Digital Governance: Savings of 1.3 billion euros over 5 years from the use of gov.gr

For every citizen visit to the digital portal gov.gr, there is a benefit for them and for the State of 1 euro. A total of 273 million site visits were made during the two years from March 2020 (when the portal was launched) to March 2022 and the total benefit as estimated by a Deloitte study was € 270 million.

The study was presented yesterday at a Hellenic Federation of Enterprises-SEV event on digital governance, with the participation of the Minister of Digital Governance Kyriakos Pierrakakis.

The benefit comes mainly from the time savings as citizens do not need to lose workhours to visit state services and also from the work of civil servants (268 million) while 1.2 million is the savings from the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions and the reduction of the expenditure for 800,000 euros from printed documents. The same study estimates that in five years the benefit will reach 1.3 billion euros as the services provided by the digital portal are expanded.

As Mr. Pierrakakis stated at the event, the next goals is to add digitized IDs and drivers’ licenses in the form of a mobile app. The regulatory framework for emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, blockchain, the internet of things will be introduced with legislation to be submitted to Parliament in July.

Gov.gr currently provides 1375 services, up from 1147 in March 2021 and 627 in September 2020. During this period, 6.5 million personal affidavits, 2.2 million authorizations, 4.5 million certificates , 18 million vaccine certificates were issued and 3.2 million intangible prescription activations were performed.

It is also worth noting that the use of the Portal grew during the pandemic, however, even after the lifting of restrictions on physical transactions, its use continues to increase. Specifically, in the last four months, the monthly rate of the use of gov.gr grows by 10%, which means that 1 million new digital transactions are made per month.