At a time when energy poverty in Catalonia is increasing significantly, with more than 9% of the population experiencing difficulties paying for basic supplies on time, Law 24/2015 has become a key mechanism to protect vulnerable people. This law establishes that, to avoid supply cuts to vulnerable people, municipal social services must certify the situation of risk of residential exclusion through an energy poverty report.
Law 24/2015 prevented 200.000 supply cuts between 2015 and 2020, but the task is titanic. Nearly 800 councils must process monthly data from more than 50 supply companies and issue reports within 15 days. This process, where the users' vulnerability situation must be proven, is mainly done manually, which makes it slow and inefficient, generating a significant administrative workload for local administration staff.
The digital solution of the AOC Consortium
To deal with this situation, For a year and a half, the AOC Consortium has been working on a pilot project with a clear objective: to automate and digitize the process of drawing up energy poverty reports. This pilot is based on the use of a cloud platform that allows to standardize and automate the management of reports, reducing the administrative burden and improving the efficiency of the whole process.
How does the pilot work?
The service allows the municipal social services to upload to the platform the files sent by the energy suppliers, which contain the contracts affected by possible supply cuts. Once loaded, the platform automatically performs interoperability queries to Via Oberta to obtain the data necessary to prepare reports corresponding This data includes information such as residence, income, social benefits or disability and dependency situations.
This not only saves time for citizens, since they are not asked for documents already held by the administrations, but also ensures compliance with the rights and duties established by law with the right of access to basic supplies and the duty of collaboration between supply companies and public administrations to issue vulnerability reports.
The step-by-step automated process
- Verification of the register: First of all, the process asks the register if the person whose supply is to be cut off is registered in the corresponding municipality.
- Consent: If it is registered, it is checked whether it has an open file at the municipal social services and, therefore, that the consent of the person is available for issuing the report and carrying out the necessary interoperability consultations .
- Automatic calculation: If you have an open social file, income, disability and dependency data are collected from different databases and an automatic calculation is applied to determine if the family is at risk of residential exclusion. This calculation is based on the sum of family incomes, which are compared to an established threshold
- Automatic generation of the report: Once the information is validated, the energy poverty report is automatically generated, which is digitally signed with an organ seal.
Pilot results
After a year and a half the pilot is in operation in 11 Basic Areas of Social Services (ABSS) and 5 already use it in their daily operations. These councils simply upload the files they receive from the supply companies to the platform and get the automatically generated reports within minutes or hours, depending on the size of the files.
To date, almost 800 files with over 4.500 default records have been automatically processed. on average the vulnerability situation (positive or negative) has been proven in 50% of cases, with a success rate of over 90%. In the cases where the accreditation could not be carried out in 89% of cases, it was because the owner's consent was not available to carry out the necessary interoperability consultations.
Challenges overcome
Despite the pilot's success, some technical challenges have had to be faced. one of the main challenges has been the exact calculation of the income of the family unit because the regulations do not clearly specify which income should be calculated or how. In the pilot, an optimal calculation has been agreed which includes income, pensions, social benefits and benefits. The calculation has been validated with several councils to ensure that it adequately reflects the economic reality of families.
Another important challenge has been to overcome the lack of standardization of the process which makes it difficult to manage. On the one hand, the supply companies send the unpaid lists through any channel and in any format. On the other hand, it is not established what data the reports must contain or how they must be sent to the companies.
Future challenges
To ensure the efficiency and sustainability of vulnerability reporting automation it is necessary to address three key aspects. First of all automate obtaining consent, for example through a one-click electronic process on your mobile. This will enable reports to be drawn up more quickly and effectively
Secondly it is essential simplify the authorization process for making inquiries to Via Oberta. The legal-administrative complexity of this procedure must be reduced so that it can be completed in days instead of months. This simplification will speed up access to the automation process.
Finally, law 24/2015 must be deployed by regulation standardize interoperability. The creation of a single hub or database will facilitate the connection between councils and companies allowing an easier and more efficient exchange of data.
Conclusion
This pilot project of the AOC Consortium is a clear example of how digitization can improve public services and ensure that citizens' rights are fulfilled efficiently. Automation reduces the administrative burden, speeds up processes and ensures greater accuracy in the preparation of energy poverty reports. As more councils join, the ability of local administrations to respond to energy poverty will be significantly improved
