Greek public administration must establish a central Project Management Office and digital tracking dashboards to stop systemic project delays, expert Dr Theofanis Giotis said.
Writing in financial news website Capital.gr, Giotis warned that public projects continuing to suffer budget overruns and missed deadlines directly hurt citizens who fund them through taxation.
The warning comes as Greece concludes its National Recovery and Resilience Plan, known as Greece 2.0. The plan encompasses 100 investments and 76 reforms utilizing 35.95 billion euros in resources, putting tens of billions of euros at stake for an entire generation.
Giotis stressed that citizens are the ultimate customers of every public project, including roads, schools, hospitals, digital services, civil protection systems and flood defences. He added that taxpayers have every right to know total costs, completion dates, operational risks, responsible officials and expected societal benefits.
Shift from financial spending to citizen value
Giotis argued that public agencies frequently measure project success by financial absorption rates or signed contracts rather than actual public benefit. He noted that spending allocated funds on time does not make a project successful if citizens must still visit government offices with paper paperwork.
Similarly, constructing a hospital building creates no social value if the facility lacks the necessary operating procedures, technical equipment and medical staff to treat patients effectively.
Citing management scholar Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez in the Harvard Business Review, Giotis stated that modern organizations must move away from focusing purely on inputs and outputs such as cost, delivery times and physical deliverables. Instead, administrators must focus on strategic outcomes, long-term benefits and overall value.
The Harvard Business Review is a management magazine published by Harvard Business Publishing, an arm of Harvard University in the United States.
Giotis said the essential word for public sector management is citizen, meaning every public project must answer what specific improvement it brings to daily life.
Real-time digital dashboards for public oversight
To turn transparency into genuine administrative accountability, Giotis proposed creating a simple, publicly accessible digital dashboard for every major public project across the country.
The proposed single-screen system would replace lengthy report documents with ten key metrics. These include project purpose, total budget, start date, expected completion date, physical progress percentage, financial progress percentage, designated Project Manager, state Project Sponsor, main risks, and key revisions with expected citizen benefits.
Under the system, citizens could instantly view whether a project is rated green, yellow or red, while identifying reasons for delays, updated cost estimates and revised completion timetables.
Giotis pointed to figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showing that in 2025 only 24 percent of citizens in Greece reported high or relatively high trust in government, compared to an OECD average of 40 percent. He noted that transparent project tracking could help restore public confidence.
The OECD is an intergovernmental economic organisation founded in 1961 and headquartered in Paris, France, which monitors governance standards across 38 member nations.
Professional management roles and international standards
Tracking tools alone cannot fix public administration because projects are designed, implemented, managed and used by people, Giotis explained.
He called for every major public scheme to appoint a clearly defined Project Manager with explicit authority and accountability, paired with a strong state Project Sponsor responsible for maintaining alignment with project goals. The dual-role structure is highlighted by the Harvard Business Review as essential for delivering long-term benefits.
Giotis noted that the OECD has already advised Greece to execute rapid reforms in managing public investments, prioritizing staff training and setting up dedicated centres of skills.
International administrations in the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom rely heavily on standardized management frameworks such as PMBOK, PM2 and PRINCE2, accompanied by formal professional certifications.
PMBOK, or the Project Management Body of Knowledge, is published by the US-based Project Management Institute. PM2 was developed by the European Commission for EU projects, while PRINCE2, standing for Projects in Controlled Environments, is widely used by the UK government and international bodies.
Establishing a central project office to cut red tape
Giotis urged Greece to establish a central Project Management Office under the Prime Minister to oversee major national infrastructure and administrative programs.
The central PMO would aggregate data from all state projects, enforce uniform standards, spot troubled projects early and support project leads in ministries, regional authorities and state agencies.
Far from creating an extra bureaucratic layer, the unit's core mission would be to streamline administration, speed up decision-making and expose operational failures before budgets are exhausted.
In what the Harvard Business Review calls the Project Economy, projects serve as the principal vehicle through which organizations innovate and generate lasting value, a principle Giotis noted applies directly to government operations.
Decades of project management experience in Europe
Giotis first raised project failure concerns 20 years ago in national newspaper Kathimerini, writing in a 2006 article titled 71 Percent of IT Projects Simply Fail that unclear requirements, weak management procedures and lack of executive support ruined most tech investments.
Kathimerini is a daily national newspaper based in Athens, founded in 1919 and widely read across Greece for political and economic reporting.
In a 2011 Kathimerini column titled Control and Transparency in Public Projects, Giotis first proposed a central PMO operating as a control tower for Greek state projects, asking how many schemes were active, delayed or over budget.
Giotis holds a doctorate candidacy, master's degree and professional credentials including PMP, PfMP and CSAP. He is chief executive officer of 12PM Consulting and has managed projects across the Europe, Middle East and Africa region since 1987.
He served as the first president of the Greek Chapter of the Project Management Institute from 2004 to 2014, co-founded the Greek Chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysis, and teaches postgraduate management courses.
He can be reached by email at [email protected] or on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/TheofanisGiotis.
Giotis concluded that project management for citizens is not about complex Gantt charts or foreign terms, but ensuring promised projects are completed on schedule, within budget and with clear social benefits.
