Algorithms for the people

Greece has made remarkable progress in terms of the digital transition, mostly thanks to the efforts of Digital Governance Minister Kyriakos Pierrakakis. As a result, citizens have been spared much of the cumbersome and time-consuming bureaucracy in their dealings with the state to the extent that the required paperwork has been moved online. However, the Greek public sector is still far from European standards.

This is reflected in the European Union’s 2021 league table for digital governance, which saw Greece in 25th place, only ahead of Bulgaria and Romania. Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Ireland, Malta, Spain, Luxembourg, Estonia and Austria were leading the rankings.

This does not mean that the digital transformation of Greece’s state apparatus is unfolding at a slow pace. After all, we can now carry a copy of our ID, driver’s license and Covid vaccination certificate in our smart phone. Greece’s low ranking just shows that our European peers that have for decades been higher up on the list just continue to make progress. After all, most European countries are quickly digitizing other aspects of daily life where Greece is still a laggard. 

Like the medical sector, for example. An expert was saying to me recently that 500,000 people in the South of England have signed up for a pilot program that seeks to use new technology to improve remote monitoring of health conditions. Patients carry a sensor that keeps track of most basic bodily functions day and night, giving doctors up-to-the-second information on the state of their health. Round-the-clock supervision means that medics can intervene before something major occurs. Therefore, they can prevent a large percentage of heart attacks, strokes and other serious outcomes. Thanks to medical algorithms, people feel more confident, while hospitals have cut costs by around 30 percent.