Kerameos and Papastergiou made a joint visit to a central store e-EFKA on Akademias Street.
A new page in the relations of the citizen with the public sector and in particular with e-EFKA is opening through the digital reform, which is now being implemented. In this context, the Minister of Labour and Social Security, Niki Kerameos, and the Minister of Digital Governance, Dimitris Papastergiou, made a joint visit today to the branch of the Agency at Akadimias Street.
The purpose of the visit of the two members of the government team was the on-site observation and presentation of the pilot implementation of the Personal Number, a flagship reform aimed at unifying the critical identification codes of each citizen.
This is one of the key reforms of digital governance, which aims to put an end to errors and discrepancies in citizens’ data and help simplify transactions with the public sector by creating a single identification number.
During the visit, the political leadership of the Ministries of Labour and Digital Governance highlighted the benefits of the reform, emphasizing the reduction of bureaucracy and the facilitation of citizens’ daily life.
In a statement, the Minister of Labour and Social Security, Niki Kerameos, said:
“Our goal is always to be useful to citizens and with every action we take to improve their everyday life, especially in terms of their interaction with the public sector.
In perfect cooperation with the Ministry of Digital Governance, we are coming and implementing, as an institution that serves millions of citizens every day, a very important reform of the government: the Personal Number.
From now on, there will be a single identification number for all citizen’s transactions with the public sector and, in this case, with eEFKA.”
As Kerameos explained, this means in practice simpler, faster and more efficient transactions with the State, with an overall better service for the citizen.
“We are here to serve the citizen better and better every day,” the Labour Minister said.
For his part, the Minister of Digital Governance, Dimitris Papastergiou, noted:
“We came today to the e-EFKA store on Akademias Street, in order to see the progress of an important reform in the registers of the state, which is the Personal Number.
To date, we knew there were many problems, as over six million errors have been identified in simple identification data.
Our goal was to be able to correct these records and synchronize them as quickly as possible.
With e-EFKA we have seen in practice how we can use a single number to get a complete picture of ourselves and our family, eliminating the inconvenience caused in the past by even simple errors such as regramming or incorrect data.”
According to Papastergiou, this is just the beginning. He said this synchronisation is gradually being extended to other major agencies, such as the ADE and municipalities, which are being switched to the new common database, as part of a modern e-government, which is designed to avoid inconveniencing citizens.
Demosthenes Anagnostopoulos, Secretary General of Information Systems at the Ministry of Digital Governance, stressed that a long period of preparation and work has now reached the point where “we can have a harvest of fruits”.
As he said, cooperation with e-EFKA has enabled citizens to be served with a single number at all branches of the institution.
“In this way, citizens are served better and in less time, without the need to remember multiple numbers.
This proves that, through close cooperation between agencies, we can achieve significant and measurable results with tangible benefits for the citizen,” he commented. Anagnostopoulos, noting that efforts are being made to spread these benefits throughout the public administration.
The administrator of e-EFKA, Alexandros Varveris, said:
“Today, we saw the use of the Personal Number in practice.
It is our pleasure, as e-EFKA, to implement every new action that facilitates the citizen’s transaction with the state.”
Also, Mr. Varveris stressed that e-EFKA is at the forefront of the utilization of every new feature, aiming to continuously improve service and facilitate citizens in their transactions.
