Greece's Justice System Undergoes Major Digital Overhaul with Criminal Record Upgrade and Massive Archive Digitization

Greece is in the midst of one of the most significant technological overhauls of its justice system, aiming to streamline operations and improve accessibility. Key initiatives include the upgrade of the National Criminal Record and the digitization of approximately 300 million pages of judicial archives.

The project, managed by the Information Society (a body of the Ministry of Digital Governance), seeks to enhance the management of judicial data, accelerate critical procedures for citizens and legal professionals, and modernize the infrastructure and services used daily by courts and prosecutor's offices nationwide. A central component is the enhancement and expansion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the justice sector, with a total contract value of 69.1 million euros including VAT.

This initiative involves strengthening the National Criminal Record system to improve the processes for maintaining and issuing certificates. Through increased automation, better data quality, and interoperability with national registries and European systems like ECRIS, the system aims to enhance security, procedural control, and administrative reporting. The upgrade is particularly crucial as the criminal record is one of the most frequently used services by citizens and public bodies, and its acceleration is expected to reduce administrative burdens and improve public service.

Simultaneously, a massive digitization effort is underway, targeting the archives of the Ministry of Justice across 320 courts and prosecutor's offices throughout Greece. The project's scope includes scanning nearly 300.24 million pages, with a target of completing 90% of this task, approximately 270 million pages. Current progress reports indicate that over 273 million pages have been scanned, with a significant portion undergoing quality checks and data entry. The core of this project lies in transforming physical archives into searchable digital information, involving scanning, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), metadata enrichment, and entry into a comprehensive digital archive management system.