PQ-NEXT Core with Dimitris Tzempelikos & Maria Gotzia, Municipality of Aigaleo
What drives PQ-NEXT from within? PQ-NEXT Core reveals the minds and teams behind the project. By showcasing the perspectives, insights, and ambitions of those leading its key areas, we uncover the vision and collaboration that shape PQ-NEXT’s vision.
Let’s start by getting to know Dimitris Tzempelikos, from the Municipality of Aigaleo, a little better and by introducing the team that will work on the project.
My name is Dimitris Tzempelikos, and I am the Head of the Programming and Development Department of the Municipality of Aigaleo in Greece. I am a mechanical engineer with postgraduate studies in computational mechanics and applied informatics. Throughout my career in local government, I have been involved in the coordination and implementation of European projects related to smart cities, digital transformation, cybersecurity, advanced connectivity, climate resilience and innovative public services.
This experience gradually brought me closer to the field of cybersecurity and to the challenge of protecting public-sector digital services against emerging threats. Joining PQ-NEXT was therefore a natural next step, as the project connects advanced post-quantum technologies with practical applications that can directly benefit citizens and public administrations.
The Municipality of Aigaleo’s team in PQ-NEXT also includes Maria Gotzia, an IT Engineer, and Evridiki Pavlidi, a Social Scientist. Maria contributes her technical knowledge and supports the connection between the project’s technological solutions, the Municipality’s digital infrastructure and the operational requirements of the pilot. Evridiki contributes the social science and user-centred perspective, helping us consider the needs of citizens and municipal staff, as well as issues related to usability, accessibility, engagement and social impact.
Together, we form a multidisciplinary team combining project coordination, public administration, information technology and social science expertise. This allows us to connect the technical work of PQ-NEXT with the Municipality’s real administrative procedures and with the practical needs of both municipal officers and citizens.
What problem does your role in the project address in simple terms, and why is it critical for the project’s implementation?
In simple terms, our role is to ensure that the technologies developed by PQ-NEXT can work in a real municipal environment and not only under laboratory conditions. Municipalities issue official documents that citizens use in important administrative and legal procedures. These documents must remain authentic, secure and verifiable. As public services become increasingly digital, we must also consider whether today’s security mechanisms will remain reliable in the future, when quantum computers may be able to compromise some of the cryptographic methods currently in use.
Our role is critical because we provide the real administrative process, the practical requirements and the end-user perspective. We help the technical partners understand how a municipal service operates, what information is required, which steps must be followed and what constraints must be respected. Without this connection to the real operational environment, even a technically advanced solution may be difficult to deploy, use or replicate in public administration.
What are the main activities, tasks, and objectives of your work and your work in PQ-NEXT?
Our main objective is to support the design, implementation and validation of the Municipality of Aigaleo pilot.
The first activity is to analyse and document the existing process for issuing the Property Exact Address Certificate. This includes understanding how citizens submit their applications, how municipal officers register and assess each request, which supporting documents are required and how the final certificate is issued.
We then translate this administrative process into functional and technical requirements for the PQ-NEXT solution. We work closely with the technical partners to ensure that the Verifiable Credential components, the digital wallet and the post-quantum security mechanisms are properly integrated into the municipal workflow.
We will also support the deployment and testing of the solution, involve the relevant municipal officers and users, collect feedback and evaluate its usability, security and practical value.
Finally, we contribute to project coordination, reporting, dissemination and the replication of the pilot, so that the experience gained in Aigaleo can also be useful for other municipalities and public authorities.
Moving on, a personal note. What is the main outcome you personally hope this project will achieve?
Personally, I hope that PQ-NEXT will demonstrate that post-quantum security can move from highly specialised research into practical public services that citizens can understand and use.
For me, success would mean that a citizen can request an official municipal certificate, receive it securely in a digital wallet and present it to another organisation without unnecessary paperwork or repeated verification procedures. At the same time, the citizen should be confident that the certificate is authentic, privacy-preserving and protected for the long term.
I would also like the Aigaleo pilot to become a practical example that can be replicated by other municipalities. Local authorities often have limited technical and financial resources, so solutions must not only be secure but also realistic, interoperable and easy to adopt.
The most important outcome would therefore be increased trust: citizens trusting digital public services and public authorities being confident that their digital infrastructure is prepared for future security challenges.
Looking ahead, what excites you most about the post-quantum era?
What excites me most is the opportunity to prepare our digital infrastructure before the threat becomes an immediate crisis.
The transition to the post-quantum era is not simply about replacing one cryptographic algorithm with another. It gives us the opportunity to reconsider how digital trust, identity, authentication and secure information exchange are designed across public administration.
I am particularly interested in the potential of post-quantum technologies to protect digital identities and official credentials that may need to remain valid for many years. This is especially important for governments and municipalities, which manage information and documents with long-term administrative, legal and social value.
The post-quantum era can also encourage public organisations to become more adaptable and crypto-agile, meaning that their systems will be able to respond more quickly to new threats and security standards.
Ultimately, what excites me is the possibility of combining innovation with public value: using advanced technology to create digital services that are safer, simpler and more trustworthy for citizens.