IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The first Smart City Monitoring Center in Greece, comprising specially trained personnel called Datagers, has been established and is operated by DOTSOFT AE and e-trikala AE. The Smart City Operations Center serves as the brain of a modern and digital city, integrating and connecting information and processes from various systems. The center is located and operates at the “GiSeMi HUB” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Hub of the Municipality of Trikala.

Datagers are specialized data experts responsible for ensuring the efficient functioning of the smart city; they are data managers. Datagers are the first in Greece and the Balkans to offer application operations and management services specifically for smart cities.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) wants to be actively involved in the digital transformation of the country after the important steps taken in this direction by both the private sector and the Greek government.

“Every investment that creates opportunities for more innovation [helps lay the foundations for] a modern, digital Greece that makes the most of the possibilities of technology,” Marina Stavrakantonaki, public policy manager for Greece and Cyprus at Amazon Web Services (AWS), said on Friday.

Iseauto is part of the EU-funded Fabulos project to see how cities can use passenger AVs

An Estonian consortium whose members include Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) has trialled an autonomous bus which has been declared as “street legal” in Greece.

A statement issued by TalTech says Auve Tech's autonomous bus carried nearly 400 people across 1,930km of streets over two months in the municipality of Lamia.

Pandemic has forced Greek government, businesses and consumers to rapidly embrace online platforms.

While national lockdowns to stop the spread of coronavirus are ravaging economies around the globe, for Greece, the pandemic is forcing a rapid and long-overdue embrace of digital platforms that is placing Greek businesses and the government on stronger footing to deal with the crisis and its fallout.

"Remote work is moving forward in leaps and bounds, and could leave us with an important legacy [after the crisis]," says Marco Veremis, a technology entrepreneur and angel investor.

The coronavirus crisis has forced Greece to take rapid steps to computerize its lumbering civil service and belatedly introduce e-governance in one of the EU's worst digital laggards, experts say.

After recording its first coronavirus death on March 12, Athens took unprecedented measures totally at odds with its previous love affair with paperwork and red tape.

Diomidis Spinellis, head of the department of management science and technology at the Athens university of Economics, says that the COVID-19 crisis "accelerated" Greece's digital turn -- though critics say the country has a long way to go.

The first Greek Digital City is being developed under the responsibility of the Municipality of Trikala, with funding from the Greek Information Society Strategy. The e-Trikala initiative aims to improve everyday life by simplifying public transactions, reducing telecommunication costs, delivering new electronic services, and offering new methods to enable citizens to participate in policy-making.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a new advisory services agreement with six Greek municipalities – Athens, Thessaloniki, Kozani, Trikala, Ioannina and Kalamata – to support the design and implementation of local investment strategies aligned with climate neutrality and smart city objectives.

Signed under the InvestEU Advisory Hub and delivered by EIB Advisory experts in coordination with the European Commission Climate Neutral and Smart Cities Mission, the agreement represents a strategic step toward reinforcing the EIB’s partnership with local authorities in Greece, aiming to accelerate the transition toward sustainable, inclusive, climate-neutral and smart urban development.

Estonia has pledged to assist Greece with e-government projects, in a memorandum of agreement signed between the two nations on September 9. Digital ID card system, digital signature and other e-government projects, already implemented in Estonia, will be adapted for Greece.

Parts said that when building up e-state, it is important to observe every state’s peculiarities and create solutions in line with needs.

With a team of international architects including Norman Foster, Kengo Kuma, and Bjarke Ingels, this is how construction is progressing on one of Europe’s most important urban regeneration projects.

Ellinikon is currently one of the largest European urban redevelopment projects underway on the coastal part of Athens. With an estimated budget of 8 billion euros, the ambitious project will bring back to life the obsolete site of the Athens International Airport, which operated from 1938 to 2001, before a new one was inaugurated for the 2004 Summer Olympics.

More specifically, after technical and institutional amendments, the level of services to citizens has been improved for 81 electronic services such as the issuance of certificates, etc. For these services, the transaction between citizens and public administration can now be processed entirely electronically, without the citizen having to visit the required service in person, neither to apply nor to receive a certificate. The standardised procedures can be found on the homepage of HERMES under the heading Electronic Services.

Athens Urban Transport Organisation has partnered to create a fare collection system that simplifies commuting and makes public transportation more accessible.

The Greek capital of Athens is rolling out multimodal, contactless payments to improve the public transport experience for both locals and tourists travelling in the city and the metropolitan area.

Last year, Greece’s capital city, Athens, hired its first Chief Digital Officer – Konstantinos Champidis talks to Smart Cities World about his first 18 months in the job.

Many cities hired Chief Digital Officers years ago and their smart city drives are well underway. Athens has had other things on its mind.

Ellinikon aims to be Europe’s first fully planned and built-from-scratch smart city, incorporating innovative digital infrastructure.

LAMDA Development, through its subsidiary HELLINIKON S.A., has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with COSMOTE TELEKOM to strengthen the technological ecosystem of “The Ellinikon project.” The partnership will support the development of the project as Europe’s first fully planned and built-from-scratch smart city, incorporating innovative digital infrastructure and advanced connectivity services.

Public space in Athens is scarce – and therefore precious. The Attica Regional Authority, however, doesn’t seem to share that view. Inside Pedion tou Areos park – which falls under its jurisdiction – just a few meters from the recently unveiled “Prometheus” sculpture dedicated to small and medium-sized entrepreneurship, new illuminated bench-like structures have appeared. In fact, they are a bit like bus stops. They occupy significant space, are ungainly metal constructions, and are supposedly designed to let passers-by charge their phones, access free Wi-Fi, and receive updates on city events.

Following an inquiry by the citizens’ group “Pedion tou Areos – Our Park,” residents were informed that the regional authority’s project for installing this “smart mobility system” as part of an “integrated smart city platform” cost 2.5 million euros.

Sustainability and environmental protection are among the key planning principles of The Ellinikon, the highly anticipated urban regeneration project in Greece, set to breathe new life into the Athenian Riviera.

Developed by Lamda Development exclusively with private funds, the project focuses on the coastal front regeneration of Ellinikon and includes the creation of a metropolitan park, residential zones, schools and special utility infrastructures, tourism, sports and entertainment facilities.

“We have spent 7-8 billion euros on telecoms and data processing since 1996 and the result is that not only are we nowhere near the European average, but we are the last or second to last, case by case, in Europe,” Tzortzakis told the press last week, adding that Greece’s performance has actually dragged the EU average down.

The application enables citizens to communicate with municipal services, receive answers to questions using artificial intelligence and indicate problems on the map - Cleaning, recycling and lighting issues at the "forefront"

In 110 municipalities across the country and abroad, the smartcity platform & digital governance City On & Crowdapps cloud, which offers direct service to citizens for a variety of services as well as direct, two-way communication for all issues of interest to residents and visitors.

Every adult citizen avoided up to sixty visits to public administration offices in 2021 by logging to the gov.gr digital portal.

Last year, the integrated public administration systems either provided digital services to the citizens or exchanged information with each other 566,962,980 times, according to the data of the interoperability center of the General Secretariat of Public Administration Information Systems of the Ministry of Digital Governance.