EU Next Generation Funds

The European Council of 21 July 2020 agreed to a package of measures to boost the European Union’s convergence, resilience and transformation. These included its launch of the EU Next Generation Recovery Fund and approval of Regulation (EU) 2021/241 of the European Parliament and of the Council, which establishes the Recovery and Resilience Facility.

It was within the framework of the EU’s initiatives that the Spanish government gave its approval, on 7 October 2020, to 'Spain’s Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan' Open in a new window (PRTR), setting out the work lines for modernising the Spanish economy and coordinated through 4 areas: ecological transition; social and territorial cohesion; digitalisation and gender equality. The PRTR was approved by the European Commission on 16 June 2021.

Barcelona’s strategy for Open in a new windowNext Generation EU (NGEU) funds represents the city’s response to the COVID-19 crisis and, at the same time, the Recovery Plan’s opportunity for working to build the Europe of the future.

Barcelona is planning a comprehensive change to enable it to become a more resilient city in the face of future crises by opting for ecological and energy transitions, digital transition and social cohesion.

Barcelona City Council is coordinating its response through seven strategic areas meant to enable work to continue towards a resilient Barcelona at the helm with a sustainable future.

Seven strategic areas are:

Boosting the local economy
Boosting sustainable mobility
Achieving a fair digital transition
A responsible transition towards a sustainable model for renewable energies and sustainable renovation
Strengthening the system for innovation, research and knowledge
Deploying healthcare and social infrastructures
Restoring nature in the city

Under Spain's Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (PRTR), the aim behind the Digital transformation and Modernisation pursued Ministry of Territorial Policy and Public Function, along with Regional Communities and Local Authorities is to modernise regional communities and local authorities coherently and in coordination with the investments made at a cross-sectional level by the State's General Administration, in accordance with the criteria of consistency and impact expected by the European Commission. This modernisation also aligns with the Digital Strategy for 2025 and the Public Authorities Digitalisation Plan for 2021-2025.

As for maximum aid allocated to Barcelona, a value has been established under the provisions set out in Order TER/1204/2021 in proportion to the census population in the municipality as of 1 January 2020, with a resulting maximum allocatable sum of €6,084,141.72 and a total of 99.67 million euros in aid for the Local Government.

Subsidies intended for the digital transformation and modernisation of Local Authorities

The Municipal Institute of Information Technology (IMI) has been taking part in the ‘Digital Transformation and Modernisation’ project under which five strategic projects have been implemented, including:

Line 1: Citizen-oriented administration whose aim is to ensure maximum accessibility of public services in digital channels
Line 2: Smart transactions whose aim is the City Council’s digital transformation by improving internal management and procedural processes.
Line 3: Data governance through which a Data Portal will be implemented to integrate various data sources.
Line 4: Smart infrastructures which will adapt the working environment of municipal staff in a modernised digital administration
Line 5: And finally, cybersecurity, which implies the deployment of tools and methods such as ’Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) in Cybersecurity’, the Security Operations Centre and the Advanced Telecommunications Services Office, the Implementation of a New Corporate Network Access Control System (NAC) and improved responses to security incidents.

IMI projects funded by Next Generation funds

The aim is for a holistic improvement of the digital public services that the Barcelona City Council offers to its citizens and businesses. More specifically, it is about ensuring maximum accessibility of public services through digital channels favoured by city residents and enterprises, with special attention given to the use of the most prevalent mobile devices (such as smartphones and digital tablets). Hence the need to have a strategy at hand for adapting public services does not involve the creation of versions adapted for each channel, particularly in the case of mobiles connected to apps. Opting for a provision of public services in responsive web mode allows a universal approach to a universal type of multichannel strategy, with rapid deployment that does not generate unnecessary exit barriers. The aim, in short, is for an obvious improvement in usability, utility, quality, accessibility, mobility, etc., of the current digital relation and interaction model and the associated experience of final users (end-to-end digital relation).

The project is focused here on promoting interactive, responsive, intuitive, personalisable, proactive and omni channel assistance models to enable an increased variety of interaction media and channels for a better provision of public services. It incorporated three services most used by city residents in this mode through an adaptable («responsive») interface integrated into the General State Administration's Mi Carpeta Ciudadana,

AMOUNT AWARDED:

€2.347.768,48

INCLUDED CONTRACTS:
- Creation of new Municipal Tax Office procedures ( contract No.: 21000021)
- Creation of a new procedural and communication environment with citizen associations (contract No. 19000154)
- Collective and children-at-risk assistance (contract No. 21000115)
- Portal procedures for the New Associations File (contract No. 21000032)
- Development of Procedures Portal for citizen and professional spaces (contract No. 21000032)
The City Council is making a commitment to promoting e-government by having a comprehensive end-to-end vision of procedures and their demand, involving the various areas of this process to facilitate cultural changes and the implementation of a new management model.

