Complete electronic state services remains a 404
Greece remains a laggard in Europe in terms of electronic transactions between the state and its citizens, according to a report by the Observatory for Administrative Reform of Information Society SA. The report evaluated 20 state services for people and enterprises, and found that Greeks can only complete an average of 70 percent of transactions with each agency online, against a European Union average of 90 percent.
The public sector’s only fully integrated digital service is Taxisnet, the Finance Ministry’s tax portal, while communications with the police remain woefully behind in these digital times.
It appears that Greeks have not been trained to use electronic services for their transactions with the state. According to the eGovernment Benchmark 2012, a Europe-wide survey, no more than 21 percent of people in this country knew how to use electronic services, against an average of 26 percent in 32 European countries.
The Observatory’s report found that just 12.1 percent of Greeks prefer to download state application forms from the Internet, while 15.5 percent seek information about state services via computer, and 14.4 percent complete their transactions with the state electronically.
