 My name is Tara McGinnis and I am delighted to invite you into the physical and virtual space that is New America for folks who are unfamiliar with New America. We are a Washington DC based think and action tank dedicated to revitalizing the promise of the ideals of America and the digital age, we could not be more excited about our guests today. Across New America we have a number of teams that are focused on bringing all aspects of public life and public public policy into the digital age we have teams that work. Digi on digital governance we have teams that work on bringing technologists into government. We have a team that I lead called the new practice lab that focuses on how we use technology for family. Economic security but here today. There are a few people who I've learned as much from as the, the minister of digital governance in Greece over the past year and so I'm, we're going to turn most of the session over to, to him to hear some presentation and dive into questions about your work and what the implications are for the United States. I can't say enough about how grateful we are to be here, but also the kind of the fellowship and learning so I want to say a few moments about karyakos PR cocky, the minister of digital governance in Greece. In a very unique capacity he is both a computer scientist and a full scientist, someone who has been leading on both the technology side as well as the vision. And the work that's been taking place you'll hear more about from him, but has been an inspiration not only in the forward looking nature about how you can smooth the life experience of resistance, but also in how you can build trust and government along the way. I think having picked up the New York Times, some point in 2020 and read a headline, suggesting that in the surprising in a surprising way, Greek citizens are very satisfied with their government covered response. I was inspired to speak to you and the team about the work so I'm going to turn it over for presentation and let's hear more about your work directly but thank you for being. Thank you for the invitation is a great joy to be here needless to say and let me kick off by saying that your book the book that data doesn't McGinnis and Hannah Shank road on public interest technologies power to the public has been an inspiration for the great government for myself personally for my team and it's actually mandatory reading for my team so thank you so much for this and it's a great joy to be here the New America Foundation. The work that we have been trying to do is very much in parallel with what you have been trying to describe in your book how governments haven't been provisioning public services in the manner in which would be ideal for citizens. And that's what we have been attempting to do in the last three years in Greece is effectively to change the way citizens are served in the context of their life events. This means that life events are structured basically from the government's perspective from the state's perspective rather than from the citizens perspective and technology can enable you to change this this is your vision. This is our vision and this is what we have been trying to attempt. Let me begin by quoting two numbers, the change in two numbers of our KPIs are key performance indicators to showcase what we have achieved in Greece in the last three years. The first one is the number of digital services provided. And there we started effectively having learned a lot from the UK experience from the government digital service of the UK in 2011 the gap that UK experience. We created a similar portal, got that gr. And what we wanted to do was to aggregate the pre existing services of the Greek state to begin with how many services do we have. Do they work well where are they should they should be on a single point of reference. This took us nine months we found out that we had 501 pre existing services. We added two more on day one. So 503 the rule according to which we added services we said would be the Pareto rule, meaning that 20% of the services generate as a rule of thumb. 80% of the traffic. So effectively we wanted the most frequently used services, being the ones that we will start from. So 503 in March 2020. And as of yesterday 1398 services. This means that if you look at the curve, it's effectively one service per day provided including weekends. And that manifests the scale of the work conducted by our engineers by our service designers by our UX designers by the people who are engaged in this project. Now the second number I think is even more interesting it's even more important. It's digital transactions now we can have a sense of how many times a Greek citizen interacted digitally with the Greek state, the tax services excluded from this analysis, because this was digital, even before us, we have a Greek citizens have to file their tax digitally for more than 10 years back. So say that slowly, Greek citizens have to file their taxes digitally carry on. Yes. That's a policy that started around 15 years ago and it's a policy that remains to this day. And it's a success because which is interesting here is that every Greek citizen has a digital idea for the tax system, which we then use which we then instrumentalize for a series of other digital services. Now, we can have a sense of digital transactions effectively by adding two numbers up. The first number is how many times you logged in the systems. How many times you logged in the systems either using the tax credentials that I mentioned which we instrumentalize further, or the authentication of the banks of the Greek banks which you have which for which we have allowed use for access in our digital public services we accept them as equivalent the European directive enables us to do so. Bundling those numbers is the direct logins but there's also a second number vis-à-vis how many times one is served interoperability. Now Estonia has X road we don't have X road but we have a version of it, we have an interoperability center. So the calls in the interoperability center are equal to physical visit not made because the Greek state already has access to your data. So the green light will obtain access to your data through the interoperability center, and effectively this is the one so only principle that Estonia has originally conceived of. So by adding those two numbers up you have a sense of digital transactions. So how how did those transactions evolve in