Greek Municipalities and Citizens’ Engagement. The case for implementing a Citizens’ interoperability through platforms.

Photis Zygoulis: E gov Coordinator at the Municipality of Iraklio Attikis Greecefotiszygoulis@gmail.com

Rania Tsopana : Public relations Supervisor at the Municipality of Nea Ionia Attikis Greece

raniaaa_t@yahoo.gr

Key words: public participation, citizens’s portal, open data, citizens’s smart card.

Abstract: The implementation of e-governance in local government goes through the openness that aims to serve the citizen. The municipalities in Greece have set up portals for communication between them and the citizens. These Portals have common characteristics that are holding back the development of a local policy towards openness and transparency.

1. What is open data and e-government. Legislation in Greece and Europe.Public open data refers to data that can be used, reused and redistributed. Open data features are:• Openness• Availability• Reuse and Redistribution• Inclusive participation

Public authorities in Greece allow the publication of a few information on public portals but this information cannot be used by citizens. These technologies allow the provision of data by governments to their citizens but this does not always mean that these governments reflect a concept of open governance. The policy of open government is one thing different from a policy which contains only technologies of open data. Authoritarian states demonstrate public open data policies without implying anything about their real policy. Many times the openness is a cover for corruption and opacity.Open data are related to accountability and inclusiveness. The need for more good and open governance is the result of lack of trust in public institutions and lack of effectiveness of governments. Public inclusiveness through consultation legitimizes elements of state policy.In Greece the tradition in the public sector, speaking for hierarchy and bureaucracy, are a serious obstacle towards the development of a new administrative model based on open government. There is a strong incompatibility between e-gov applications and governance. In Greece the recently issued Presidential Decree No 28 / 03.23.2015 on the access to public documents and records contains a lot of legal information concerning open data usability. In Chapter III, Article 21 defines what is meant by:• Personal data

• Sensitive data• Processing of personal data• Interface• Controller• Third• Consent of the subject whose data is being processed

Article 28 defines the right of access to personal data. Notification concerning third parties of any rectification or erasure of all data signifies an obligation of the data controller. European policy on open data in particular regarding their use in the economy is concentrated in COM (2014) 442 final, according to which: data is a reinterpretable representation of information in a formalized manner, suitable for communication, interpretation or processing. EU should be more competitive in this area should it want to succeed the Agenda 2020 reforms. EU should rapidly conclude the legislative processes on the reform of the data protection framework, network and information security and support exchange and cooperation between the relevant enforcement authorities.In Greece during the recent years a lot of data disclosure efforts have been carried out on electronic platforms, state or local. The data on these platforms have been categorized lastly.

2. Brief reference to 2 portals and their functions. Description of the problems these Best Practices are addressing.

Gov.e-irakleio.grCityofathens.gr/khe/crm

These two citizen's electronic service platforms were selected because they represent platforms both at a medium and a large municipality in Attica.

Gov.e-irakleio.grThe first platform is connected to the official website of the municipality Heraklion Attica (www.iraklio.gr). It can be used both by citizens and officials. Identification and authentication of users is connected with their email. Citizens do not have to visit the town hall with their identity to verify their application or registration. This platform accepts two streams: one coming from outside the municipality towards the interior environment and one that is uniting a service unit to another service unit inside the municipality. The second flow is predominantly governmental service. The first flow concerns the citizens and employees of the town hall. The requests masks of the citizens and the officials have classifications depending on the subject, department, even the population group of the geographical-boundaries of the town set up automatically depending on the demands. The platform is connected to gis (gis.iraklio.gr) of the municipality. The administrator has authority throughout the whole system and he/she can extract statistics which are based on measurable indicators. A disadvantage of this platform is focused on the lack of a link between with the applicant's account on social networks and the platform itself. Another disadvantage is the data requests which is not yet published data on environment openness.

Cityofathens.gr/khe/crm

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The second platform is connected to the official website of the municipality of Athens. It can be used both by citizens and officials. Here the identification and authentication of users can be accumulated through their email and (for a single time) the physical presence of users at one of the civil service points in the city of Athens. The same concept as in gov.e-irakleio.gr platform applies here to internal procedures reflected in the cityofathens platform. The platform is connected to the gis of the municipality. On both platforms an effort has been made focused on a) the categorization of requests and b) the connection of each request to a specific process owner of the municipal service. The process owner holds a -gate like- position in the organization chart of the municipality and serves as the correspondent of the system for both citizens and employees. This app has a reengineering effect inside the Greek local public service through IT implementation.These two platforms are not yet able to personalize service to citizens by linking the accounts with social networks or through categorizing those being served under request-quality-geographical indicators.

Indicators

Request Environment Education

Health

economy

Quality Service Unit

Settlement Time

Geographical Origin Request

These two platforms serving the following demands: Environment Cleanliness Roads Lighting Education Health Licensing shopsRequests can be accordingly extended civil life events.

3. Type open data exist or do not exist at both portals. Scenarios illustrating problems. Solutions

Categorization Gov.e-irakleio.gr

Cityofathens.gr

Metadata No info No infoData Access Limited LimitedData Formats Open Open Source —

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SourceData Licenses PDF

readablePDF readable —

Data Quality No info No info —Data Sensitive There is

no policyThere is no

policy

Data Identification

Unique re-use

internally

Unique re-use internally

We can see that these two platforms have not been given an opportunity for the openness. This apparently occurs because the Greek local policy pursues only the legal use of data for internal purposes of the public services. It seems that these platforms which have been built to serve the citizen actually serve only the services.

An one and only possibility which exists for these platforms may involve public access to the requesting citizen statistical data. This data may include: Dispersion timeframe of a service request Correlation of unique request with other requests Relation of the profile request to other entities (profiles of persons) with similar requestsThe (applicant / citizen profile - oriented ) platforms can be connected to social networks and specific applicant-depended formed groups with common geo-characteristics. These features can be captured on a map gis

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Profile:

Data:

Metadata:

Connection:

The profile of each user-citizen applicant can be connected with a number corresponding to identification card (smart card). This card can be used instead of an authentication for citizen transactions.

4. Intended outcome of a policy Citizens' Engagement in these platforms. Relationship to PSI directive. Possible solutions for the implementation of the new code in Greece.

Under the Directive PSI many elements that should be embedded in these platforms are not embedded.

Benefit to the knowledge economy NO

Promoting transparency and accountability NO

Minimum harmonization to determine what public data are available for re-use

NO

Personal Data/privacy YES

Right to exploit the documents NO

Licenses YES

This means that both platforms have not been tied up clearly to European standards and they cannot be the scope of interoperability concerning openness of data in the public space.

The Citizens' Engagement even it is implemented through the application of social networks, it needs further safeguards regarding subjects as security, privacy and accessibility.By simply implementing a user authentication process via a smart card it is unlikely to solve significant problems such as the adaptation to European directive and a personalization of service.

The new Greek code of public access to public documents and records which came into force on March 23, 2015 in Greece is in this direction. In this Code unfortunately there are not included legal responsibilities attached to municipalities so as they can

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have access to tax information. This is very important because it can support Greek Municipalities to identify sources of repayment of their claims.

5. Proposals for an integration between portals inside Greek municipalities. Categorization of information.

In Greece there are 2000 governmental services and 10000 governmental "Points of Service" in total. These governmental entities are not communicating between each other. We have the following problems:

Legal and Organizational interoperability Semantic interoperability Technical interoperability Citizen Engagement InteroperabilitySince there is no total interoperability we cannot speak for an integrated citizen service, continuous and reliable. These two platforms are an example of administrative-technical incompatibility. Each Municipality in Greece describes and implements its own action plan without caring for possible communication between other Municipalities’ applications. The negative consequence is the citizen service failure referring to authentication by using a smart card which will be accepted by all public bodies during all the aspects-events of a person’s life.National Interoperability Framework operates in Greece. This consists of:

This framework is not implemented through unification between all the portals of Greek municipalities. The legal status at this point is not sufficient.

