There may have been an element of exaggeration in Perdikis’ comments but his general point, about the failure of the state services to fully embrace time-and money-saving e-government methods was correct. Some of the state’s departments still inhabit the bureaucratic world of the 1970s and ‘80s, filling in forms by hand, and having them stamped by four different civil servants for validation purposes. At the same time, car owners can pay their road tax electronically and submit their tax returns via computer.
On Tuesday a House committee heard that from next year people would be able to have enquires answered by SMS, which is difficult to believe, considering the way state services deal with telephone enquiries. The Social Insurance service, according to one deputy, received 5,000 calls a day many of which went unanswered so why would things be different with the introduction of a texting service? Perhaps the fact that enquiries would be on record would allow public servants to respond at a future date, but this is not the answer to bureaucratic delays and lousy customer service.
An overall plan is needed to overhaul the bureaucratic system, enabling people to conduct their business with the state via the net as happens in all modern states. So far, efforts have been spasmodic with only few departments providing e-forms. There have been some improvements regarding access to information, with all government departments having web-sites providing basic information to the public but this could hardly be described a major breakthrough.
The truth is that state services are many years behind as far as e-government is concerned, because the political will to pursue full computerisation does not exist as this would bring about the need for a complete re-organisation of the civil service, including job cuts. It would be no surprise if there was resistance from PASYDY to any attempts to establish e-government. And this government has proved it would do nothing to displease the all-powerful civil servants’ union.
In fact we might be the only state in the EU, with the possible exception of Greece, which has seen the numbers of its public employees almost double, instead of being halved, since the advent of computerisation. Perhaps now that the state is short of cash it would have an incentive to pursue the goal of e-government which would save it time and money as well as make life easier for all of us.
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Quelle/Source: Cyprus Mail, 23.06.2012
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