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"Kivotos" Immigration Management Database System
- 1. DIGITIZING IMMIGRATION Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ‘EUROPEAN LAW STUDENTS’ ASSOCIATION’ WINTER SCHOOL - THESSALONIKI 2015 Migration Law and Refugee Issues Monday, 07 Dec. 2015
- 2. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold FACTS_ PROBLEMS_ SOLUTIONS_ (understand) (focus on) (come up with)
- 3. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold STATUS OF IMMIGRANTS IN GREECE FACTS 550.000 documented immigrants live in Greece today
- 4. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold STATUS OF IMMIGRANTS IN GREECE FACTS 550.000 documented immigrants ALBANIA (380.000) GEORGIA (18.000) INDIA(14.000) UKRAINE(19.000) PAKISTAN (17.000) RUSSIA (15.000) EGYPT (12.000) SERBIA-MONTENEGRO (20.000) MOLDOVA (9.000) BANGLADESH (6.000) SYRIA (6.000) PHILIPPINES (10.000) CHINA (4.300) USA (2.300)
- 5. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold STATUS OF IMMIGRANTS IN GREECE FACTS 550.000 documented immigrants MEN: 290.000 WOMEN: 260.000
- 6. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold STATUS OF IMMIGRANTS IN GREECE FACTS 550.000 documented immigrants EMPLOYMENT: 70.000 FAMILY REUNION: 238.000 STUDENTS: 2.000 OTHER: 240.000 - indefinite/long-term residents (over 50%)) - special certificate of legal residence: 15.000 - humanitarian reasons: 19.000 - exceptional reasons: 6.000 - permanent residents: 9.000
- 7. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold STATUS OF IMMIGRANTS IN GREECE FACTS ALBANIA (380.000) image source: http://www.worldembassyinformation.com work: 12% family members: 43% other: 45% (mainly indefinite/long-term residents)
- 8. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold STATUS OF IMMIGRANTS IN GREECE FACTS former SOVIET REPUBLICS (60.000) image source: http://www.lib.utexas.edu work: 12% family members: 47% other: 41% (mainly indifinite/long-term residents) Ukraine, Russia, Georgia
- 9. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold STATUS OF IMMIGRANTS IN GREECE FACTS PAKISTAN(17.000) image source: http://www.worldembassyinformation.com work: 15% family members: 15% other: 70% (mainly indefinite/long-term residents)
- 10. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold STATUS OF IMMIGRANTS IN GREECE FACTS INDIA (14.000) image source: http://www.worldembassyinformation.com work: 8% family members: 37% other: 55% (mainly indefinite/long-term residents)
- 11. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold ADMINISTRATION MINISTRY OF INTERIOR AND ADMINISTRATIVE RECONSTRUCTION (1) DECENTRALIZED ADMINISTRATION REGIONS (7) ATTICA | THESSALY-CENTRAL GREECE | MACEDONIA-THRACE EPIRUS-WESTERN MACEDONIA | PELOPONNESE | AEGEAN | CRETE REGIONAL DEPARTMENTS OF RESIDENCE PERMITS (50) i.e. RESIDENCE PERMITS DEPARTMENT OF IMATHIA i.e. RESIDENCE PERMITS DEPARTMENT OF THESSALONIKI i.e. RESIDENCE PERMITS DEPARTMENT OF HERAKLION i.e. RESIDENCE PERMITS DEPARTMENT OF RHODES (about 1.000 appointed civil servants) FACTS
- 12. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold LEGALITIES Law No. 4251/2014 – “Immigration and Social Integration Code” (June 2014) Ministerial Decisions (Twenty three (23) issued already, regulating various specific topics) FACTS Circular Directives & Internal Documents & Official Memos (Forty three (43) issued already, interpreting & analyzing various specific topics) Hundreds (more than 500) of legal pages and directives, in just 17 months since June 2014 EU legislationPRESIDENTIAL DECREES includes authorizing provisions AND
- 13. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold PROBLEM HOUSTON, WE’VE GOT A...