the last years in 2018 there were 8.8 million digital transactions in 2019 there were 34 million. In 2020, there were 94 million digital transactions and in 2021, there were 567 million digital transactions. And if you do, if you look at the numbers the curve is purely exponential. Now, COVID played their role of course in the usage of such services because it was the demand catalyst. Governments had to ensure government continuity in the same manner in which businesses have to ensure business for the year. The claim here would be that it's the previous number the availability of digital services in the core life events, which was the driver for the exponential evolution of this number effectively, it was a supply, I would say, change primarily and then a demand change. So overall those two numbers if you look at any poll in Greece right now in the policy areas and the satisfaction of each policy area. So there's a consensus in Greece that digital transformation of the state was an unexpected reform. It was the vision of our Prime Minister Kiriakos Mitsotakis and it's a reform which we're delivering to citizens, and where results are being made basically every day because one new service emerges every day. Now the question is, how did we do this, apart from how we plan to continue building in an agile manner, the new services that we want to add every day. So the first lesson is preparation. We started more than a year prior to the national election. Our last national election took place in 2019. So imagine us starting mid 2018. The then leader of the opposition now Prime Minister Kiriakos Mitsotakis had personal experience on them on the topic because he used to serve previously in a previous capacity as a minister of administrative reform. So the government was part as it was called then it was part of his portfolio. But as he said to us, he felt that he had the remit but he didn't have the tools that he wanted. So effectively, when the Prime Minister created his cabinet in a very symbolic move he decided to abolish the ministry that he previously run to create a new digital ministry were effectively while we were naming it and designing it we knew that digital was not exactly the proper title, because digital is the means as you say in the book it's not the goal. The goal is service design the goal is public interest technology the goal is to change the experience of citizens when they interact with the state it's not about the technology. It's it's about the experience and about how to change things. So effectively if we conceive of the status three things structures processes and human resources. We decided to get processes out of the traditional ministry of public service or interior as we say, and create a ministry around process simplification, digitization and telecom of course being part of that mix. So the digital governance ministry was created. It took us a long time to learn the lessons from other places and the lessons from our previous experience. We looked both at the horizon and at the landscape. The horizon being, okay what is Estonia doing being the most digital of states. We studied Estonia of course but we realized well we were studying it that it's more a compass, rather than a map. It's the end result it's it's where we want to get, but getting there, the path is not the same. The government digital service that I mentioned before was a closer example of the UK to the Greek experience. So we brought people over from the government digital service to help our delivery unit and train them at the beginning. And in that process, we mapped all the digital organizations that existed previously in the Greek state up until 2019. And as you can imagine, as is the experience in all places, the way digitally evolved in the previous decades was that at some point every department of organization every ministry, in our case, had a digital department, doing the digital things of that organization, digital education, digital health, etc, etc. So we had to understand how to deliver change at speed in that scale for a horizontal policy portfolio. That's a challenge. So we decided that one we wanted to adopt a centralized model for a counter in the size of Greece that made sense. The population of around 10.7 million citizens. It made sense to have a very strong ministry of digital at the core of government. Another lesson that we learned was that in the governments and in the countries where we had success at speed. It was primarily because at the end of the day the project had the remit had the personal interest of the head of state or head of government, depending on the policy architecture of every country. So in our case, that was the case, our Prime Minister had previous experience as I mentioned, so we decided to build a very strong organization. So in effect, we knew previously that our cloud services, for instance, we're part of the Ministry of Finance, our delivery unit was another in this center which previously belonged to the Ministry of Education. We had another cloud and delivery unit together infrastructure at the Ministry of Labor. So all these organizations are election took place on July 7 2019. On the night of July 8 Monday, July 8 2019 all these organizations became part with the presidential decree of the new Ministry of Digital Governance we were ready before. So the button was pressed 24 hours after the election and the new organization was created automatically. So we played a huge role. And what also played a huge role were three policy decisions at the beginning, which in my view were extremely instrumental. The first one, and those decisions became part of our legal system that were passed parliament 10 days after our new government was created. The second one was the centralization of procurement. The new Minister of Digital Governance was endowed with veto powers on all significant procurement on digital across the state on the basis of fitness with a digital strategy which we would be developing. The second policy decision in my view the most critical was rendering the Minister of Digital Governance chief information officer of the state. And by name but in content. And by that I mean that the Minister of Digital Governance in Greece has the capacity to interoperate any data set with any other interoperate any data in order to in a sense, offer a better citizens experience in while we're trying to redesign life events. And the third one was that we made a decision