This is the truth about the contract with CISCO

Under the heading “Fake News for E-learning”, your Press Office New democracy refutes the allegations made by SYRIZA management about distance learning and the CISCO platform used.

Specifically, the specific announcement mentions the following: “Fake news about e-learning”

1. The contract with CISCO that has been in force since last year is NOT free

It’s free. From March 2020 to January 2021, e-learning was implemented in all schools in the country COMPLETELY FREE, through CISCO’s free Webex Meetings video conferencing license. The title itself, but also Article 1 of the contract, unequivocally establishes the “free concession of the WEBEX teleconferencing platform”.

2. € 2 million has been paid to CISCO for teacher training licenses for distance education.

Not a single euro has been paid to CISCO for the licenses of teachers for e-learning as a framework of the contract was the free concession. But e-learning cannot be free. When the donation ended at the beginning of the year, the Ministries of Education and Religions and Digital Governance decided to use the existing inactive licenses, at no additional cost to the public, for any use of teleconferences, meetings, distance education, through SYZEYXIS. Draft. The Framework Agreement 1453 of the SYZEFXIS II Project, which grants, among other things, teleconferencing licenses for the State and includes a variety of CISCO products, was signed on July 4 and 5, 2019, a few days before the elections, under the SYRIZA government. . The SYZEFXIS II framework provides for videoconferencing licenses worth 2,156,000 euros, for which the Greek State will pay 14 euros for each of the 154,000 teachers per year to be able to do distance training for their students, meet via videoconference, train , etc.

3. Cisco can use business personal data of 1.4 million students

I can not. This is expressly prohibited by the contract signed in article 2: the company “is not authorized to make any use of personal data that will be available for the implementation of this Convention that goes beyond its purpose (…). (…) You should not use the personal data that will be available (for example, email addresses) for promotional activities or other commercial activities. “The Ministry of Education has taken all measures to protect the personal data of the entire educational community, following the instructions of the Personal Data Protection Authority and preparing an impact assessment study. Also, make sure that not only the general privacy framework of the company applies to all users, but also a) a special enhanced framework , b) without requiring the creation of an account by students, linked to a link sent by their teacher, c) the connection of teachers must be made through a special platform of the Ministry of Education (through the Network of Panhellenic Schools) and not through Webex, d) there must be special clauses that prohibit any use of any personal data for any purpose other than the e-learning operation, and e) the parameterized operation of the platform, p. ex. Turn off the video and save function. The Opinion of the Personal Data Protection Authority on all of them was issued on 4/2020, which considered that e-learning was fully compatible with the basic mission of the State to provide education, which is not contrary to the legislation on the protection of personal data.

Just confirm a tragic narrative about the alleged exploitation or interception of personal data It is the digital illiteracy of those who trade it and their complete ignorance of the operation of distance education. The reality is that the data that SYRIZA refers to to falsify reality, is telemetry data, that is, the anonymous data necessary to run any application on the World Wide Web: what device is running, with what operating system, etc. This technical data does not identify a natural person. This data helps to correct any problems that may arise from the use of the application in order to optimize its operation.

4. The Ministry of Foreign Relations hid the CISCO contract

The donation contract, as the title itself mentions, did not imply a single euro of economic burden for the Stateand therefore no publication is provided in the KIMDIS electronic system. However, the Ministry of Education had made the donation agreement available to opposition representatives, none of whom came to see it, and of course had forwarded it to the Personal Data Protection Authority, which studied it in detail. before issuing its approval decision in September 2020. Donation expired in January 2021, distance learning was included in the existing SYZEFXIS II licensing program without any additional charge from the State and the corresponding contracts were immediately posted on KIMDIS . As soon as the Court of Auditors approved the contracts last week, the Ministry of Education published the relevant approvals and the improved framework of personal data protection that the Ministry demanded, and achieved, from the company. We attach this contract here and here.

5. SYRIZA supports e-learning

The Official Opposition fiercely fought the distance education project from the very beginning, with a different pretext each time: that there was no donation, that there was no consultation with the Personal Data Protection Authority, that no impact evaluation study was carried out. But the truth is this: the donation was made, the consultation with the Authority was continuous and the Impact Report has been published on the Ministry’s website.

When the supply was free, SYRIZA blamed the government because it is free and not paid for. Now that it has entered a licensing market, negotiated and chosen by SYRIZA itself (!), SYRIZA is annoyed that the Greek state pays 14 euros a year for each teacher’s license to provide distance education to its students, to meet with your colleagues and so on.

6. The government should invest in a strong public network instead of using a private platform.

Creating a huge public infrastructure from scratch, especially when it is ready in the private sector, would be an asymmetric, useless and unreasonable investment. to deal with an emergency and a short-lived emergency. The official opposition is fighting for a public e-learning platform, as if it were free or as if e-learning became permanent! Achieving the know-how and infrastructure of global teleconferencing services would take a lot of time and a lot of public funding, which is clearly preferable to investing in much more specific: p. Eg in the investment of the jump in digital skills of students and teachers that has taken place in the last year, through a program of 112 million euros to support 560,000 of our young people with technological equipment.

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