Impact

As long as computer penetration in Greece measures comparatively lower than the European Union average, a new approach was developed in order to bring eGovernment benefits to large parts of the country and the population. Since the first year of operation, the CSCs have changed the way people think about public administration. Their geographical distribution and the promptness of expediting cases, are just a few of the immediate benefits. Certain segments of the population, especially islanders and inhabitants of remote and mountainous areas, became the immediate recipients of these benefits since they could avoid unnecessary visits to distant outlets of public administration. Public Administration acquired a recognizable face and could be found literally next door just by visiting one of the more than 1000 branches country-wide. The extensive network of CSC branches operates hand-in-hand with a 24x7 call center which responds to citizen information inquiries pertaining to public administration and receives by phone citizen request for any of the 1000-odd certified government processes. Usage data shows that the drop rate (unanswered calls) is around 1.5%, and of the answered calls, 98% are answered within 20 seconds. An additional impact of the CSCs has been the momentum that the project generated in reengineering and redesigning traditional bureaucratic procedures into citizen-centric services. This is evident through the increased number of public sector agencies that decide to offer their services through the CSC network. A prerequisite for an organization to join the CSCs is to reengineer and streamline each of the processes to be certified. Once redesigned, a process is certified by ministerial decree and is offered through the CSCs, currently offering more than 1000 services. A study that investigated legislation pertaining to citizen services showed that 75% of all transactions with the administration, are offered at the prefecture level. The extensive geographic distribution of the CSCs has significantly narrowed the gap between citizens and administrative centers. When citizens transact with the administration through the various CSC channels, back office organizations save a significant amount of citizen visits, thus releasing human resources to focus on core business. Clearly, this is a win-win setting for both the citizen and the administration. Skilled customer service agents who serve citizens at the CSCs and fulfil all the related tasks on the citizens’ behalf, in essence fight the digital and social divide by offering the eGovernment benefits to all population groups, including immigrants as well as digitally illiterate individuals. As soon as the various ICT projects of the public domain go in production mode, the CSCs will be the multiplier that will increase the added-value of eGovernment impact to the population.

Track record of sharing

The web-based platform that powers the CSC network has been a growth vehicle for the whole project. This success influenced a number of public domain agencies and organizations causing them to evaluate the new status and start considering of ways to benefit from it. Our first candidates were public organizations that physically interface with a large number of individuals on a regular basis. This list of organizations includes, but is not limited to, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Transportation, the Social Security Foundation (social security fund), the Agricultural Insurance Organization (social security fund) and the National Tourism Organization. They asked their IT departments to comply with the CSC interoperability guidelines. The extend and the speed of change varied across different organizations; however those who completed all the requirements and linked up their systems to the CSC platform, instantly gained access to a 1000-plus-branch homogeneous network. Each of these organization-to-CSC links brought significant benefits to all of the parties involved, but most of all to the citizens. All public domain ICT projects which are currently in various stages of the design or implementation phase have incorporated such features that enable uncomplicated linking to the CSC platform. Apart from achieving technical coordination, the organization that owns each of these projects is expected to adapt its legal framework of operation in order to cooperate transparently with the CSC network. Uniform and homogeneous service delivery across the CSC network has triggered reverse engineering for all activities which are offered through the CSCs. Prior to this, these activities were offered by the various government agencies in, mostly similar, but not always identical, ways. Apart from uniformity across the public domain, process reengineering resulted in streamlined activities, free of unnecessary steps and tasks, less confusing for the citizen.

Lessons learnt

Lesson 1 - Large-scale eGovernment projects which tackle a number of problems, like the CSCs, will eventually produce quantifiable rewards. However, apart from the clearly measurable benefits that are evident by looking at the numbers, the most important lesson has been that a recipe for success is a healthy mix of technology and services. Technology alone can not guarantee that the benefits of eGovernment will reach large – eventually all – parts of the population. In our case, the person-to-person channel, supported by a robust layer of technology has worked miracles. Lesson 2 - The CSCs have been accepted by the citizens by a very wide margin. This, coupled with the fact that people are not required to use the CSCs – since they can contact the traditional public organization – makes their success even more significant. They act as an alternative channel of dealing with public domain agencies and organizations. Therefore, our experience suggests that if you build a first-class service, citizens will join you and will welcome development. Lesson 3 - Finally, the CSCs have produced significant savings for all the parties involved. More specifically, citizens and businesses save time while the administration saves money and gains happy citizens.