that all data will be centrally stored on the governmental cloud, unless we said so unless we allowed for that not to happen. So those three policy decisions happen at the beginning of our government's tenure and in my view politically, this was crucial in order to be able to then deliver the results, of course having the proper team on the ground also played a huge role. We instrumentalized that previous year in order to headhunt and in order to know whom we would be collaborating with in the context of the Greek public service. This was again extremely important because we have extremely talented people within our public service and we empowered them with the creation of this ministry. And then we started delivering results nine months later, the government portal was created in our view the core reform. But COVID came in exactly nine months after we were into office. And then reality there we had a dilemma. There is this phenomenal essay which I strongly suggest everyone reads the Prime Minister and my team. Interestingly enough we read it simultaneously and we exchange the essay on what type on that day. It's an essay by Yuval Harari on the FT at the beginning of the pandemic. It was interestingly named after the pandemic, even though the pandemic was just beginning. And there Harari points out the dilemma that governments will face saying that from our experience, after a couple of years the pandemic will be over but what will remain are your policy choices on the ditch primarily on the digital front this time. And there is a core dilemma between empowerment and surveillance he says it's as clearly. So our decision as a government was obviously empowerment, because in effect we had a pre existing strategy. The strategy was, let's change the way citizens are served by the state. So we took that policy decision and we rendered it a tool to battle the virus as well, because we knew that as we're digitizing public services in a state which is quite conceived as being bureaucratic additionally, with lots of steps on a life event. If you simplify and digitize at the same time effectively you're eliminating interactions and doing that during a pandemic, that's a strategy. So we did that. And in reality the core life events of citizens are currently a part of our government portal. I'll use one example vis a vis how we have approached our work showcase how similar it is to the philosophy that you point out in your book, birth of a child. Prior to the portal the first event that we decided to simplify and digitize symbolically was exactly this. So it was a five step process up until February 2020. You obviously had to go to the hospital. You had to go to the citizen service center to get a social security number in Greece for the for the newborn. You had to go to the pension fund of one of the parents to have a social security enrollment and coverage. You had to go to your local city your local municipality for registration for the official registration, and we had added the fifth step, which is a stipend which we offer 2000 euros stipend for newborns on the basis of income. So five steps, and the parents are typically very happy when they have a child so they don't notice them, they notice them in other more problematic events of their life. Unfortunately, we figured that this was a great opportunity to prove the concept. So we'll prove we try to prove the concept and we did the following now, when a child is born in Greece, aren't received two messages, the first message being congratulations, and the social security number for your child is this, and the second message or it can be an email. And the second message is whether or not they will be receiving the stipend, telling them that it's automatically credited to their account. And in a sense it's the first smart social policy design that we have implemented this work miracles, this is what we have been trying to do on all other fronts. On certain things we have managed to simplify and redesign more quickly than simply digitizing but COVID forced us to do a little bit of the latter as well, but still the whole policy right now I think is running at speed and the scale as I mentioned and to add another point to this the vaccination process for us was a core, I would say policy decision on the overall digital agenda of the government because in reality we viewed vaccination as a service design experiment. And this is exactly what was the decision of the Prime Minister and of my team. We wanted to have a multiple channel approach we wanted to have predictability that you would know when you would be vaccinated and where. And that when you went to the vaccination centers you wouldn't experience long lines of people waiting, it would be maximum half an hour. And given the fact that this was the most difficult logistics exercise for World War Two. That was a challenge we had to develop the system in seven weeks. The Greek citizens view the vaccination system as a very big success, exactly exactly because we managed to achieve this multiple channel approach just namely, we had the obvious digital platform that worked where you could book your two appointments for the vaccine. We had the second digital platform, which was our e-prescription system during COVID we launched, we already had the prescription system, your prescription associated with your social security number but only doctors had access to this not citizens. The doctors had to print the prescription and you had to then go to the pharmacy store with a printed piece of document. We changed that and you received your prescription on your phone with a QR code. So we said that if you're enrolled on that system you don't even need to go on the platform you will receive an SMS telling you what your proposed appointment is on the basis of your zip code. And on the basis of course of your other characteristics, your age and or your health condition, because the e-prescription system has historical data for 10 years. And we can reverse engineer them on the basis of conditions, so our vaccination authority did that. So the two digital channels played a huge role, but we didn't only have digital channels because service design is not only about digital, digital is the means. We also had physical channels for those who are not digitally skilled. And there we either used the citizen service centers, we have a thousand degrees where you could physically go and book your appointment. Or, and that was I think one