The Government of Spain allocates more than 27.6 million euros to 56 local Andalusian entities to promote the digital transformation and modernization of local administrations.
This is the pre-allocation of grants from the second call of the Ministry of Territorial Policy, endowed with 154 million euros from European funds.
The objective is “to advance in an improvement of the public services provided by the administrations closest to the citizens, facilitating the completion of procedures through the use of digital tools. The digital modernization of the municipalities is especially useful for the most remote rural centers of the capitals or centers of concentration of services,” explained the delegate of the Government in Andalusia, Pedro Fernández, who added that this call and the deployment of ultra-fast Internet to improve Internet access “contributes to curb depopulation, supports entrepreneurship in the rural environment and balances social and development opportunities in the territory.”
In Andalusia, 48 applications have been submitted from municipalities of between 20,000 and 50,000 inhabitants and 8 applications from provincial councils, which will be responsible for implementing the digitization of the smallest populations.
The municipalities and deputations have presented their projects since September, with the call announced by the Minister of Territorial Policy and spokeswoman of the Government, Isabel Rodríguez. The criteria for allocating this aid have been agreed with local authorities, through the National Commission for Local Administration (CNAL) and the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP).
Throughout the national territory, 242 municipalities that have between 20,000 and 50,000 inhabitants will benefit in this year’s call with grants, as well as 53 provincial deputies, cabildos, island councils, autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla or uniprovincial autonomous communities.
It should be remembered that the call for 2021, with 93 million euros, was intended for municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants for their modernization and digitization projects.
154 million euros
The call for 2022, with a budget of 154.5 million euros, is the second one promoted by the Ministry of Territorial Policy, which is expected to exhaust the budget, since aid has been requested for 117% of the amount established in the order.
The previous one, from 2021, aimed at municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, was a real success: “The almost 93 million euros were practically exhausted and the municipalities executed more than 96% of the projects,” highlights the minister. In order to fully exhaust the aid of 2021, another call was launched in parallel that exceeds the remaining 3 million euros for municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants that for different reasons could not access last year’s call.
Digitalization and modernization of local entities
Among the priorities of the subsidies presented for the modernization and digitalization of local entities are the following: improving the accessibility of digital public services to citizens and companies; reducing the digital divide; improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public employees; reuse of constructed digital services and solutions; active use of emerging technologies in the deployment of new digital services (chatbots, automation and robotization, platforms, etc. ).
Strategic Support Lines
Strategic Line 1. Citizen-oriented administration. The projects will aim to improve the public services provided to citizens and companies, promoting usability, usefulness, quality, accessibility, mobility of digital public services and the modernization of processes. Actions such as: the development of apps for the most used services, digital public services through the mobile, or the creation of virtual assistants will be subsidized. Examples: application through the mobile, intelligent platforms to know in real time if there will be room or not to park in the street to which we are heading, etc.
Strategic line 2. Smart operations. The objective of the projects will be to improve the quality, quantity and efficiency of the services and processes of management and processing of public administrations, through the use of intelligent automation technologies (Robotization of processes, Artificial intelligence, etc. ). It is about reducing processing times and an improvement of the service.
Strategic line 3. Government of the data. Actions such as the development of integrated data platforms will be subsidized.
Strategic line 4. Digital infrastructures. To provide local entities with technological infrastructures for their modernization, in order to ensure availability in any circumstance and adapt the available capacity to the needs existing at any time, contributing to the development of digital connectivity, data economy and artificial intelligence. Likewise, it is planned to modernize and digitize the headquarters of public administrations, adding digital meeting points between them and the citizens, and contributing to the improvement, security and energy and process efficiency of local entities.