Electronic administration is a particularly useful instrument to achieve a more effective, efficient and modern public administration. And as far as citizens are concerned, it represents a substantial improvement in the availability of services, which are offered 7×24, regardless of their geographic location, avoids unnecessary travel, improves social inclusion and facilitates access to public information .
In this sense, a key milestone in the development of electronic administration has been the approval of the Law 11/2007, of 22 June, on electronic access of citizens to public services, which offers a regulatory framework that removes barrierseres legal requirements for its full development, although the key factor of this law is the recognition of a new citizen's right: electronic access to government services. And this citizen's right translates into a duty for the administrations, who will have to put all their public services online before December 31, 2009.
Due to Law 11/2007, some of the administrative procedures will need to be redesigned, with the aim of simplifying and reducing administrative burdens, a process in which collaboration between administrations is of the utmost importance.
The new service provision model for the General Administration of the State must facilitate its access, both through the access points specific to each department, and through a global access point so that it is not necessary for the citizen to know the internal structure of the Administration to be able to use them. Citizens will not be asked for information or data that is in the possession of the administrations, but when they have to provide additional documentation, this can be sent in electronic format.
With the aim of providing legal guarantees to the actions that are carried out using electronic procedures, the Law establishes the legal regime of the Electronic Administration and pays special attention to the cooperation mechanisms between administrations to guarantee the interoperability of the systems and applications developed and the reuse of applications and the transfer of technologies between them. Therefore, one of the maxims of the Law has a direct impact on the competence center of the AOC Consortium, the interoperability of the information systems of the Catalan public administrations.
The Law also strengthens one of the initiatives of the Ministry of Public Administrations, the communications network between all public administrations, the so-called SARA Network. The AOC Consortium is the entity that provides access to its services through the platform EACAT, the extranet of the Catalan administrations.
In most of its wording, Law 11/2007 has the character of basic legislation and therefore leaves room for regional development. This is why the Government of the Generalitat is promoting legislative initiatives, both a bill and a decree, which would complete the regulation of the state law, taking another step in this process of developing the electronic administration.