of the best decisions that we made, instead of using call centers which wouldn't work. And we saw them not working in many places around the world. We instrumentalized the pharmacy stores in Greece, which are 11,000. They have an SME structure and like the United States and all pharmacy store owners are credentialed in the prescription system. So we said that if you don't want to book your appointment for the vaccine online yourself, you can go to your pharmacy store in your village or in your city and have the appointment booked for you. So overall it was a very coherent system fully digital. And it's very interesting that, as again, is pointed out in the book. Sometimes the simpler technologies play a more significant impact, have a more significant impact. And when we discuss with citizens what has played the biggest role in their impression about change overall in the Greek state. They quote, amongst other things, the SMS that they received, when they received their first job of the vaccine, exactly because the system was fully digital, they automatically received an SMS notifying them about their second appointment. So many told us that this was exactly where I felt that my state is working really well, and it's changing in the process. Now, overall, this whole process again, those projects are a function of the work of a very large team of a service delivery unit of contractors who have changed the way they operate within the context of our strategic priorities. Our digital strategy is public. It's called the digital transformation Bible. The document is interesting. It's in Greek, but the document is interesting exactly because it's not solely strategic. It's an implementation plan which codifies 448 specific projects that are going to be implemented by 2025. They're not the only projects because of course, we have crisis we have new priorities, but we will certainly fund these projects. And because it's not only about the screens of code but it's also about the books of law. The digital law which passed the Greek Parliament in September 2020. And I would say that in a quite rare for our standards manifestation of bipartisanship, the equivalent of 275 MPs out of 300 for political parties. My party and three extra parties voted for that law. And in effect, it's a digital constitution of Greece includes all facets of digital transposing European directives on telecommunications and open data. Our governance and identity, digital identity, digital signatures, and the full scope of policies like the policy, the innovative policy that we have had on the deployment of 5G networks in Greece, everything is within that law. And for us it's extremely important amongst other things to answer the challenge of continuity, which is as we're reading the experience of other states amongst other places the UK. We see that continuity of that policy is a huge challenge that needs to be answered. And by definition for to answer this, this needs to be part of the political system of every country overall, because at the end of the day it's more of an infrastructural discussion that we're having on that topic. On a final note, the whole strategy that I tried to describe is agile in nature so our plans for the future is to continue delivering services, which we haven't yet managed to do so because some of them require larger procurements, rather than quick wins and smaller services, but we're getting there and at the end of the day our goal is in 2026 to be digital by default. Again thank you so much for your invitation here and I'm obviously much looking forward to the discussion. Thank you so much and I think you covered a lot of territory there in a short time. Maybe I'll start where you ended I think that then the speed and impact of your work is unique, because it lies at the nexus of not only service design, but they're also of lawmaking I think you mentioned the 2020 law. And as digital governance, the growth of service design, new teams and shops that local and federal level across the globe advance, I think often this is thought of as a separate entity from where we make policy at the legislative body or an administrative process I'd love to ask you to open that up and talk about how much was, you know, the legislative powers you have, which I can just, we're in a virtual environment I could just hear, you know, 30 engineers and designers and policymakers say, you have total governance over you know, you can you can interoperate data. These are kind of long in the United States so many of them are interagency agreements to get a fraction of what the four powers are but I'd love you to kind of tease out how much was the governance structure and the not bipartisan quad part, you know, you know, shared goal from a legislative body mission critical to the work you've done. I'll answer this in a tweet. My legal team is equally big to my delivery team. And I think that speaks volumes about what we have been trying to achieve. The former president of Estonia Thomas Henry syllabus was extremely kind to act as an advisor at the beginning of our tenure, and to me personally and I always try to find the opportunity to thank him for that. And one of the quotes, if he doesn't mind me quoting him that he one of the phrases that I remember from his advisor capacity at the beginning was that when we were designing this plan and he was our let's say closest person where we present and said, does this work or not. He said that more or less your first year is going to be your year of legislation. And the next years are your years of coding, as a rule of thumb, you will need to legislate again and again and again in the process. But you need to get the legislation right you need to get the responsibilities right if you don't get them right. You won't manage to achieve the results that you want, because in reality here as you mentioned, we're a very strong digital ministry my colleague, my Italian colleague with audio call out was this minister of Italy and the former CEO Vodafone. We were at a conference in Italy, 15 days ago and he said that the Greek digital ministry is effectively the strongest digital ministry in Europe. He's right. We designed it, our prime minister and ourselves designed it as such on purpose because we wanted to get the results very quickly. Policies are like transplants. You need to have donor receiver compatibility. You don't have a one size fits all approach. This wouldn't work in a federal system. But