- Open administration
The use of digital services increases by 11%: balance of the AOC 2023
From the AOC we are developing a pilot project of a cloud service that allows the automation of social reports on energy vulnerability, both the management process and the preparation of the report. The aim is to standardize and facilitate a task that is currently complex and inefficient.
In order to be able to prove the vulnerability situation in the report, a series of calculations are necessary which are currently being carried out, in general, manually. We also find differences in the formats and transmission channels, which depend on each company and administration. Faced with this lack of standardization and bearing in mind that much of the data required for the preparation of the report is in the AOC's Via Oberta service, we have considered developing this pilot.
What are energy vulnerability social reports?
Law 24/2015, in its article 6, determines that public administrations must guarantee the right of access to basic supplies to people and family units at risk of residential exclusion. It also establishes a precautionary principle, where when the supplying company has to make a supply cut it must first request a report from the municipal social services to determine if the person or family unit is in one of the risk situations of residential exclusion[1].
For this reason, on a monthly basis, the different Basic Areas of Social Services must draw up the aforementioned reports to prove the situation of economic vulnerability in the face of cuts that may be agreed by the electricity, gas and potable water supply companies due to non-payment.
What does the service offer?
The designed service makes it possible to upload to the platform the .xls files that the energy suppliers send to the different basic areas of social services where the affected contracts are recorded. Once loaded, the BPM processes the data and starts the process for each of the records. First of all, checking that the holders are registered in the municipality and verifying if they have a file registered with Hestia, which authorizes the subsequent consultation of the data. From here it calculates in parallel the coefficients of both the holder and the parties, making the corresponding calls to Via Oberta. After the query calls of all documents are completed, it performs the coefficient calculation and automatically generates the energy poverty report model by painting the resulting information.
Knowing how the flow works, it is important to highlight some key points that can make the process difficult, both at a legal and organizational level:
- To validate the personal data of all the cohabitants and make open inquiries, it is necessary to have a social file in Hèstia of one of the people in the cohabitation unit.
- It is necessary for the City Council to process the necessary consultation requests in Via Oberta to make the calculations, as well as to have a data processing order.
Solvency of these points, the automation process described is an opportunity to generate savings for the administrations, both in terms of time and efficiency, considerably reducing the administrative tasks derived and establishing a standard for the Basic Areas of Social Services.
The experience carried out so far is a first pilot test carried out at the ABSS of Torroella de Montgrí, El Prat de Llobregat and Esplugues de Llobregat. It will be necessary to conduct tests in other organizations before making the final deployment of the solution.
From the AOC we want to thank the councils mentioned in the last paragraph for participating in this first phase and providing us with all the necessary information and dedication.
[1] The reasons why people can be considered at risk are the level of income, the imminent risk of losing their home or that there is someone with energy dependency.