Education Service Commission embraces digital transformation

Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy of the Republic of Cyprus, Dr Nicodemos Damianou, and the President of the Educational Service Commission (ESC) Panayiotis Antoniou have underlined the benefits of digital transformation while presenting the ESC’s new online services.

The new services include the appointment of teachers with contracts, substitutions and teacher transfers.

During a joint press conference presenting the new digital services, Damianou and Antoniou said the services concern applications for Contract Teacher Appointments, Teacher Replacements and Transfers, as well as a Teacher Document Display and Management service, from where interested parties gain access to an ever- expanding archive of documents that concern them, such as Promotions, Appointment or Replacement Contracts, as well as a Detailed Statement of Transfer Units.

Damianou is pictured in the centre above, with Antoniou on his right and Vasilis Hadjiloucas, Database Developer at the Commission on his left.

This archive currently numbers around 20,000 documents, which teachers can refer to at any time, from wherever they are, while the need to send them by post has been eliminated.

The services are integrated into the new government portal gov.cy, while their use requires the user to have an activated and identified Cy profile which is the common access mechanism for government systems and services.

These four services have already been implemented on a pilot basis since July 2024, except for the service concerning Teacher Transfers which was activated in November 2024. Their implementation had a substantial impact both on the convenience of teachers and on the broader modernisation and efficiency of the ESC itself, since it now allows the various tasks to be carried out fully electronically, without requiring the physical presence of the user.

It is indicated that since the day the services were put into operation, the ESC has received approximately 22,000 electronic applications in total, while citizens have uploaded more than 3,000 files, which previously would have been sent at a later date, thereby significantly reducing the processing time of the entire work. Almost 1,300 appointment offers were made through the same electronic process and approximately 2,500 thousand responses to appointment offers and acceptance of documents were received.

The next step, as mentioned at the conference, is the digitalisation of four other ESC services which concern Promotions of permanent teachers, Objections, Teacher Requests and Change of Headquarters.

In his introductory speech, the Deputy Minister referred to the importance that the Government attaches to the sectors of Education and Digital Transformation, emphasising the horizontal power of technology for the modernisation and upgrading of each sector, and for the improvement of the daily lives of citizens. He then referred to the broader effort made by the Deputy Ministry to develop digital services that are simple and user-friendly, and that respond to the real needs and data of each user.

“We are not simply digitising the existing process,” Damianou said, “but we are simplifying it and adapting it based on the feedback that the users themselves give us, interconnecting the databases to the extent possible, so that the citizen is not asked to fill in data that the public sector already maintains for him multiple times. "You understand that this is a major effort that also touches on the modernisation of the state's technological infrastructure and which requires change on many levels. And it is an effort that we have already begun, with careful planning."

In his own intervention, and after thanking the Deputy Ministry for the excellent cooperation, the President of the Educational Service Committee referred to the importance that the ECS attaches to adopting and implementing new practices with the aim of always optimising services to citizens, serving the needs of the public education system, saving working time and minimising the use of paper.

“For us, there is no end to the effort to renew and develop our services,” Antoniou said. “It is our strong belief that every living organisation, especially those related to serving citizens, must be in a continuous process of renewal and modernisation. It is within this framework that, in collaboration with the Deputy Ministry, the implementation of four other digital services is planned, in addition to those we are announcing today.”