what we're trying to do and what we try to do when we studied on that previous year Estonia the UK, the US, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia. That was to be inspired by those would say policy designs and then try to get the lessons out of them. And with an acute understanding of which domestic political system to have the optimum policy design for digital here in a sense you need. I think that was the support from a camp from a political campaign here but anyways, you need the knowledge of an insider and the mindset of an outsider in order to be able to deliver results in that manner. Thank you. I thank you so much for that presentation which I have like 1000 questions for you. And I'm going to pick one to start. As you were talking I couldn't help but think about the fact that I would imagine that democracy governance and government, it's are somewhat in the lifeblood for Greeks, and so that maybe citizens are coming from a slightly different perspective than in this country where we're all about privacy. And, and also maybe not as committed to certain forms of government. I'm curious to what extent do you think that the fact that that sort of that culture factors into all of the great work that you've been able to do like is the appetite, would you say for Greek citizens. Is there maybe more of an appetite for experimentation or just like more of a core faith in government that we might not have in this country. In reality, I think that, you know, our, our strategy was delivery of services. And by that I mean that overall we were trying to solve for a very large problem so if you looked at any poll in 2019 and ask Greek citizens, what are like your top three or four access bureaucracy was always topping that list top three. So in reality, we're trying to solve for a chronic condition that the Greek state has faced since its conception. So this by definition, replying to this to this challenge is by definition something that Greek citizens are endorsing every country has privacy concerns in Europe we have the general data protection regulation as you know, and we have a very strong privacy regulator in Greece with whom we interact extremely closely and we try to check all our policies and or our solutions with them so that they answer the GDP are properly. But having said this again, if the problem that you're trying to solve is quite big, then I think that you know solving it is the answer itself and this is why Greek citizens are endorsing this significantly and part of the answer is also that this reform was quite unexpected if you look at the dimensions of digital in the way they're measured by the various indicators indices throughout the world effectively, it's for things right, it's digital public services telecommunications it's digital skills, and it's the penetration of digital in the private economy. So if we pulled Greek citizens in 2018 out of the four, where do you expect to see most progress in the next four years, no one would reply in digital public services. The unexpected nature of the reform plays an all as well. I think. I think, even with low expectations you have, you know, you have gone beyond but I think this this point worth is worth bearing a little more that globally, right, citizen trust in government whether you're in Washington DC, or in Athens or is that a kind of epic low for Greece this was distinctly so say a decade ago right I am. I was reading last night at 2011 transparency international studies saw, you know, a decade ago, nine out of 10 weeks, you know, believe their, their politicians were corrupt I think the, the capacity to turn around here is worth like stopping and meditating on, but I also want to ask you, you know, what are the signs you felt in from tweets to the, to the ministry to, you know, what's coming up in qualitative work that your service deliveries. What what shows you that citizens are changing or do you have any, you know, connective data between trust in government and some of the service service design projects. At this point, it's more of a hunch, plus certain data that we have in mind like the polling that I mentioned before vis-à-vis acceptance of this policy of this government it falls in the 70s, in the 70% so the fact that people are endorsing this in every poll that we look is obvious, but we have the same sense that you do that this acts as a trust catalyst now. In my previous capacity I used to be the director of research of a think tank in Greece and I remember implementing the world value survey for Greece. And we compare the data on trust of the world value survey with other places like the Scandinavian countries in Europe or or close neighbors in the Mediterranean. And I would tell that Greece was quite low in the trust indicators I mean not only trust or its institutions even societal trust. In our view, this is one of the core elements that we want to change in the coming years, reestablishing the relationship between the citizen and the government and the state and the way the public sector works is part of that of the answer to this problem. So we feel that this policy acts as a trust accelerator as I would say, as a policy that induces trust, adds trust on behalf of the citizen. But still I think that we need to be extremely careful about, you know, the delivery of this policy, because if you remember this game called Janga, where it's very difficult to build the edifice and very easy to have it collapse if you remove the wrong brick. So we need to be extremely careful about how those services are constructed, and how trust is catalyzed and how use what vocabulary you use in the delivery of such services. For instance, you mentioned experimentation experimentation is generally not very it's closer to the American culture than the European culture would say. But we need to learn to experiment. We need to learn from our mistakes we need to learn from failing. It should be part of the design. It's the feedback loop. We need to instill this in our vocabulary and in our communications with the citizens saying look, don't expect all services to be absolutely excellent on day one. They all have challenges but if the system is built well in 24 hours, we will have responded to the challenges also having seen your feedback. Some systems, as you know from global experience both domestic here and in every country, there are certain systems which never launch, even though they have been procured and even though