The anaplirotes.gr platform is an innovation in many ways:

• The platform was developed as an open software application available at gitlab. It can be reused and easily customised to meet the needs of any other public or private organization that contracts citizens and employees without need of physical presence
• It interconnects non-connected information systems of the Ministry of Education
• It massively updates the necessary information systems of the Greek Administration mentioned above
• The use of the public digital seal in signing contracts creates a good practice and the underlying code can be used by the entire public administration in similar cases
• It is a green application as it significantly reduces transportation, paper bureaucracy, operating hours of public administration infrastructure and working hours

The platform was first used in August 2021, serving approximately almost fifty thousands (50.000) teachers in 13 recruitment cycles. The platform was also used to recruit approximately seven thousand (7.000) teachers to cover the emergency needs of teachers who showed Covid-19 symptoms. On the 2022 school year it was used for the first round of recruitment serving around 28,000 teachers. The development team is discussing with the Ministry of Education to extend the Platform to special cases of substitute teachers, that are not covered by the existing system, extend the Platform to include the appointment of permanent teachers and to develop new web services with all connected information systems mentioned above, in order to make the application more flexible, efficient, and user-friendly.

GRNET's Digital Governance Directorate, designed, analysed, and developed the platform. To complete the analysis and design, a joined advisory body consisting of executives from GRNET and from the HR and IT directorates of the MoE, two regional and two local educational directorates, and the organizations that had developed and supported all the information systems mentioned above, collaborated and met regularly for 4 months to set the specifications and functions of the system.

Teachers benefit because they do not have to travel to go to the headquarters of the local education directorate. Employees of education directorates report greater job satisfaction, as they do not have to register the appointed teachers in the required public information systems, one by one. Registrations have become instant, massive and interoperable. The image of the ΜοΕ is benefited as it directly informs teachers through sms at every step of the process (3 sms/teacher).

The purpose of the innovation is to facilitate the Ministry of Education to leverage new interoperability technologies on an internal and external level in order to improve internal processes and specifically the procedure of substitute teachers’ appointment. Impact is measured through a quantitative assessment based on measured observations from the log files of the application. Also the qualitative assessment is based on written and oral reports, of all involved stakeholders (teachers, school principals, local education directorates etc.) who mention job satisfaction, greater support from the central administration, and simplification of procedures. The vision is to universally extend the application to all Ministry of Education contracting processes, as well as to other agencies. During the school year 2021/22, 48.256 teachers digitally signed their contract, while during the first round of the school year 2022/23, 28.737 signed their contract.

The major challenge is the transition from physical reality to digital technology. It is difficult for the public sector to shed bureaucratic processes and move to a new digital age. Obstacles, in addition to the public administration officers, are brought by the legal services. It is almost impossible for them to imagine a world where the contract is not printed and stored on the shelf of a wardrobe, but stored in the citizen’s digital wallet or the digital repository of the agency. When developing such applications, the goal is to simplify procedures for the benefit of citizens, public authorities, and agencies. The goal is not to digitize bureaucracy. Structural failures or significant setbacks did not occur due to effective pre-treatment and preparation, apart from a long delay that initially occurred when informing teachers via electronic messages. To solve this setback, the team consulted immediately with the mobile phone company.

The conditions that are necessary for the success of an innovation such as this are:

• The Innovation to be responding to a substantial and real need
• The robust analysis of the process and business, that should be based on agile methodologies, in which all interested stakeholders participate
• Identify during initial analysis, hazards and risk factors that have the potential to cause harm. Deliver an early risk analysis by analyzing and evaluating the risk associated with every hazard
• Development and coding based on innovative and open technologies
• Utilising procedures and agile methodologies
• Strong and agile management and clear milestones, including start and end dates for project phases, key deliverables, stakeholder approvals, key dates or outages that may impact the timeline
• Human and financial resources
• Political will and support from the administrative authorities

All applications, digital services and platforms developed by GRNET are based on the Software Requirements Specification (SRS) document that elaborates "What" requirements must be met to satisfy business needs and are based on the following design principles, namely:

• A unique environment for the citizen
• Once only
• Single development environment
• Unified business intelligence environment for public officials (dashboards) and
• Reusable

The development team was provided with a gitlab repository where the development code had to be uploaded to the gitlab.grnet.gr infrastructure. The code has been developed using open source processes and is freely available to all interested parties. Other organisations, other GRNET development teams, larger or smaller agencies, organisations or event governments are allowed to copy, reuse, remix, customise, revise, and redistribute the application.

The main lesson learned is that digital transformation is not easy to implement. The public sector needs a clear digital transformation strategy, one that involves training, on digital transformation issues, for all citizens and public administration officials. In the case of Greece, the platform on how to learn to use digital services (https://howto.gov.gr) to support digital innovations is an innovative and efficient example. There is a lack of proper IT Skills in many cases and a need to change the culture and mindsets regarding digital solutions. There are time consuming security and General Data Protection Concerns that need to be arranged before any new digital service deployment. Even if there are initial disagreements, if the application serves real needs it will be used massively and effectively and improve the conditions of the underlying processes.

For the operation of the platform and the process of signing the digital contract, all the involved organizations supporting the interoperable information systems mentioned above had to either make changes to their systems or create appropriate web services consumed by the application. It is important to highlight that the Computer Technology Institute and Press "Diophantus (www.cti.gr) developed and supported the information system for the "digital submission of applications and the management of Primary and Secondary Education personnel in the Greek territory" (OPSYD). For the proper platform operation, they developed an AI algorithm for the automatic placement of teachers at schools.