Authors: Panagiota Konstantinou, Georgios Stathakis, Spyridon Nomikos, Maria-Georgia Nomikou

Title: Reducing Management Costs in the Public Sector Through Smart Certificates Application

Abstract

Universities and other institutions issue certificates to students who have successfully completed their studies. These certificates include information about institution, department, performance, grade and other personal information. In Greece, it has been observed that false study certificates were circulated, mainly in public sector and especially in hospitals. This phenomenon has occurred as it is very easy and cheap through new printing and copying technologies to either create from scratch or falsify existing certificates. False certificates can be created through widespread PC applications that everyone now can easily access without special knowledge and training. Therefore, both business and public sector should adopt easy and fast procedures to verify and ensure the authenticity of the documents they accept. In this paper, we propose the dissemination of smart degrees/certificates that can easily certify their integrity. In this essay we suggest smart degrees in order to reduce the administrative costs of today's public bodies for conducting document that certify qualifications and play a special role for staff employment.