they have been designed for months. So the experience is that all our initiatives worked and work well and this is why trust is catalyzed, but you need the feedback loop you need to be close to the people on the front line. You need to instill the culture of experimentation so that you develop this trust with the citizens and I think that this is part that would say of my job description. And this is part of a role of our goals as Ministry of Digital Governments. One thing that you mentioned that I would love to just hear a little bit more about are the citizen service centers. You said that they're over 1000 and they, they act basically like a one stop shop for getting things like a driver's license or a birth certificate and sort of a front door to government services. So, this is the thing that comes up often when we're like, who could, who could do that here. And it's often the post office and then there's a, or the motor vehicle department of motor vehicles. And then there's a conversation about what that might look like and it sort of feels a little dreamy. And this is something that like you've now had for, I understand for quite a while and are about to sort of enter the next stage. So I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about how those, how the service centers came to exist and what's, what's in the future for them. So the citizen service centers are a reform that dates, they're more than 20 years old dates in the early 2000s. It was one of the biggest reforms that took place in the last decades. They reviewed very positively by Greek citizens, they were the outcome of the work of one particular politician back then Stavros Bernos, who designed and conceived of them, and started implementing them and then all governments built on them there was governmental continuity. They never though materialize their founding vision, their founding vision was that they would be the only place where a citizen would interact with government, as is our vision for God that you are by the way. They materialize this because around 1000 processes past the citizen service centers but not all process of the state, past under the remit. And this is manifested by the fact that in I mentioned the birth of a child, which was the life event that we simplified and it was a five step process. Had they materialized their full vision it would have been a one step process, solely going to the citizen service center. So then there are certain life events that still require you to do 10 or 15 things. So overall, we plan to do more or less what we did in the vaccine, we plan to leverage them, because in reality, what will succeed, I would say in every country, not only in Greece is the multiple channel approach. You need to have digital, digital channels and you need to have physical channels for those who are not digitally savvy, or in the life events were certain physical physical presence is required I mean in Estonia you remember three things for three things you need to physically appear in the public services, getting married getting divorced buying property. Some services will remain physical so there you will need a physical one stop shop. But apart from that, we plan to do in effect the vaccine model, which means, as we said in Parliament when we were delivering the vaccine service we said the vaccine is not only about the vaccine the vaccine is about everything. This was exactly the message that we were trying to convey. So overall got that GR will be the new face of the state for all services, and the citizen service centers that we call kept will be the equivalent where physical presence will be required or if you will want voluntarily to appear in public services. I would love to talk a little bit about I think you know, in the United States, President Biden in December put out an executive order on customer service quite quite deliberately I think not on digital service to the same point of meeting people where they are means to an end this kicked off a series of processes at a bureaucratic level, including one which is at the front end of what you've been up to looking at life experiences. As a child, leaving the military turning 65. I wonder whether you have advice on the back end of a folk of a two year focus on life experiences for the, you know, the leaders that agencies who are at the front end of thinking these, or whether there's any specific story, digging into how you went from four touch points around birth to receiving a letter or an email, you know, either kind of stories from the field of birth life experience in the Greek, and also advice to some of your peers and counterparts here in DC who are working on similar effort. So the, the overall principle in redesigning life events and changing the experience of citizens is that ideally. they come to you rather than you coming to us. This is what we tried to do for the vaccine. That was the message, for instance, that if you're enrolled in the prescription system you will receive a message. This is by the way, another inspiration that we have from your book, where you mentioned the story of citizens receiving their via SMS and invitation to do their exams. So basically being inspired from your book and augmenting our prescription system we plan to launch this this month in Greece. So citizens will be receiving invitation to do specific medical exams on the basis of the pre existing conditions because we have a very interesting data set as I mentioned the prescription system data set. Now, overall, another lesson which I think is also part of your work is that you need to have interdisciplinary teams. That's an absolute necessity, you mentioned that you need to have lawyers, you need to have economists, you need to have policy experts, and you need to have public interest technologies, both engineers, and people who know technology policy and public interest technology on the table and they don't, you need to know people who understand technology not necessarily people who will write the code themselves, ideally you will have both. So for every life event that we were trying to redesign, we have an interdisciplinary mix of people on the table. Certainly at the end of the day, depending on the event you need to have a business owner. So you need to have an organization that will have the ownership of the change or the reform. On many cases, especially at the beginning as we were trying to change this culture in the Greek public service. The owner was us, and we were doing it under the Prime Minister's directions. So effectively, we were trying to do this centrally, but after some point after we managed to prove the concept. Various organizations started doing it themselves. So we're there to catalyze this for them. They decide the what we decide the how the mechanism through which this happens. Exactly because of the fact that birth of a child was the first change I have many stories, most of which I cannot share, but amongst the ones that they can, even though the law was voted. Even though the ministerial decision was signed, even though the technology was there and the program was there. And even though managerial books urge you not to micromanage, I had to micromanage in order to have the delivery of the service so my office had to call all hospitals in Greece to check. They're not that many. I mean, given the size of the country. They're not that many, but we had we called all of them. We asked all of them whether the system is working if they have comments. We told them that the plans to work tomorrow. We called all registries in all in all relevant municipalities to see whether or not it would be working. We had challenges with certain amongst them. We had to call all of them and call them again and iterate back and find all the problems that they were facing so that the system would work. Making a policy decision, having a system created or having a law passed is not enough. All those are necessary conditions. The managerial equation and the implementation equation at the end is the sufficient condition. So, in a sense, after you get everything right after you have all the laws passed all the policy shape the interdisciplinary team on the ground. Then it's time for perspiration. And then it's time to pick up the phone and see whether or not the policy is working on the ground and what you need to change so that it does. I appreciate your candor because I think, and especially for those of us who are in the smoothing and moving into the internet era. Sometimes you have to call the hospital is a good reminder of the task lie ahead for our team. I really do want to pivot and I'm looking over at Hannah to see whether there are some engaged questions from the audience to raise this up. But just to anchor in the life experience here in the United States and how I'm sort of queuing you up for audience questions. Next, you know, 40% of births in the United States are paid for by the US government, because families are too low income. That is an actually a very sophisticated payment system. You have to independently have a, you know, quasi close to your, to your benefit dependent $2,000, you know, or to your Euro infusion. It's a tax credit so you have to separately come back to us after your birth and tax season, and where we do not file universally online and prove to us that you're both a parent and that you're a low income. But it is a fully real about realizable vision. I don't think we know no one has your powers of data integration, but that when a mother, you know, low income mother gives birth. We know who she is we know she's validated for her child tax credit you could send her in real time like these are not impossible dreams for us in the United States. I think thinking about what are, what are the interesting openings where we have as you thought, oh wow the pharmacies are a footprint, what are the footprints we have that we can vision life experiences differently but there's a ton to learn and I and I really want to encourage there is I think a bootleg version of your vision in English which I'm happy to make sure that some of the government officials here have a chance to look at because I think you are ahead at thinking through particularly this life experience of birth. So are there are there questions from the crowd, I have plenty more questions so if there aren't happy to use the chair of the mic but do you have questions from there. There are questions and I know I'm weighing like do I want to just ask my own question or these are also good questions. We got a question about how deep is the digital transformation in terms of reengineering or even reinventing government, or is it more the type of low hanging fruit in times of covid. I would say we did both to be fully to be full candid. So in a sense part of it is extremely deep because if you look at the policy changes that I described at the beginning, the new organization, the powers that we end out the ministry with all of those things are quite structural. And they will remain so, but there are certain things which were absolute low hanging fruits and quick wins, but low hanging fruits remain low hanging fruits until someone grabs the fruit. So, certain of these have been low hanging fruits for decades. So in reality, and they were not because of covid. My covid effect in reality was to catalyze the demand for certain services, but it helped that the delivery unit was there. The team was there, the responsibilities were aligned. The strategy was there, and the budget was there, because what I should mention in this debate is that as we were structuring our digital strategy the digital transformation Bible we had the debate with all departments of the Greek government. Originally we conducted a gap analysis, and we tried to see what systems are missing so we had any prescription system, but most of Greek hospitals didn't have the system that we would want them to have. So, having seen the full gap analysis in 2019 we didn't, we purely didn't have the budget to do 100% of cover 100% of the distance. And then covid came and covid held, especially there because there is a plan in the European Union called the RF, and this plan effectively budget wise it's a Marshall plan for our times for the European Union countries. 