On April 12, the Conference organized by the AOC Consortium “from IDEC Local to Geolocal: the value of sharing information about the territory” took place in the assembly hall of the School of Public Administration of Catalonia. Mª Àngels Barbarà, Secretary General of the Department of Governance and Institutional Relations, made the institutional opening where he remarked that Geolocal has “a strong DNA of the AOC Consortium as it incorporates some of the concepts that best define its activity: collaboration, interoperability, subsidiarity and service provision, beyond technology ”.
The session began with a thought-provoking presentation by Vincent Parthal, director of Vilaweb based on the idea that the world is ending. The world, as we have known it so far, is changing very quickly: the connection of almost the entire population to the network and the fact that it is increasingly occurring from mobile devices makes them crack. all the schemes that have existed so far. People relate in a way that has nothing to do with how it was done until recently and administrations need to take this into account and deal with it. We need to change the way content and services are offered. And you have to do it fast.
Then, Ferran Farriol, head of service at Geolocal, gave a presentation on the evolution of the service, from its early dayseres functionalities, under the name IDEC Local, to Geolocal, the new service that was presented in the session. This service was born with the mission of giving added value to the resources that already exist in the IDEC Local network, facilitating that they can be exploited and widely used, both by local entities and by citizens, also opening the door to cooperative work between administrations. Through demonstrations of the various possibilities, the spirit of Geolocal was revealed to promote an increase in the usability of the services, incorporate more services with added value and make a greater dissemination of public geoinformation.
Later and coordinated by Jordi Guimet, IDEC Support Center, began the session entitled "Experiences of using Geolocal in Catalan public administrations" under the heading of specific examples of the use of these services. In first place, Xavier Valverde, head of the Knowledge Society of the City of Sant Vicenç del Horts narrated the evolution in recent years of the use of geoinformation services in his City, proposing for the coming years an increase in cooperation between administrations, the companies and citizens and reviewing the challenges, as well as the threats, of this process. After, Jordi Duran, head of the GIS Area of the Baix Empordà County Council, reported the activities that have been carried out by the County Council itself, both internally and in support of the municipalities, highlighting the creation of thematic atlases to which descriptions, images, attachments, links are incorporated and showed examples of different viewers developed within the framework of Geolocal’s GeoInformation Resource Platform (PRG). He finished this blog Raquel Canet, head of the Civil Protection Technology Service of the Department of Interior of the Generalitat, who explained an interesA case study of collaboration with local authorities applied to flood risk management, which demonstrates the possibilities of this new tool. Based on the principles of decentralization, coordination, speed and efficiency, a service is built in the PRG where local authorities update information regarding Priority Action Points. The conclusion drawn from the pilot carried out in two county councils and six municipalities (covering 22% of the points) is that with a very small investment, the effectiveness and transparència, thanks to a collaborative spirit between administrations.
Finally Josep Lluís Colomer, ICC Deputy General Technical Director, with the paper entitled “Institutional Collaboration in the collection of geographical information” highlighted the idea that Catalonia has an adequate interoperability framework, the Cartographic Coordination Commission of Catalonia, and that · Working and sharing geographical information is technically possible. In addition, we have an adequate regulatory framework, and he exemplified this with two cases: the collaboration of the ICC with the Port of Barcelona and the elaboration, at the request of the Mossos d'Esquadra, of Carrer de Catalunya which has had the participation of town councils and provincial councils.
He closed the act Joan A. Olivares, managing director of the AOC Consortium, who thanked the speakers and attendees for their participation, making a special mention of the Cartographic Institute of Catalonia, the technological partner of the service and the EAPC and encouraging them to use Geolocal.
