How Public Administration Restructuring Can Contribute to Greek Educational Reform - Information and Communication Technologies in Public Administration - page 308

and interests, resolve their differences, and fulfill their responsibilities (Fukuda-
Parr & Lopes, 2013). This strong interdependence among state power, private sec-
tor, and civil society is a vital element of the type of cooperation that promotes
nationwide welfare and justice.
One of the biggest challenges that PA faces today is the deep economic and
social impact due to new technologies. The ICTs can indeed help PA to face numer-
ous problems. However, ICTs cannot themselves be a goal. The epicenter should be
the exploitation of ICT in combination with structural changes and emergence of
new skills to improve public services, democratic processes, and policies exercised
by PA. That exactly is the subject of electronic governance (Grönlund & Horan,
2005).
Good practices in many different countries have shown that eGov is a power-
ful instrument for the provision of improved quality public services, reduction of
waiting times, improvement of economic efficiency, increase in productivity, and
improvement of transparency and accountability. The eGov strategy, as a central
element of the Action Plan e-Europe, should focus on achieving Lisbon goals, reduc-
ing barriers in the internal European Union common space and increasing mobility
across Europe while effective implementing national policies and regional or local
development. This will lead to a global integration in the area of PA (European
Commission, 2010).
The basic target of eGov is the electronic support of the whole life cycle of
public policies, from diagnosis and understanding of society's needs to planning
and implementation of appropriate policies to cope with. Therefore, eGov should
be used on the following (good governance) cases: (a) increased communication
with clients/students, (b) cooperative implementation of planned programs and ser-
vices based on workflow management systems, (c) immediate delivery of services
through multiple physical and electronic channels, and (d) evaluations of produced
services by using e-democracy software. In general, eGov tools can be a catalyst for
a massive wave of cultural change in the whole PA area.
Inside the realm of the Greek Ministry of Education now, a massive program
toward the digital school has been implemented for the last 3 years (Ministry of
Education, 2011). This program is fruitful enough: It comprises modules like inter-
active school books, the national repository of teaching material, a digital edu-
cational platform, and a library of digital content and context (called light-tree).
In parallel, a large-scale project of digitization of standard bureaucratic processes,
like files, protocols, and student registers, is being carried out, under the name
“myschool.” It is very interesting to observe the acceptance of these new artifacts
throughout the school community. The reactions vary from moderate acceptance
to intense rejection. At the same time, several ethical problems arise, like eligibil-
ity from the upper hierarchies to gather and maintain sensitive data, security, and
authentication. The whole operation has been physically based upon the optical
backbone of Panhellenic school network.