20% of the plan in every member state of the European Union is budgeted towards digital increases 23%. The plan did for us is that it enabled us to finance 100% of the outstanding elements of the past, and even go into the list of things that we want for the future. So right now we have a very, I would say coherent strategy vis-à-vis what we're going to achieve. Most of the low hanging fruits have been delivered. So now we're in the, in the process of doing significantly designs of services, which of course citizens are truly endorsing. All right, you want to, I also I will just open it up, please, please submit your questions. I want to ask a question about leadership, unless they're that you have other ones ready at the ready. I was really struck by the history of having a prime minister who saw the shortfalls and opportunities of the bureaucracy. In the book we talk a lot about the importance of political leadership from the top understanding the front lines. I just like to kind of tease out the ingredients of, you know, is can you do this at a technocratic level alone. Tell us a little more. The answer, the answer I think the question is, the answer to your question is obvious. You need both political skills and technical skills in this equation. And you need the vision, you need vision at the top, you need political leverage at the top. So it was very important that Kyriakos Mitsotakis, your prime minister, had the experience on that field and understood what was missing so that you wanted to create such a team that would deliver such a project. It wouldn't have happened otherwise. But having said this, when will you go into the delivery unit and you go into how this policies implemented. Yes, when we passed the three policies that they mentioned the policy on data the policy on the government platform and on the new services on interoperability on procurement, all of those things. One can think that we have all the cards in our hands. Yes, but this is not where the story ends it's where the story starts. You cannot impose digital policy on other departments. It's very useful that we have the cards, but it makes the debate more productive and it makes, in effect, the outcome closer to fruition, but you cannot do it without other departments you cannot do this without political deliberations. You cannot do this without an extensive iteration process, but at some point the iteration process ends at some point someone makes a decision, and at some point, the policy is delivered. And this is why we decided to have this model. I want to open up for any more closing questions how I can see jumping in. Yeah, we have a related question actually to what we're just talking about, which is how hopeful are you that the current momentum will endure in an uncertain future I political changes new policy directions financial strains great question. Politicians are not good at making predictions as you know, we should be good at making what we feel should happen happen. We should be good at delivery of results. So in my view I have you this question as a challenge. This is what I'll say so in reality, we should try to guarantee continuity to the maximum extent this is why we tried to get bipartisan support, even though we didn't need it we have an absolute majority in parliament, but we wanted it not only for symbolic purposes we wanted everybody's commitment towards this significant radical change happening at the core of our government at the core of our state. So in reality, this is the core challenge moving forward. I want to give you a moment to reflect on, you know, in an unstructured way if there if there's a single piece of advice, you give to your peers in Europe to your peers across the globe to us here in the United States as we embark on the smoothing of life experiences. So that may be my final my final question to you is your reflection is advice to two others who may be at a much earlier stage in the chain. Don't even think for a single moment that you cannot do it. It's absolutely feasible to deliver the this project, but the path for delivering it is singular. Each one has a different experience. The end goal is the same, what we need to deliver, but the path will be different for each one of us. We need to be inspired by one another we need to learn from each other's successes and failures and to be very candid about the latter. And but at the end of the day, you know, if you do your homework, if you prepare in advance if you have a good team which is interdisciplinary. The leadership at the top, as you mentioned, then you have all the core ingredients there, and then you can deliver significant change at that level. Maybe I'll close us out by saying when Hannah and I were writing power to the public was around the same time when you were gathering an army of folks envisioning a new way that digital governance could take place in Greek, Greece, and the core pillars in how we talk about what we see as the kind of next level of work, anchoring deeply in and designing for for citizens for residents using data in a way to say oh 80% of our, you know, action is over here or this is what matters most using data in real time to see how you're making progress. And the third is whether you call it experimentation or you'd call it trying and failing or you have the ability to constantly learn, which I've learned a lot from you in this book, I can see that you've espoused a culture of learning across the agency. These are the hallmarks of what we say that kind of the excellent looks like you have built in your work. A profound example of what we write about as should be done in the book after interviewing hundreds of people around the globe so I'm excited for the Princeton press is already on us about a next edition and I feel confident. There's an ability to articulate the story of the work you've done in a moment in a really important moment of crisis so I really wanted to have the chance to say, it's, you have some people working very deliberately on one of these three areas of the sphere, but the ability to say this is not at all about digital governance that's serving public that this is a Jenga house and you could explain it. It's really excellent on your covert rollout, but destroy something for the next generation of thing you haven't thought of the level of sophistication, a few in the team and actually the broader ministers. It is really I think inspiration and inspirational and in a moment like now where we're asking ourselves, you know how can we be doing better at serving our citizens than the United States. The answer is we have a long way to go it's a real inspiration to have you here. I hope we will be in an ongoing conversation about what inspires you, what you what you failed at what you succeed at you're headed towards your goal in 2023. But I just want to kind of there's no in a in a remote environment there's no way to kind of stand up as we would in the old days of numeric and and have some applause but I want to express my gratitude to you and the team for sharing your learnings with us today. Thank you folks really appreciate it.