In our opinion a prerequisite for unification with the aim of interoperability is the creation of a digital certificate which makes safe and secret every transaction between the citizen and public services. The challenges are:

o Connecting citizens and government

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Service Portals Standards

Government Systems Architecture

Electronic ID Standards

Interoperability Standards

o Connection business and governmento Ensuring interoperability of systemso Connecting and simplifying laws

Technology does not produce value for citizens-customers. A proposal tabulation of data in primary portals could be the following:

Municipality’s Portal for Citizen

Tables with dataCategories Certificates SMEs

LicensesTaxes Education Health

Entities Entities Entities Entities Entities EntitiesEntities Entities Entities Entities Entities EntitiesΓάμμα ΌμικρονΔέλτα ΠιΈψιλον ΡοΖήτα ΣίγμαΉτα ΤαυΘήτα Ύψιλον

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Public Consultation

Platforms

Main Site Gis App

Social media Authentication

E-platforms for citizens

Γιώτα ΦιΚάπα ΧιΛάμδα ΨιΜι Ωμέγα

In real time a citizen can see the flow of hers/his request inside the municipality’ s platform only by registering hers authenticated profile through social media account.

6. The role of politicians and bureaucrats to transparency and inclusiveness.In democracy the issue of transparency and inclusivity determines the quality of democracy. In Greece the political design is reduced to a policy management without sufficient transparency which is often depended on a grid of political and economic interests of a local oligarchy.In front of such a situation, citizens in Greece, averse politics and come (when they do) only to the polls to exercise their right to vote and to legitimize a government.The Kantian connection between the political and moral puts the disclosure of political actions. The publication may, under certain conditions, lead to transparency. The legitimacy of a political class passes through the active participation by citizens in decision-making processes. The public debate about rational arguments comes only with truly open standards of data. This participation of citizens can contribute to a collective intelligence. Democracy is in decline today. Transparency, corruption, secrecy in the receiving areas of high political decisions explain the delegitimation of democracy. Especially in Greece nowadays where the economic crisis has changed everything. Therefore, the importance of the open data in public open portals is tremendous. Open data portals should aim at:

Transparency and Accountability-----Social Monitoring & Benchmarking Information Participation-----------------------------Access to Info lowers the digital barriers

Barriers to implementing a policy of open data:

• Technology Formalism (reflect and not transform)• Increasing Transparency VS Increasing Participation

Sometimes publicizing data does not mean a parallel reinforcing of institutional structures.

Finally, government data is uniquely comprehensive, consistent, credible, relevant and accessible and still protects confidentiality. For these reasons, open data particularly local government data, can make local government more efficient, interactive, transparent and accountable.On these platforms we have seen, local governments have not made the big step forward: to make their data openly. The challenges facing these administrations are concerning:

• Designing a citizen - centric platform• Advancing the mobility of these data

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• Collaborating with other local -egov platforms• Fostering Transparency• Engage Citizens

These five goals are achievable under the European Union Agenda 2020. Time will show whether there will be achieved.

7. References- Screenshots okfn.gr/open-data/ www.e-gif.gov.gr https://digitalgovernment.wordpress.comCapitalizing on the Open Data Revolution, EMC Federal Summit, Washington D.C. 10/22/2014Harlan Yu, The New Ambiguity of “Open Government”, UCLA 2012.Stella Ladi, Political Changes for Greece of Tomorrow, Athens 2009.The law on open data in Greece affects the law on citizenship card (smart citizens card) “Open data” concerns re-use of information combining the power of technology and the knowledge provided by data. European Commission, COM (2014) 442 finalData on the Web Best Practices, W3C First Public Working Draft, 24-04-2015www.Iraklio.gr, gis.iraklio.grhttp://www.w3.org/2013/shape-psi/wiki/Elementswww.eygep.gov.gr

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Figure 1. cityofathens.gr (citizens platform/ authentication registration mask)

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Figure 2. cityofathens.gr (citizens platform entering mask)

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Figure 3. cityofathens.gr (citizens platform elements registration mask)

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Figure 4. cityofathens.gr (citizens platform identity number for authentication of citizens mask)

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Figure 5. gov.e-irakleio.gr (citizens platform administrator mask)

Figure 6. gov.e-irakleio.gr (citizens platform new task mask)

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Figure 7. gov.e-irakleio.gr (citizens platform statistics based on KPIs)

Figure 8. gov.e-irakleio.gr (citizens platform statistics)

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Figure 9. gov.e-irakleio.gr (citizens platform statistics)

8. Intended Audience: Data managers, Application Developers, Senior Government Officials

9. Related Best Practices: http://www.e-trikala.gr/, http://opendatagortynia.gr/, http://gis.thessaloniki.gr/

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