By 2025, all state services without exception should be on the screen of our mobile phone, DISY President and Presidential candidate Averof Neophytou said on Monday morning, during his visit to the Digital Services Factory of the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, which is located on the campus of the University of Cyprus in Nicosia.
Mr. Neophytou was given a tour of the premises by the Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, Kyriakos Kokkinos, as well as by officials of the Department.
Neophytou congratulated the responsible Deputy Minister and the staff of the Ministry "for the excellent work they have done", adding that "the government of Nicos Anastasiades and DISY made this essential reform, the creation of this Ministry".
The EU's goal and through the Recovery Fund, the DISY President said, "is to have Digital Europe and the goal is for Cyprus to be one of the first countries in Europe where all state services are on the citizen's mobile phone." He also said that more than 120 state services are already digital and that the citizen can be served digitally and electronically. Neophytou, adding that "in addition to ending the inconvenience of citizens, we will create a more competitive economy, attract more investment and help further develop the Cypriot economy."
"With simple things, one portal, one code, one ID card, electronic identity, every citizen will be served without delays, without bureaucracy and without having to put any means for service from the state," the DISY President said. "Our state must become modern, digital, efficient, competitive and drive further economic growth," he indicated.
For his part, Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, Kyriakos Kokkinos, thanked the DISY President and his team for the visit. "This is the temple of gov.cy, this is where the philosophy, methodology and implementation of state services are built in a very modern design way, which focuses on the friendliness of services to the citizen," he explained.
Furthermore, Mr. Kokkinos said that the Ministry of State has drawn expertise and advice from the UK and the methodology adopted is one of the most flexible and at the same time one of the most innovative approaches. The Digital Services Factory team, the Deputy Minister explained, works in collaboration with the English consultants who have done the equivalent of gov.uk.
Kokkinos pointed out that "several services have already come out, but the bulk of the services will come out through the collaboration with the private sector that has already started and the role of this team will now be advisory and oversight so that all the services that come out have the state-centricity and are based on the axioms and principles that are now norms." He explained that the citizen information should be one time only and then the system should find that information, adding that the citizens themselves are involved in the planning.
"The redesign of a service is preceded with the relevant department of the government and then it will start to be planned programmatically so that that service will work," the Deputy Minister stressed. "What we have adopted is one of the best practices on a global scale and many countries are visiting us to see how this experiment has succeeded, which is now a factory for the production of digital services," he added. Using the online payment of Social Insurance as an example, the Deputy Minister spoke of "huge benefits in terms of the state and the 52 people employed in the funds". Every month, he continued, hundreds of thousands of transactions are made with online payment, whereas before citizens had to spend 2-3 hours waiting.
In response to a question about the services that will be digitized in the near future, Kokkinos said that there is a plan to digitize 200 services over the next 18 months. Some of the services that will be digitised next month, he said, are the Minimum Guaranteed Income, the Statutory Pension,θεν Eschede and the updating of citizens' data in the Population Registry.
DISY President and candidate for President of the Republic, Averof Neophytou, reiterated the goal of his government "In 2025 the whole state on the mobile screen", adding that in 2028 citizens will be able to vote digitally. Furthermore, Neophytou noted that he had visited a similar department in Estonia in 2014.
Source: CNA
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