The state, the public sector, are changing and are changing for the better, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Monday after a visit to the Interior Ministry.
In order to achieve our goals, he added, two components are needed: the first is political will and the second is the use of technology.
"We are facing a new phase of implementation of many projects financed by the Recovery Fund and which improve both the performance of the public sector itself and the way in which citizens and businesses interact with the Greek public sector," he underlined.
Referring to important priorities, Mitsotakis spoke about accelerating hirings, noting that significant work has been done but we need to move much faster, to make hirings within the year so that civil servants can take their places.
Speaking about the evaluation of civil servants, he said: "Today, for the first time, we have an evaluation system that can distinguish excellent civil servants, reward them, and at the same time give us the necessary tools for those who do not have the performance we expect, so that we can intervene and improve their performance."
As Mitsotakis said an important initiative will be presented in the coming weeks, which is the horizontal evaluation of public services by the citizens themselves, as 4 million citizens will receive a detailed public service evaluation questionnaire.
"This questionnaire will be extremely useful for us to see where we need to focus our attention and to establish a meaningful culture of accountability because the final judge of state services must be the citizen," he added.
Referring to the issues of the Ministry of Digital Governance, he spoke about the range of digital services provided through the gov.gr platform.
"A revolution is taking place in the way the state and public administration operate in Greece," the prime minister emphasized.
On his part, Interior Minister Theodoros Livanios said among others: "We had the opportunity, together with Dimitris Papastergiou (Digital Governance Minister), to present the most important projects that are in progress, with an emphasis on public sector staffing and public accountability, and on the introduction of innovative tools such as the evaluation of public services by citizens, with the aim of creating and improving public services and improving the quality of life. We talked about the new code of local government and other major initiatives of the ministry for the everyday life of citizens. The goal is to make life easier, public administration more efficient and to have a public sector that will be evaluated, improved and progressed."
The Minister of Digital Governance, Dimitris Papastergiou, stated, among other things, that "we are implementing hundreds of projects. In the Recovery Fund alone, the ministry is implementing 104 projects with a total budget of close to 3 billion euros, with the aim of providing a solution, making the lives of citizens simpler and safer, projects that must be delivered on time."