Cyprus Mail 13 April 2020 -by Kyriakos Iacovides
Kyriacos Kokkinos, the recently appointed deputy minister for research, innovation and digital policy
After years of delays, some vital government services have been transformed within weeks
E-GOVERNMENT has been given a big boost by the coronavirus, with the authorities forced by social distancing decrees to speed up digitisation of state services. Some programmes have been put in place within days in stark contrast to the glacial pace of the past.
Work currently in progress, that could be completed as soon as the end of April, will enable people applying for any of the five emergency benefit payments to complete the entire process digitally. Applications, processing and payment will all be done online.
Social distancing will not be affected as there will be no paper trail – no need for people to gather in numbers at the labour ministry to fill in forms, no postal deliveries and no visits to the banks to deposit the cheque.
“There was no other way of doing it considering some 250,000 people would be eligible for the benefits,” said Kyriacos Kokkinos, the recently appointed deputy minister for research, innovation and digital policy. Only through the full automation of the process could so many people be served promptly, without having to leave their home, he said.
Staff at the deputy ministry are working non-stop on six programmes so that these can go live, hopefully, by the end of the month.
Kokkinos only assumed his duties at this newly created position on March 1. Crucially, he is not a career bureaucrat. Instead, he has 27 years’ experience in IT and is a former IBM executive director and partner, who held a host of key roles in the multinational and has built a mega-successful career on getting things done.
He said he has been working all hours of the day, weekends included, to prepare the labour ministry’s support programmes.
These include the benefits for parents staying at home to look after their children, people who have to self-isolate, the self-employed, workers of businesses that suspended operations completely and workers of businesses that partially suspended operations.
Kokkinos told the Sunday Mail that he meets the Labour Minister Zeta Emilianidou and her team two times a day to discuss the different programmes and go over every detail involved, in what has become a race against time.
“We are using shortcuts and will go live as soon as we are ready without all the necessary testing,” says Kokkinos, who stresses that the overriding objective was to pay beneficiaries as soon as possible. “We will revisit it and fix things later, because now the priority is getting it running so people can receive their benefits.”
Even President Nicos Anastasiades is anxious, calling Kokkinos twice a day to find out how things were progressing, he said.
The deputy ministry for research and innovation has close to 300 employees working non-stop to make the deadline. They were transferred from the finance ministry, under which the government’s IT department had been previously, before the establishment of the deputy ministry.
“The personnel are very good and very capable,” said Kokkinos. “They were underutilised at finance.”
The private sector is also helping the digitalisation effort. Companies are offering assistance as are individuals, said Kokkinos, citing a former bank employee offering his wealth of experience as a testing manager free of charge. People wanted to help, he said.
“We are doing in three weeks what had not been done in 10 years,” he said, pointing out that the labour ministry with its many departments serving so much of the public should have been digitalised a long time ago.
One such example was the monthly social insurance payments. There were queues at labour ministry offices at the end of each month as people went to pay their dues in person, but when the coronavirus lockdown came into force, it was announced that payments could be made electronically.
Had they set up a payment system overnight then? The answer is no. There was indeed a system for electronic payments in operation for several years, but because it was so user-unfriendly and difficult to navigate, people did not bother with it, preferring to trek to a labour office to make the payments in person, said Kokkinos.
As queuing up at office buildings is not an option in the age of coronavirus, the payment system was modified and made user-friendly and people were now using it.
“The crisis has made us do what we should have done years ago in the space of a few weeks,” said Kokkinos. “Things we said could not be done are now being done like teleconferencing, working from home, distance learning.”
Necessity has forced people to acquaint themselves with digital technology. It has also made the politicians realise that the implementation of e-government does not have to move at a snail’s pace.
Three years ago in April 2017, the cabinet approved a bill for an individual to use an electronic signature for any dealings or transactions with the state. An electronic signature would have the legal validity of a handwritten signature. The law was duly passed, but three years later the digital signature still has no legal validity.
Yet when a few weeks ago the government decided that people’s movements had to be controlled as part of the measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus, a SMS system granting authorisation to leave the house was in place within a few days. People send a text message from their mobile phone and receive authorisation – or not – to leave home within a couple of seconds.
Kokkinos said the programme was prepared over a weekend, even though he admitted not getting much sleep that weekend.
Its only weakness was that it could not accept messages from telephones with non-Cypriot numbers. That has now been sorted.
The speed with which such programmes are being prepared is unprecedented. Procedures that may have needed years to prepare and go live are now being completed in a few weeks.
If nothing else, the virus crisis reiterates one truth: keep bureaucrats away from overseeing change.
