The Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia organized the online session “Implementation of complaint channels in the city councils. Experiences, recommendations and new regulations”With the participation of Charo Bravo (Sabadell City Council), Carles Anson (Vilanova i la Geltrú City Council), Ona Martínez (Terrassa City Council), Dora Padial (Lleida City Council), Rosa Mª Sánchez (Barcelona City Council), Lourdes Parramon (Catalan Anti-Fraud Office) and Miquel Estapé (AOC Consortium); and had the follow-up of over 250 people.
With this session, we wanted to reflect and give answers and recommendations to local bodies for the implementation of the Directive (EU) 2019/1937, for the protection of alert people, which imposes on the public sector the obligation to have a reporting channel. Other currently applicable rules, in terms of data protection or Next Generation fund management, also include internal detection and alert systems.
In this sense, the Executive Committee of the AOC Consortium approved on October 20 to promote the initiative to offer a common technological service of ethical mailbox for local bodies. The AOC Consortium is working to be able to start piloting during the first quarter of 2022. When the pilots are finished, a deployment will be made to all local bodies that request it and have an integrity action plan.
This initiative is part of the action plan of the Network of Transparent Governments of Catalonia to offer solutions and services that facilitate all local bodies to promote open government and good governance.
In the territory, we already have good references from governments that have implemented secure channels of complaint such as Barcelona City Council, which was the pioneer, we also have the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Anti-Fraud Office and the City Councils of Lleida, Manresa, Terrassa and Vilanova i la Geltrú.
This has been possible thanks to the excellent work done in recent years by theBarcelona City Council in col·laboració amb xnet and the initiative GlobaLeaks which allows us to now have a complete, robust and secure technological solution in free software. From the AOC Consortium we will reuse this solution to make it available in software as a service (SaaS) mode worldwide. In this way, local bodies will not have to worry about the technological, security and protection aspects of this solution. The ethics mailbox will be integrated into the e-TRAM's catalog of procedures.
The application of this Directive is complex and very sensitive at the political, organizational and legal level. For this reason, it is necessary to define a governance model among all actors that draws up a consensus roadmap on how to facilitate its implementation in an efficient and sustainable way in the local world, especially in administrations with fewer resources and capabilities. These will need supra-municipal support, guides, good practices and management and regulatory models. From the Network of Transparent Governments, with the involvement of the Secretariat of Open Government of the Generalitat and the support of the Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia is debating how to address this challenge.
The Directive is generating legal doubts and uncertainties regarding its application. The fact that a transposition has not been approved has not helped to clarify them. Some of the queries raised refer to whether the directive is directly applicable or not, which supra-municipal shared models could be raised, the scope of local bodies required by the directive or the entry register of anonymous complaints taking into account the obligation of Law 39/2015 to identify the people who submit applications.
The Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia presented on October 21 a document with a set of reflections on the obligations and management of the internal alert channel to public bodies. This guide is very didactic and is an excellent starting point document, although it does not resolve all the interpretative doubts of the aforementioned Directive.
This document was presented during the day “Implementation of complaint channels in the city councils”During which the city councils of Barcelona, Lleida, Sabadell, Terrassa and Vilanova i la Geltrú, explained their experience. The video of the session is available on YouTube:
From left to right and from top to bottom: Charo Bravo (Aj. Sabadell), Carles Anson (Aj. Vilanova i la Geltrú), Ona Martínez (Aj. Terrassa), Dora Padial (Aj. Lleida), Rosa Mª Sánchez ( Aj. Barcelona), Lourdes Parramon (Catalan Anti-Fraud Office) and Miquel Estapé (AOC Consortium).
4) Examples of ethical mailboxes:
