On March 17, within the Parliamentary Institutional Affairs Committee, a series of appearances took place in relation to the Bill on the use of electronic media in the public sector of Catalonia.
Joan A. Olivares explained the need for a Catalan e-government framework. According to the managing director, there are three elements that justify it:
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When public administrations approach improvement processes' they do not consider doing things the same way as before; a fundamental aspect that differentiates the Administration paper from the electronics is the need to interoperate between administrations with all the guarantees'. And this is a basic need to the point that e-government 'is inter-administrative or not'.
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In addition, it is necessary to give profitability to public spending and therefore require a set of tools and services (notifications, identity and signature, edict boards, electronic registration, etc.) that become 'technically provided services from d 'centralized instances that make profitable the investments made by the country's institutions'.
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As a third factor, in Catalonia there is a very clear institutional diversity between the Generalitat and the local world and, within the local world, there is also great variety (large capitals, provincial institutions, municipalities with less than a thousand inhabitants). This makes it necessary to work to avoid the 'institutional fracture because the institutions are not at the same level. There is a patent imbalance. And we must give management capacity and interrelation to institutions with an economic and management capacity that by themselves do not allow them to reach this level '.
For Olivares, the Catalan framework leads to the definition of a series of policies with the aim of advancing based on the principle of collaboration between the Catalan administrations 'to progress together at an acceptable pace'. According to the managing director of the AOC Consortium, 'we are in a scenario of development of certain aspects of e-government that tries to respond to these three vectors that inform the need for a Catalan framework: interrelationship, common needs and promotion policies in order to rebalance the role of the different institutions'.
Finally, Olivares stated that 'we are on a path, as stated in the bill, which provides that the exercise of this right of citizens is relativized by budgetary capabilities', but it must be borne in mind that 'there is a wide public offer to respond to the right of citizens to access public services'.
Apart from the managing director of the AOC Consortium, the following participated: representaLocalret members, the Federation of Municipalities of Catalonia, the Catalan Association of Municipalities and Counties, the Catalan Data Protection Agency, Foment del Treball Nacional, Pimec and Agustí Cerrillo Martínez, expert in electronic administration and professor of administrative law at the Open University of Catalonia.
You can visit the website of the Parliament of Catalonia to consult the interventions by all the speakers and the answers to the questions posed by the members of the Commission.
You can check it out here Bill on the use of electronic media in the public sector of Catalonia (PDF; 548 KB).
Joan A. Olivares, during his speech