- 14. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold PROBLEMS LEGISLATIVE COMPLEXITY LEGAL FRAGMENTATION A (not so happy) Greek immigration officer
- 15. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold PROBLEMS LET’S RECAP... Hundreds of pages of legal texts 101 types of residence permits Current fiscal policies in Greece My status as an employee and an individual 550.000 documented immigrants Immigrants’ pressing needs
- 16. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold PROBLEMS WE ALREADY HAVE AN EXCELLENT AND ROBUST SYSTEM FOR ISSUING AND RENEWING RESIDENCE PERMITS It is centrally controlled by the Directorate of Immigration and it’s official
- 17. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold PROBLEMS WHAT WE DON’T HAVE THOUGH IS A SOLID AND RELIABLE WAY OF MONITORING, DOCUMENTING, CORRELATING AND ARCHIVING ALL LEGALITIES
- 18. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold PROBLEMS SO, WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?
- 19. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold PROBLEMS Productivity drop & efficiency loss Work insecurity & stress For Immigration employees: No motives for excellence Managerial cost (paper, toners, etc) Need to keep physical archive Errors For Immigrants: Confidence drop Insecurity & stress Long queues & waiting time Bad mood Bad mood
- 20. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold PROBLEMS IN OTHER WORDS: • Staff finds it difficult to track, catalog and follow the numerous changes in the legislation. • Staff finds it difficult to understand, interpret and implement the legislation. • New staff is very hard (and time consuming) to get trained adequately. • Staff in the same agency may not follow the same procedures. • Staff and applicants, mainly, get easily strained and exhausted. • Administration product (e.g. issue of a residence permit) is delayed and of low-quality.
- 21. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold PROBLEMS WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING. WE NEED A TOOL... • To facilitate staff’s work. • To speed-up administration’s response to citizens’ applications. • To enhance and optimize administrative outcome and product (more solid decisions). • To reduce managerial costs (archival space, ink toners, photocopy paper)
- 22. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold SOLUTIONSsome (really) viable
- 23. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold SOLUTIONS (1) www.metanastefsi.net
- 24. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold SOLUTIONS (2) A Graphical Conceptual Model (Roadmap) for Documented Immigration
- 25. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold SOLUTIONS (3) “Kivotos” Information System
- 26. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold SOLUTIONS (3) “Kivotos” Information System
- 27. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold SOLUTIONS (3) “Kivotos” Information System
- 28. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold SOLUTIONS (3) “Kivotos” Information System
- 29. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold SOLUTIONS (3) “Kivotos” Information System
- 30. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold SOLUTIONS (3) “Kivotos” Information System
- 31. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold FACTS_some (really) tangible (again)
- 32. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold KIVOTOS’ MOST INNOVATIVE FEATURES -Automation in correlating relevant, yet diverse and mainly dispersed legislation through an Entity/Relationship (ER) computational model. -Decision Support System (DSS). -Agency’s workflow modeling (One-Stop Shop modeling). -Automated Report generation.
- 33. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold KIVOTOS’ IMPACT ON PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 1) By June 2014 up to today, over 60 legal texts and directives have been issued by the Ministry of Interior summing up to approximately over 500 pages for EACH civil servant to print, study and archive. Since then, no photocopy has been produced in our Department, for that reason. 2) By December 2014 up to today, our agency has served more than 3.000 immigrants with only 3 civil servants available at post. Every immigrant was served the day of visit with total time of service reduced from 30min. to about 10min. The workflow was managed by “Kivotos” . At the same time we managed to keep expenses regarding running costs (photocopies, printing, long- distance phone calls, mails and emails, etc) at extreme minima. 3) Since the implementation of "Kivotos" in everyday practice, staff reports being “more self-confident”, “coming to work with a better mood”, “feeling safer”. 4) By using “Kivotos”, our agency managed to dramatically alter its day to day functional strategy by a) reducing running costs and expenses, b) creating a comprehensive and integrated public image of itself in the eyes of applicants, c) minimizing applicants’ waiting time in the office, d) optimizing, in qualitative terms, residence permit acquisition from the stage of applying for it until the stage of having it attached on one’s passport. 5) At the end of the day, civil servants report being “more motivated” to offer their services since their hard work’s results are now tangible and measurable while third-country nationals feel confident that they receive fast and professional, error- free, private-sector like services with minimal delays and maximum benefits.
