Greece fast tracks new digital projects worth 620 million euros

A new package of digital projects, totaling 620.5 million euros, is coming soon. The Information Society (IC) is moving “full steam ahead” to auction ten new tenders, to keep apace of the rhythms of the Recovery Fund , which will promote critical reforms for the digital transformation of Greece.

A bevy of auctions are expected in the next 6 to 10 months. During this time, the Information Society, under managing director, Mr. Stavros Asthenidis, will put more than 90 IT and communications projects on track, with a total budget of 1.4 billion euros.

It currently manages a portfolio of 260 public projects, in various stages of maturity, approaching €3 billion. Utilizing all available financial tools, it is currently implementing the largest program of digital interventions in the history of the organization, which is the executive arm of the Ministry of Digital Governance.

The first batch of projects

Within the next period, the first batch of ten tenders is expected, covering the entire spectrum of economic and social life. Justice, health, the public sector, agricultural production will take their next steps towards the digital future. These are projects that are included in the national recovery plan and constitute important milestones for its implementation.

These include digitization of records that will lay the groundwork for important reforms. More important is the digitization of the Justice files, with a budget of 96.7 million euros. As part of the contract, the records of the country’s 368 Courts, of which 288 are located on the mainland and the remaining 80 on islands, will be scanned and optical character recognition (OCR) applied so that they can be searched by key words.

A specialized information system will also be developed for the management of digitized material, which will “communicate” with the systems of the Ministry of Justice. Thus, the existing paper files will be replaced, facilitating and speeding up the search in local courts and prosecutor’s offices. In this field, the project of upgrading and expanding the record keeping system in all Courts will be implemented, with a budget of 30 million euros.

Returning to digitization, with a budget of 80 million euros, the medical records of the country’s public hospitals will be digitized, the General Archives of the State with 23 million, as well as the archive of the Ministry of Shipping and Insular Policy with 5 million euros.

Smart infrastructures

Also expected are the digital transformation project of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with a budget of 45 million euros, as well as the “Extroverted Agriculture” amounting to 20 million euros, which will boost the exports of Greek products with a series of innovative tools.

Optical fibers will be brought to 120,000 buildings with the “Smart Readines” project, with a budget of 145 million euros, for the installation of cabling infrastructure through vouchers. Cloud computing occupies an important position in the portfolio of projects that will “close” in 2022. This is the project to provide Public Cloud infrastructure and services to public bodies, with a budget of 117.8 million euros, as well as the “G-Cloud Next Gen”, amounting to 58 million euros, with the aim of creating new ones and upgrading existing ones of government cloud infrastructure.