A modern, clean, modern building that meets the expectations of citizens, which creates good service conditions, respecting the taxpayers’ money is the new Land Registry Office of Thessaly, noted the Kostas Kyranakis, Deputy Minister of Digital Governance, who accompanied the Prime Minister yesterday at the inauguration of the new facilities.

“The main bet,” he pointed out, speaking to the First Program, is to maintain the good image of the service.

The last visit of a prime minister to the Land Registry was in 1998, under the government of Kosta Simitis, before yesterday’s visit to the new premises of the Land Registry Office in Larissa by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Mr. Kyranakis added.

Although the commitment of the then government, he noted, was that the Cadastre would be completed immediately, apparently meaning within the term of that government, since then “an endless yacht of Arta has incessantly inconvenienced citizens and professionals and property owners throughout Greece,” the Deputy Minister stressed.

“And that is why in the programmatic statements of Kyriakos Mitsotakis at the beginning of this second term he was absolutely determined and gave us a clear instruction to finally complete what we are the last country in Europe that does not have the Greek Cadastre, the cadastre throughout the country,” Kyranakis stressed.

“Six old mortgage offices are being merged. I think all of us and all of you have visited in your life at least once a mortgage office all this chaos with the volumes. (…) There were buildings in a very bad state. So that’s one of them. The second is that the archive is being digitised. This week we exceeded 120 million pages digitized from the old mortgage offices. (…) We are talking about thousands of man-hours. Over 1,000 jobs have been created by this project, paid for entirely by the Recovery Fund. Not a single euro is put in by the Greek taxpayer for this. And what it means is that the lawyers who do title searches for you when you want to buy a property will not have to go to any mortgage office in Greece, any land registry office in Greece, at the end of this project. They will be able to do the research from their computer, from their office and wherever else they see fit.”

The third one presented yesterday, he said, is an artificial intelligence tool for use by the Land Registry.

This is the first public body in Greece to apply artificial intelligence for administrative decisions, Mr. Kyranakis explained.

“Until now a supervisor takes a contract and reads it, no matter how many pages it is. There are contracts even with 200 pages or more. He takes his eyes out to find what he needs and applies legal control rules. That is, to see if the law coincides with what is stated in the contract, if the documents and certificates which presuppose a legal transaction have been mentioned. And at some point it issues a legal control decision that this transaction is approved, transcribed, registered. So this is a very long process in some cases. The average is around 30 minutes, and this tool reads in natural language the text of the contract, understands what kind of transaction it is, identifies the elements that need to be applied based on the legal rules and generates an automatic recommendation to the supervisor to approve or reject elements of the contract. (…) We save an awful lot of time. We cut the time down to less than half, maybe even 1/3 with the tests we have done so far. And of course it saves the government costs. (…) The decision is always made by the person. But imagine yourself reading a 200 page text and having to apply rules written somewhere else. And imagine having a ready-made recommendation that shows you exactly within the contract text what to apply and where. The process is much simpler, faster and most importantly saves the taxpayer a lot of money. A procedure that currently costs 15 euros, this can cost up to 30 minutes,” the Deputy Minister added.

Asked to comment on the barrage of reactions from the opposition and not only, for delayed promises and empty announcements, Kyranakis said the following.

“In order for the citizen to judge whether we have delays, who is right, who is wrong, who has done projects, who has not, the erga.gov.gr platform has now been created, where every citizen across the country can select the region in which he lives and works and see what projects have been done or are in progress in his region, how much they cost, what the financial tools are, what stage the projects are at, what benefits there are for the region. I am not of the opinion to say it is black and white, we have done everything perfectly, everyone else is the worst in history. But I think in a democracy, in order for it to work better, there have to be tools for comparison.”

In response to reporters pointing out that there are citizens who have not been compensated even a year after Daniel, he replied that “case by case, any citizen who wants to complain about something and tell us there is a problem, there are ways. Of course if a year later he has not been compensated, it is wrong.” Asked whose fault it is, he noted that he meant the government. “But to get to the realities. And last year and this year, let’s say, in the case of the Penteli fire, we had compensation today. EUR 500,000 was disbursed to the fire victims. In other words, the state, despite any weaknesses, despite any pathologies, is working on some things much faster than before. Now if there is a citizen who 1 year later has not been compensated, we will see the reasons and causes, whether there was a mistake in the applications, whether something was missing. I because I know the area, my mother is from the area from last year’s Daniel disasters, the compensation was fast,” he stressed afterwards.

“I don’t want to be absolute. If there is a citizen who has been wronged, we are here to redress the injustice. I’ve just learned to look a little deeper. That is, we cannot be satisfied with slogans, nor should we look for movements with political expediency. If there is a citizen somewhere who has been wronged, the injustice must be rectified immediately,” he added.

Projects worth three billion have already started to be implemented, Kyranakis stressed. “I mean, I don’t know what other government has made sure that an area with a natural disaster has been given so much money. (…) The Janus projects, that is, the previous natural disaster flood control projects withstood last year’s natural disaster of Daniel. This is, which is evident from yesterday’s autopsy and the announcements that were made. Doesn’t that matter? Doesn’t it matter that the previous projects that were planned, funded, implemented, withstood an even greater natural disaster? It means that amidst all the pathologies some things were done right. And from last year to this year, projects have been done and will continue to be done. Now I am not an expert to tell you on public works which flood defences worked and which didn’t. You’ll have to talk to my colleagues. I just urge people not to be content with headlines and not to see everything in black and white. Let’s get a little deeper into the causes,” he said.

Asked whether he judged the progress of disaster recovery and compensation of the affected people as satisfactory, he said “each citizen judges this individually. I do not want to express an opinion on behalf of a person who has been affected. There are citizens that I have spoken to and they are satisfied, and there are citizens who are not satisfied. We are trying to do our best.”

Finally, on the issue of dead fish in the Pagasitikos, asked how difficult the management of problems, the “difficult” understanding between regional and local government, he agreed that obviously plays a negative role and added “we call the two rulers of the city of Volos and the Region of Thessaly, who, I remind you, do not come from the New Republic nor have they been elected with New Democracy, for the common good to come together more and help the region and the government will contribute as much as it can.