- 34. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold BY USING KIVOTOS SYSTEM IN OUR EVERYDAY PRACTICE: •Administration shares one, unique and homogenous outside image to its citizens-customers. •Administration shares one, unique and homogenous inside image between its officers. •Administration saves time. •Administration saves money. •Administration saves and reuses valuable resources. •Administration enjoys a boost in productivity and efficiency. •Civil servants finally get the theoretical support they needed during judgment formation. •Third-country nationals receive first-class services.
- 35. GEORGE K. MATSARIDIS, M.SC. | HEAD OF RESIDENCE PERMITS DPT. | PREFECTURE OF IMATHIA ELSA WINTER SCHOOL THESSALONIKI 2015 Digitizing Immigration: Bits and Bytes of Stories Untold Thank you!
Editor's Notes
- So, hi to all, I’m George Matsaridis and I work at the Department of Residence Permits, here at the Prefecture of Imathia. I understand that today you had a really interesting journey to Idomeni and I know that you heard and saw things that will accompany you for a lifetime. Nevertheless, I believe this is your last lecture in the Winter School and I would like to get your attention and focus from the Refugee problem to legal or better, Documented Immigration. More specifically, in the next 45 minutes or so, I’m going to show you a few things about documented immigration in Greece and how Immigration Law is implemented in my Department.
- First off, we’ll start by enumerating and understanding certain facts. We’ll then try to focus on certain problems and then I will show to you some solutions.
- 550k live in Greece today, we’ re talking about documented immigrants, these are statistics as of October 2015, Ministry of Interior.
- In this slide, I present the most favorite countries of origin that range from Albania down to USA. Of course, almost all nations show some presence in Greece, even a slight one.
- Greece hosts today about 500.000 documented immigrants while the number of undocumented ones is hard to estimate. Appointed to their service, there are about 1000 civil servants qualified for administering their residence permits, meaning that there is an 1:500 ratio of immigrants per civil servant. The public agencies responsible for providing public service on Immigration are 50 Departments of Residence Permits scattered along the country, falling under the administrative schema of 7 Decentralized Administrative Regions of Greece, which finally fall under the central authority of the Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reconstruction.
- Although things were not always this way, administration today shares and implements a robust and solid integrated Database System regarding the issuance of residence permits, the communication with other agencies like Police or Social Security Institutions, the upkeep of statistical records, etc, which eventually serves all official state transactions regarding the issuance of residence permits.
- At the same time, unfortunately, Immigration legislation keeps growing in terms of applicable laws, ministerial decisions and memos either due to binding EU regulations and directives or due to adapting national legislation to specific, nation-custom acts. This constant enrichment of legal and institutional context is seemingly set to solve problems but at the same time it keeps deepening and broadening the interpretation needs of civil servants, finally forming a rather gargantuan and appalling web of tangled legal concepts that not only they often contradict one each other but also and more importantly, they put an unprecedented and unfair burden on the daily duties of civil servants in their understaffed agencies.
- Given the fact that immigrants must be considered a special group of service, a social group of highly sensitive and pressing needs (and rights), the aforementioned administrative framework places rigid boundaries to their adequate and comprehensive service. Under extremely pressing daily circumstances, civil servants must be always up-to-date following legal acts or administrative directives that change or get updated or reformed almost monthly. So the need for a better Civil Service, a most homogeneous and self-contained professional confrontation of daily challenges regarding the understanding and implementation of Immigration Law by civil servants, gave birth to the idea of the current project, under the name of “Digitizing Immigration: The bits and bytes of stories untold”.
