Editorial Ta Nea: State

Something is stirring in the area of digital reform and that is extraordinarily positive.

The last example is that as of yesterday all Greek municipalities can automatically access the tax compliance certificate of businesses that act as their procurers at the time that the taxes are paid.

We have long spoken about the benefits of digital reforms but now there appears to be an opportunity for the country to expedite them so they can constitute an ally of the state and the citizenry.

In the uncertain terrain of the pandemic the opportunity can move us forward.

One can buttress a new type of citizen-friendly state and a public administration that will rely on expediting digital reform, will be more flexible and functional, and which will leave behind the sort of Kafkaesque bureaucracy and practices that all Greeks have experienced.

The political will exists and that is highly significant.

Step-by-step old bureaucratic procedures are changing and in this era the country is adjusting to the technological explosion and the digital transformation of the last months.

By all appearances we are proceeding collectively and new structures will transform the citizen-state relationship and the effectiveness of the state – as state which all Greeks have slammed for

decades.

We have the human capital and the political will and the government is plying forward.

Society demands it.

This is a ray of hope in a terrain that is in flux.