The Minister of Public Administration, Dimitris Papastergiou has responses to the tender for the installation of 1,000 cameras in roads.
In response to complaints about the difference in cost between the original and the new tender (from €88 million to €35 million), Papastergiou said that “it is exactly the same tender. It’s just that the first one provided for the purchase of 1,000 cameras and their operation for 5 years, plus the right to extend for another 1,000 cameras after the 5 years“. As he explained, the decision to redesign was made with the speed of technological developments in mind, “It was not technically safe to describe technologies today that will be in place after 5 years. So we scaled down the tender to save time, cut the preference and said “let’s get the 1,000 cameras out now and in 5 years, with better clarity on the technologies, we’ll put out a new tender.” This justifies the difference in cost,” he said.
Papastergiou also referred to the completion of six years of gov.gr, stressing that the platform is going through a phase of “personalized contact” with the citizen. One of the most important new features, expected to go live in the next ten days, involves monitoring the progress of requests. “The citizen will be able to see where their case is, who is in charge of it, the phone or email of the official and most importantly when it is expected to be processed It is a huge difference that the new law brings about a more citizen-friendly and accountable state,” he noted.
Referring to the Cadastral Registry, the Minister of Digital Governance announced that the cadastre has now covered 99% of the country, and announced the transfer of the Building Services (urban planning offices) to the central cadastral mechanism. “The aim is to ensure that the engineer has no contact with the official to avoid corruption. The answer to corruption is digitisation. We are moving to a hyper-local competence so that local officials do not necessarily deal with local affairs,” Papastergiou stressed, noting that the use of Cloud technologies will ensure speed and securityin transactions.
Finally, Mr. Papastergiou spoke about the challenges of Artificial Intelligence (AI), focusing on the danger of misinformation through false videos. “Greece is the first country to use genetic AI, but at the same time citizens are afraid. With the AI Act we are clarifying which models are banned,” he said. Commenting on the phenomenon of deepfakes, such as the recent fake interview of Bank of Greece governor Giannis Stournaras, Papastergiou stressed the need for platforms to react faster: “The issue is how platforms will not even allow uploading such videos. If a video is uploaded, the damage is done, even if it is taken down after three hours. Mechanisms need to be created to detect AI videos before they are published.”
