its staff – at the moment, along with the contracts, we have reached 140 employees and, at the same time, we use a lot of external collaborations with technical consultants – we have not made any re-calls, because there is no incentive. No one will leave their service to come to us (where they will have to work more) for the same amount of money. We need people, but this also relates to the general problem in the Greek market, i.e that there are not enough skilled employees – the whole market is looking. The problem is that we are several steps behind in this “race”, because we cannot respond in terms of wages to what the private market is offering…
I fear the public sector and its shackles, in terms of management, the bureaucracy that creates constant delays and the lack of flexibility. A proposal made both by the Hellenic Labour Inspectorate (SEPE) and ourselves is to bring back the remunerated evaluation committees, which were cut due to a memorandum… At present, the committees are made up of civil servants, who participate as part of their duties, without remuneration. If they receive a decent remuneration, possibly depending on the size of the project and the delivery time, the acceleration could be significant. Of course, something else that could speed up the whole process is dealing with the issue of appeals. There is no point in filing an appeal, losing and then returning to the courts…
The bet that must not be lost…
I’m about to turn off the tape recorder – he stops me: “If we lose this bet now, there will never be another opportunity like this. Either we “get aboard the train” and move forward – not hoping to reach the very top, but at least the middle – or we fall behind. Today, we are below the European average in most sectors. This does not only apply to IT, but also Energy, Transport – there are many pillars! The Recovery Fund is a mini-Marshall plan, as the minister and the prime minister have said many times! With its help, we have every chance of succeeding – it’s in our hands!”
First publication: Printed and online edition of the Netweek magazine
