Smart cameras on streets appear to be working particularly effectively, according to Minister of State Governance, Dimitris Papastergiou, who said on Wednesday morning (10/06).

In an interview with the “Society Hour MEGA” show, Papastergiou first referred to the 6-year anniversary of the gov.gr, which he said has substantially changed the lives of citizens, offering digital services and reducing bureaucracy.

“Gov.gr was launched exactly 6 years ago. An initiative of this government, the Prime Minister, Kyriakos Pierrakakis and all the people of the Ministry of Digital Governance, where they collected and created new digital services to show and prove that, after all, a country can change.”

Referring to the smart cameras and the firsts that have emerged, Mr Papastergiou said: “Yesterday you showed a tab that we have 5,500 calls. The Greek police put out a press release a week ago and said we have 2,453 calls. You said, you showed that we have a 90% miss. They have been contradicted, regularly, by the Greek Police bulletin,” he said. “The call is witnessed by a police officer. The Hellenic Police bulletin says that 2,453 tickets have been confirmed and served. There have been 420 objections and in fact, only 52 were accepted, of which 17 were those that had technical issues, 0.7%. All the rest – and he notes this – were accepted after consideration of substantive reasons, such as health incidents,” he added.

“If there is a police officer at an intersection and he is regulating traffic, if the camera is left on, obviously he is going to take and send pictures. That doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean the camera didn’t do its job well. It’s just that the officer will obviously see that there is another officer directing traffic, and will not acknowledge the ticket. Where is the failure?,” he said.

As for the delayed tender for 1,000 cameras, he explained that the tender was temporarily “taken down” to correct an ambiguity and is now back on the air.

Finally, on the transition of the Hellenic Cadastre to G-Cloud, he said it is an event that is expected to speed up procedures, increase security and eliminate system interruptions, facilitating the digitization of millions of contract pages.