The Government’s deputy delegate in A Coruña, María Rivas, highlighted on Tuesday the Government’s commitment to basic public services in rural Galicia, where it will deploy mobile units of the National Police for the issuance and renewal of ID and passports. It did so in Betanzos, during the commissioning of the first of the new Integrated Documentation Vehicles (VIDOC) of the National Police assigned to the provincial police stations, which today issued 40 documents that could already be carried with them by the people who requested an appointment at the City Hall and that in the coming months will travel through 40 Corunnese municipalities that lack a police station and the Teixeiro Penitentiary Center, in Curtis.
María Rivas, who was accompanied by the provincial commissioner, Carlos Gómez, and the mayor of Betanzos, María Barral, detailed that the police assign three of the six vehicles assigned to Galicia to the province. In them, the citizens will be able to renew the ID and, as a novelty, also the Passport, in addition to renewing the digital certificates of the ID, since they also have a Documentation Update Point (PAD) that complements the eight that are being installed in different municipalities of the province, the first of them in Ordes.
“From the way, a procedure as simple as the renewal of the electronic certificate of the DNI or the change or updating of the password, can be done both in these municipalities that already have a PAD and in these Vehicles, instead of having to move the one of the four police stations that we have in this province,” explained the subdelegate.
The new VIDOC units have confirmed at the moment 18 stops in the municipalities of the area of influence of A Coruña (Abegondo, Arteixo, Betanzos, Cabana de Bergantiños, Camariñas, Cambre, Carral, Culleredo, Curtis, A Laracha, Malpica, Miño, Muxía, Oleiros, Ordes, Ponteceso, Sada and Vimianzo), in addition to the Teixorira Prison, Santa Cruz, Noponira The police stations of A Coruña, Ferrol and Santiago are assigned their respective units.
The main advantage of the new VIDOCs, as Rivas explained, is that now “the people who request an appointment in this service will be able to have any of the two documents ready in just ten minutes, also improving the response times of the previous units, which needed three days for management: one day for the fingerprint, another for printing at a police station and a third for delivery”.
These new vehicles, which are part of the Digital Identity Plan of the General Directorate of the National Police financed from the funds of the Recovery Plan, “will increase the frequency of travel to the municipalities as well as improve the services provided to the neighborhood,” said the deputy delegate.
New Digital ID
María Rivas highlighted the Government’s work “to improve people’s lives, promoting a useful Administration close to the citizens with programs such as the one presented today in A Coruña or the implementation of the digital ID”. This respect, he recalled that the Council of Ministers comes from approving a royal decree that regulates the process of issuance, management and development of the ID not only in its physical version but also for the first time in its digital version.
In this way, the use of the ID card adapts to the new digital challenges and offers citizens the possibility of having the National Identity Document in digital format on the mobile phone. “Its implementation will transform the way of accrediting the identity of citizens in their relations with the Public Administration and the private sector, which can now be done through an application installed on the mobile phone with the same legal validity as the physical ID and with the maximum guarantees of security,” said Rivas, who pointed out that Spain is one of the first European countries to address this challenge.
The access will be made through the MiDNI application and in a first phase will only allow the identification in person with the same validity as the DNI. “It will serve to accredit the identity in face-to-face procedures before the Administration, open a bank account, register in a hotel, rent a vehicle or pick up a package in the Post Office,” exemplified the subdelegate.
“In short, we continue to work to bring the services provided by the Administration closer to the citizens, trying to make them easier and easier, and that as much as possible, and especially in those towns with smaller populations, these services can arrive in the same way,” said María Rivas, who stressed that these actions “represent a before and an after for the neighborhood of small municipalities, paying a historical debt to it by bringing to the doors of their homes services for which they had previously had to travel, losing time and resources.”
The VIDOCs will serve from Monday to Friday in a common manner. The senior police headquarters will determine the places of travel and it will be the municipalities that make up the list of citizens mentioned.