- 1. [Staff finds it difficult to track, catalog and follow the numerous changes in the legislation]. Immigration law is a complex law. Although it offers numerous possibilities of legalization, they all pass through either binding EU legislation or custom state interventions in order to tackle with state-specific problems. The latest legislation (as of June 2014) is a definite and comprehensive step forward but it still largely relies upon the publication of several complementary legal acts in the form of ministerial decisions or ministerial memos. At the same time, Greek courts decisions should be also taken into consideration, not to say directives or memos by other Ministries (like Labor or Health or Law Enforcement, etc) which play significant role in deciding which type of residence permit is suitable for the applicant. Up to day, civil servant had to track the changes by him/herself and maintain a personal printed archive (in heavy dossiers) of the legislation in effect. 2. [Staff finds it difficult to understand, interpret and implement the legislation]. “Kivotos” is not just a mere digital repository of legal acts. It is rather an ‘intelligent’ way of correlating all relevant yet dispersed information regarding each and every available type or Residence Permit and present it all in a straight-forward manner to the user. By properly ‘segmenting’ and re-structuring legislation’s typical form, it provides the user with crucial answers within conceptual groups of common information and thus, it becomes a technical adviser to everyday managerial judgments. 3. [New staff is very hard to get trained properly]. When new staff is appointed to our agencies, a logical training period is defined for the new colleague to study the law. In practice, it’s been proven not viable at all to keep a new colleague in the dark waiting only from her/him to understand the complexities of a system she/he’s never been aware of as long as how this system behaves in terms of its administrative everyday practice. Maybe one could use the old and experienced employees as mentors for the newcomers but experienced ones are urgently needed in every moment of an understaffed agency to solve problems. Maybe one could give ‘homework’ to newcomers but surely it’s not viable (and legal, in strict terms) to ask for an employee to study the law at home. 4. [Staff in the same agency may not follow the same procedures]. After taking into consideration all of the above, an agency comes to a point where all employees have a personal, idiosyncratic view of the legislation, they form personal interpretations of it and finally, in the same agency, personnel follows quite different procedures and gives quite different advice to the applicants. 5. [Staff and applicants, mainly, get easily strained and exhausted]. As a result of the aforementioned problems, applicants tend to form long queues at the office, misunderstandings arise and multiply, given also the language and cultural barriers of the type of applicants to be served, which affects both the image but mainly the quality of the services provided. At the same time, both citizens and staff are reaching exhaustion and fatigue, very early in the day. 6. [Administration product (e.g. the issuance of a residence permit) is delayed and of low-quality]. Summing it up, the error probability increases and the legal grounds of many of the acts issued by agencies usually suffer from lack of proper documentation.
- 1. [To facilitate the work of staff.] By modeling and standardizing procedures, staff focuses only in the production of high-end decisions and acts and re-iterates its workforce to more productive phases of the application procedure. Staff does not spend time in menial and trivial tasks of photocopying or interpreting difficult legal concepts (staff may also NOT have the academic background to do so). 2. [To speed-up administration’s response to citizens’ applications.] Not having a handy advisory system, it means that one has to run through many pages of legislation and its interpretation, in real-time, at the actual time of providing services to the applicant. This may cause frustration to both parties and it can surely delay the administrative outcome of the agency. By using a system like “Kivotos”, staff can speed-up the formation of its judgment since all necessary information is already correlated and directly presented to it, saving invaluable servicing time. 3. [To enhance and optimize administrative outcome and product (more solid decisions).] By using “Kivotos”, staff knows it has in hand the whole legal arsenal available when it comes to support its positive or negative judgment on an application. In real-time, staff produces documents of high-quality and up-to-date, leaving little or no space for errors and by the same time, reducing dramatically waiting periods for the applicant. 4. [To reduce managerial costs (archival space, ink toners, photocopy paper).] “Kivotos” helps in effect Civil Service to reform itself in terms of modernization with the Information Era. The digitization of legal documents not only helps staff form better judgment but it also helps fighting an agency’s traditional ‘enemy’, running costs. Within “Kivotos” management, the need to keep printed archives is completely eliminated not only because the system stores the file but mainly because the system ‘reads’ and ‘understands’ the file and adequately ‘relates’ its data to pre-existing information in the database.
- by integrating my previous academic background on Computational Linguistics and Information Systems, I came up with three handy solutions, all unofficial and pending for approval and sponsored by my own technical, economical means. Disclaimer: No public resources were harmed during the production of this software!
- First off, a practical and simple website, a digital library of all laws and texts, sorted by categories.
- Second, a graphical roadmap to legal immigration. Let’s elaborate a bit on this one (load actual html file).