This project seeks to bring about the City Council’s digital transformation by implementing smart solutions to improve international management and procedural processes by simplifying, standardising and modernising its procedures, thereby improving their efficiency and effectiveness.

E-government is not just the application of ICTs to public services; it is also a needed organisational change and development of new skills to offer a public service adapted to the new digital reality, and a traditional ‘hardcopy’ working culture still exists in the present.

Given this need, a series of goals are being considered, including the prioritisation of services through digital channels, simplification and efficiency of administrative procedures and relations with city residents, guarantees of integrity, authenticity and legal validity (currently found in administrative documents, they need to be unequivocally transferred to electronic documents and files), guarantee transparency and access to citizen information and the inter-operability mechanisms between authorities).

AMOUNT AWARDED:

€727.107,02

INCLUDED CONTRACTS:
- Automation of Processes (contract No. 2000100)
- Automation of the Municipal Tax Authority’s business processes (contract No. 21000035)
- Digitalisation of the City Council’s administrative and procedural processes (contract No. 001_21000652) – Managed by the City Council’s Department of e-Government
Implementation of a Data Portal, with the aim of integrating various data sources, as well as replacing existent scattered dissemination websites, allowing more transparency for the city residents, taking the concept of Open Data to a level far beyond raw data, enabling access to it, but also to analysis documents, graphs and semi-processed tables; complemented by a system of accesses and search that is much more agile and easy, using natural language. The project's tasks cover planning, design, construction, implementation, change management and IT systems support.

The project is divided into two stages. The first is the development of the ‘BCNDADES’ web portal, as a transparency, display and Internet-access tool, with maximum functionalities. The second is a connection-module development with the corporate data governance system, DataLake, which includes systems for ensuring quality, data ingestion and extraction, and a layer for developing analytical and predictive models. This second stage represents the first step towards opening the data lake to third parties: other Public Authorities, city residents, SMEs

AMOUNT AWARDED:

€339.768,00
INCLUDED CONTRACTS:

Barcelona Data Portal (contract No.: 21000044)
The project under consideration is enshrined in an adaptation of the municipal staff's work environment to a modernised digital administration's new way of working by improving communication both internally and with city residents, information-sharing and collaborative work and management and internal processes, taking us over to a fast and efficient administration available in any circumstance (face-to-face work and/or teleworking), contributing to the public authority’s digital connectivity and ensuring quality public services.

This is why it precedes the acquisition and installation of ‘complete’ workstations, made up of a laptop, with all the (peripheral) equipment necessary for their ergonomic use throughout the municipal staff's work day (24” external monitor, full keyboard with signature card reader, mouse, and dock station for connecting every feature to the laptop and data network). The project includes every activity needed for the effective and immediate use of the new equipment, as well as efficient and sustainable removal of the obsolete equipment that is replaced.

The project's main goals are:
- Providing Barcelona City Council with adapted workstations to enable their availability for office work and teleworking by increasing the percentage of municipal equipment suitable for use in a hybrid model, helping to develop the digital connectivity of municipal workers to ensure quality public services in any circumstance.
- To improve the ergonomics and spatial distribution of workplaces
- To cover the new needs and demands of the various municipal departments with regard to not just physical environments but also technical requirements.
- To facilitate the reuse of equipment replaced in social-economy circuits and with the aim of reducing the digital divide, by referring such obsolete equipment, depending on their state of repair, to a recycling or reuse process on the basis of the agreement established between Barcelona City Council and Pangea.org/reuse.org.
AMOUNT AWARDED:

€1.269.333,55
INCLUDED CONTRACTS:

Acquisition of laptops (Contract No.: 21000083)
Thanks to the steady digitalisation of services, Cybersecurity has become one of the areas of action under the Digital Transition Plan for the 2020-2023 period, mainly when the organisation's operational models were changed to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. The occurrence of this situation over a year and a half ago resulted in a weakening of the digital environment's protection when the need was considered for facilitating general outside access for all municipal staff and access to internal information systems regardless of the worker’s location. The situation grew worse with the rise of Cybercrime, where there were attempts to exploit these weaknesses and extort profit by hijacking the organisations’ information.

Barcelona City Council has been developing a project here for strengthening the digital environment's Cyber-defence structure, acting as protection for a whole range of services currently in use, whether internal or directly supplied to city residents. Several initiatives are being implemented under this project that, when combined, are expected to notably improve the current Cybersecurity model of the Barcelona City Council, and anticipate a significant improvement, particularly with the new definition and implementation of an evolved Security Centre (SOC) compared to the one currently in place.

AMOUNT AWARDED:

€1.400.164,67
INCLUDED CONTRACTS:

Improved Security Operations Centre (SOC) and Advanced Telecommunications Service (OSAT) (contract No.: 21000130)

Improved responses to security incidents affecting the integrity of data (contract No.: 20000026)

Establishment of a New Corporate Network Access Control System (NAC) (contract No. 21000108)

Funded by: