ENISA to work with Greece’s government on secure e-services for citizens

The meeting, between Deputy Minister of Administrative Reform and E-Governance, Manousos Voloudakis and ENISA’s Executive Director, Professor Udo Helmbrecht, was held at the Ministry’s Athens offices, on Friday, 7^th December, 2012.

The workshop was attended by the General Secretary of Information Systems (Ministry of Finance), Mr. Harry Theoharis and representatives of the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Public Order and Citizen Protection, the Ministry of Labour, Social Security and Welfare, the Police Force, the Hellenic Data Protection Authority, the Hellenic Telecommunications & Post Commission, the Informatics Development Agency, the Special Managing Authority of the Operational Programme “Adminstrative Reform”, the “e-Government Center for Social Security” SA and “Information Society” SA.

Discussions explored how, as an agency based in Greece and serving the whole of Europe, ENISA can offer its expertise to support the on-going development of electronic government services for Greece’s citizens. In his opening Vice Minister Voloudakis stressed that the introduction of electronic government services that respect the privacy and free will of citizens is among the highest priorities for Greece. In this context, e-Governance is considered as one of the basic conditions for the creation of an effective public administration. At the same time it enables the reduction of bureaucracy and of the overall cost of public administration operations, as well as increasing transparency.

Professor Helmbrecht, together with other experts from ENISA, also outlined the Agency’s wider work, describing how ENISA supports initiatives such as Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTs), secure information infrastructure protection and privacy protection with Member States.

Across Europe, e-government is already providing fast, secure and cost-effective services in areas such as:

• social security and welfare 
• car and vehicle services
• education
• healthcare
• safety at work
• public information

Professor Helmbrecht said: “E-gov services offer massive potential to enhance people’s lives and, crucially for us all at this time, kick-start economic activity. But whether we’re talking about e-gov or commercial services, information security must be of the highest level. If it is not, the benefits will not be realised. The work already undertaken by Minister Voloudakis and his team is very positive. ENISA will continue to give its support so that Greece’s citizens can benefit from more fast, cost-effective and secure e-gov services, and our press releases also exist in Greek, as to get the message out by Greek media and governmental bodies to the Greek society.”

Vice Minister Voloudakis stressed: “The collaboration with ENISA is of essence and concerns the common effort for efficient and secure electronic services. The government’s strategy on e-Governance has set as a high priority to create a Digital Public Administration that will be able to gradually provide more of its services to the citizens online, with the landmark being to have all public services online by the end of 2015.

However, I want to stress that this will be achieved with full respect to the privacy and free will of citizens. A key factor in accomplishing this important condition is choosing to deploy an e-identification model that will be optional while securing the citizens’ personal data. That is why we study and carefully evaluate the different deployments in other countries before deciding our approach.” 

For agenda and presentations of the Meeting

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