- “Kivotos” Information System, is the first and only database of its kind in Greek Public Administration that models and automates the administrative duties of the professional on Immigration by: a) using ‘intelligent’ modeling methods and display techniques to group and correlate all dispersed but relevant legislation regarding every and each type of residence permit in Greece, b) engaging the civil servant and the third-country national into a preset digital interview consisting of simple yes/no dialogues that eventually lead to the optimal residence permit choice for his/hers needs and c) digitally modeling all administrative steps necessary to issue a residence permit or reject its application.
- - Automation in correlating relevant, yet diverse and mainly dispersed legislation (e.g. in one form, all necessary information regarding any specific type of Residence Permit, with live links, comments, and references). - Decision Support System (e.g. digitization of a comprehensive Road Map of current legislation, by simple YES/NO questions and appropriate guidance to the applicable Residence Permit category and type. - Agency’s workflow modeling (One-Stop-Shop Modeling) (e.g. an extensive checklist that models all steps necessary to issue a permit, from receiving an application up to accepting or denying it). - Automated Report generation with all necessary requirements for the desired Residence Permit along with extensive presentation of general and specific rights and obligations of immigrant in Greece, supported by web references for more detailed info). For designing “Kivotos”, a simple yet coherent Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) schema was implemented. A) Initiation stage, which begun by identifying the problem and certifying the pressing need of solving it, permanently and consistently. B) Planning stage, where all relevant concepts were identified and relevant resources sought and collected. C) Requirements analysis stage, where all conceptual, technical and administrative requirements were documented, followed by a usage scenario on WHAT we want the system to do. D) Design stage, where we set all technical prerequisites, programming language and tools, conceptual schema, importing and exporting of data, focusing technically on HOW we’ll achieve the goals set. E) Development stage, where the actual programming took place according to technical prerequisites set and the conceptual constraints. F) Test & Implementation stage, where system was tested in many environments and was finally given to agencies in order to start using it.
- This project cost nothing to the Greek State since it was donated to it by its developer and Head of the Project, free of charge. It was developed completely by its developer’s personal hardware and software resources. It’s an ‘in-house’ production, a system designed within Civil Service, from a civil servant in order to be used by Civil Service, for free. Agency’s personnel was involved at initial stages of the product in order to beta-test it and express its opinions and mainly ideas of improvement in every day usage.
- “Kivotos” is a highly-flexible and versatile Information System. It encodes legal concepts in a systematic way turning often obscure concepts into comprehensible and fully accessible information for the layman, even for new recruits with no previous experience on the field. Given this approach, meaning the approach of converting complex legal language into mainstream administrative practice, there seems to exist no physical restraints on its sustainability and expansion in the future, by accommodating, likewise, new possible needs and procedures to the existent conceptual and technical scheme. It’s a system that models immigration in an algorithmic way but it is also considered to be (and programmed to be) a nutshell or an intelligent 'container' of various kinds of information. This project’s aim was to facilitate, speed-up and optimize administrative actions and decisions. By modeling the process and by handling legislation in a more coherent and self-contained, comprehensive way, serving quality dramatically increased, serving waiting time was reduced and this sensitive group was helped to fight exclusion created by various administrative barriers like the language or cultural or the professional one. By using “Kivotos” in our agency, applicants receive quality services that in cases eliminate even the need of a legal representative. Applicant feels now an actual part of the process since he/she is not just merely a waiting number in a long list but an active ‘actor’ in the process of getting hers/his permit. Under this new managerial schema, every piece of information counts and plays significant role in Management’s judgment. As we like to say in our Department, ‘every bit and byte of any story untold’ is now important and is sought after carefully, in order to model it and integrate it to the 'whole picture', in other words into the specific conceptual framework of the type of Residence Permit in hand. Metaphorically speaking, ‘Kivotos’ system maintains high hopes to become a ‘seaworthy’ ark of knowledge, a compact and handy tool in the practicing field of Immigration, in the hands of civil servants appointed to offer high quality services in a professional, timely and reliable manner to a social group with extremely pressing needs of well-fare and well-being. By replacing all sorts of printed form of legal sources, it helps keeping running costs down. By converting obscure legalities into plain speaking language terminology, it helps both the civil servant and eventually the applicant towards a more concise and integrated path to information. “Kivotos” (Ark), will eventually try to help all parties involved float safe in a usually ‘stormy ocean’ of a stringent, rigid and often idiosyncratic bureaucracy.