The Minister of Territorial Policy and Spokeswoman of the Government, Isabel Rodríguez, and the president of the National Institute of Statistics (INE), Elena Manzanera, have signed a collaboration agreement, which is published today by the BOE, to meet the objective of modernization of local administrations in relation to the municipal register.
The agreement will allow progress in an Online Register, based on a new system of information exchange between the registers of each municipality and the INE and establishes the following commitments:
The Ministry of Territorial Policy, with the technical support of the INE, before the end of 2023, will prepare and approve the call for grants directed to municipalities so that they can carry out the modernization of the municipal register, with a budget of between 55 and 60 million euros, under the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR), aimed at local entities updating their management systems the register according to the new functionalities that the INE will develop.
The INE, in turn, will provide support in the preparation, instruction and follow-up of calls for grants addressed to local entities, aimed at the digital transformation and modernization of municipal registry management systems based on the technical functionalities established, for interoperability between municipal registers and the new real-time data exchange system to be developed by the INE.
The INE will also provide technical support to the Ministry of Territorial Policy in the modification of Royal Decree 1690/1986, with the objective that the exchange of information of the register between public administrations be in real time and not monthly as until now.
Padrón on line, an opportunity with the recovery funds
The Ministry of Territorial Policy and the INE have been working for more than a year on the design of the new municipal register, with the opportunity offered by the PRTR funds.
The new register would update the current one, with a record more than thirty years old, which does not allow to know, for example, the number of inhabitants of a population in real time. The Regulation on Population and Territorial Demarcation of Local Entities only establishes a monthly exchange of data variations. There is also no up-to-date and unified census of streets, buildings and other types of property.
This form of exchange based on monthly files does not adapt to the current technological context that offers a multitude of faster and more efficient functionalities. On the other hand, it does not allow a complete picture of the population in real time, always providing information with some delay, which can cause negative effects in various areas (collection, electoral, public services, municipal competences), in short, in the definition and implementation of public policies.
In the exercise of its functions, the INE develops the new system of exchange of information, in real time, with the patrons of the municipalities, being estimated that the system is fully implemented before March 31, 2026.