REGION OF CRETE

The Electronic Collaborative Platform, Comidor, was developed by the Region of Crete in collaboration with the company b-Open, within the framework of the Strategic Planning - Operational Program 2015-2019 of the Republic of Crete, https://www.crete.gov.gr/ wp-content/uploads/2018/04/perif_kritis_e-gov_strategy_2015-19.pdf (Axis 3, Best Practices, Objective 15) in order to link its services in a multifaceted way. Management of Communication, Know-how and Legislation. Prototyping, Process Management, Project Management etc. https://comidor.crete.gov.gr/main#Desktop.

The objective of this Initiative was to organize the Collective Bodies of the Region of Crete, i.e. the Economic Committee, the Environment Committee, the Planning Committee and of course the Regional Council, in such a way as to eliminate the thousands of pages of paper that were wasted each time, passing to a digital transformation of recommendations and decisions of the Collective Bodies but also, at the same time, in the simplification of the procedures of both the Recommendations and the Decisions of the Bodies in a simple, direct, transparent way.

The public to whom the application is addressed are all employees of the Region of Crete, in all its services and Regional Units, all of its Regional Councilors, the Presidents and Members of its Committees and Collective Bodies. More specifically, from all the employees of the Region of Crete, the Target Group is all those who introduce proposals through their services to all the Collective Bodies, as they were presented before (Financial Committee, Environment and Planning or Development Committee and Regional Council) . Also, the members of the Department of Collective Bodies who handle all recommendations - decisions of the Region and of course all the elected, Regional Councilors, Delegates, Vice-Regional Governors and the Regional Governor, who no longer use paper but tablets to manage the meetings, proposals and decisions of the Financial Committee, but also of the other Collective Bodies of the Region, especially the Regional Council of the PK.

From 2019 onwards, there is no time duration, the decision of the Administration is that the application continues to work and improve, alas! For before 2019 we have started and will continue digitization for as many years as we want. [244 characters]

From 2019 onwards, there is the prospect of digitizing and introducing recommendations and decisions for as many years as it is deemed that the Region of Crete, its services and Executives are served, but above all, the main pillars of its Strategic Planning, which as we mentioned above are the Serving the Citizens and the Services, the Transparency and Efficiency - Accountability, of the actions and the Administration of the P.K.

The whole reasoning is based on the modeling of the process (BPR) with the aim of automating it as well as its transparency - efficiency.

a. Invitation: The Department of Collective Bodies, in cooperation with the President, "raises" the invitation for the Collective Body, e.g. the Economic Committee. He sets a deadline and sends the invitation to his members. https://comidor.crete.gov.gr/main#Meetings___568969489973000

b. Submissions: Users upload their submissions to the call, which are now available to committee members and users in a transparent, simple and naturally paperless way. This process continues until the closing date for posting the proposals.

c. Meeting: The Department of Collective Bodies meets paperless, its members come with Tablets that have been procured by PK, the proposals are discussed through this framework and the corresponding decisions are taken and posted in the corresponding field of the Comidor application.

d. Innovation. Paperless, modeling suggestions and decisions, connecting decisions with previous and subsequent ones, simplifying the process. The Platform operates in the Cloud without any capacity limitation from the mailer's mailbox to all of P.K.'s posts.

e. Acceptance. Organizations such as the Ministry of Administrative Reconstruction, has expressed the desire to copy this expertise in order to transfer the logic of Paperless Collective Bodies to all 13 Regions of the country, making the practice National Horizontal, a number of organizations such as AADE have expressed a corresponding interest, while it is characteristic, that even the main opposition of the Region of Crete, when its members received their Tablets and saw the operation of the Platform, expressed their satisfaction with a Press Release. https://www.kriti24.gr/theseis-kai-protaseis-stin-oikonomiki-epitropi-apo-tin-parataxi-i-kriti-mprosta/

There was no collaboration with any other body, apart from the b-open company that develops the application and improves it according to the feedback it has from the Region of Crete, within the framework of the maintenance contracts it signs. It should be noted that the maintenance costs are the only ones, since the Platform is contractually free and will never be charged to the Greek State and/or the P.C. and regardless of the number of its users.

The participation of the Executives of the Region of Crete was and is active. The IT Departments of P.K. with the special initiative of those of P.E. Heraklion who designed the product and continue to improve it. Very important participation was provided by the employees - IT executives of the Social Work program of the OAED, who helped in the modeling of the processes, the training of the users, the connection of IT and services, the elected officials, the institutions. The cooperation of the Department of Collective Bodies and Administrative Services with the operators - orderers of the suggestions, who register the issues, was excellent, freeing the Region from the counterproductive process of photocopying the suggestions and also the attached supporting documents which are too large in quantity. In general, the whole process was, and continues to be, a harmonious collaboration of Executives, Management, IT's and Elections, with very visible results.

Region of Crete, Regional Units of Chania, Rethymnon, Heraklion, Lasithi, Total Services, Support Department, Collective Bodies.

The Administration and Collective Bodies of the Region of Crete, especially for the Financial Committee which is the "lung" of the Region, together with the Regional Council, has approximately 40 meetings per year, with a set of proposals approaching 3,000 per year. Especially the Technical issues, with notices, conditions, committees and issue budgets but also economic, cultural, touristic, general administrative actions, have an average of photocopies of over 12 pages, per proposal and with a number of 10-12 members per committee, gives us about 500,000 photocopies for the Finance Committee alone. If we include the Regional Council and the other Committees we arrive at a number of photocopies over 2,000,000 / year. This, moreover, was the main reason why employees of another Region made a complaint about the unnecessary waste of public money. The application achieves its goal of 100% and therefore saves more than 2,000,000 pages of paper / year.

The benefits are multiple for the Region of Crete and can be identified in 2 main categories, direct and indirect. More specifically:

a. Direct Benefits: Minimization of waste of work resources and money, since photocopiers, photocopiers, faxes and printers, metals, toners and repairs are reduced, but also maximization of the time of employees who do not have to turn into photocopiers during meetings and paper carriers during the preparation of the proposals. The Support Department of Collective Bodies can now deal with the correct - joint preparation of its proposals, with the correctness - legality of the decisions instead of photocopies.

b. Direct Benefits. Apart from the (3) basic values of the Region of Crete, Service, Transparency and Efficiency, which are served from the first moment, there is also a very big perspective in this whole system. There is the possibility to extract the Decisions of the Collective Bodies based on their modeling, On Line, at the time of the meeting and then proceed to their next stages.