Administration Challenges according to the Catalan Ombudsman's Report 2025
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The Annual Report 2025 of the Catalan Ombudsman, recently presented to Parliament, sends a clear and demanding message: the current public administration is at the end of its cycle and, therefore, it is essential to rethink the model to adapt it to the new social, demographic and technological challenges of today's Catalonia.
The current organizational model is highly stressed, slow and has lost the capacity to make profound transformations that respond to the needs of an increasingly complex society. 52% of the population evaluates the functioning of the Catalan Administration very or quite negatively and this is an increase compared to a decade ago.
From the Open Administration of Catalonia (AOC), we read this report as an urgent call to action. We need to rethink the Administration, taking advantage of digital transformation, not only to modernize internal processes but to radically put citizens at the center.
Bureaucracy, slowness and the urgency to automate
One of the most severe diagnoses of the report is that administrative controls have multiplied to the point of becoming real obstacles. This hyperregulation, added to the temporary decapitalization of teams resulting from recent stabilization processes and transfer competitions, has led to an unacceptable extension of deadlines.
Delays have a vital impact on people and economic activity, such as in accessing social benefits or processing licenses. For example, the report warns that many social benefits do not reach all those who need them: nearly 60% of people in poverty do not receive either the minimum living income or the guaranteed citizenship income.
Lights and shadows of technology: Interoperability, omnichannel and support
The report assesses the role of technology and identifies where the current digital relationship model needs to be improved. The report highlights:
the frustration that citizens have to continue providing documents that the Administration already has.
the danger of the digital divide: technology cannot replace human contact when it is necessary because it generates exclusion. Support is needed in the processing process.
Citizens have the right to in-person care and prior appointments cannot be mandatory.
Data as a tool: the pending subject of evaluation
Digital transformation is not just about processing files electronically, but also about generating data to evaluate public policies. The report highlights the lack of an evaluation culture. The Administration needs mechanisms based on real data to check whether procedures solve problems or only add bureaucratic burdens.
A country agreement for humanized technology
The Ombudsman concludes that this transformation can only be carried out with a major national agreement: a consensus between political, institutional and social actors to build a 21st century public administration, capable of effectively guaranteeing the rights of 21st century citizens, and highlights the following actions:
Renovate aging structures
Simplify processes and eliminate defensive bureaucracy
Prioritize proximity and personal attention
Guarantee the ethical, efficient and humanized use of technology
Reconfiguring the Administration for today's Catalonia
Meet deadlines and arrive on time
Applying restorative justice to legal violations
Put the person at the center
The Administration must listen, understand and respond. It must act with agility, efficiency and empathy, and it must do so with its eyes on the citizens, who are its raison d'être. Catalonia has the tools, the professionals and the diagnosis.
The profile of the person complaining
The age group between 35 and 69 concentrates the majority of complaints, while the youth and the elderly are below.representats. This alerts about the barseres (often technological or procedural) that suffer at the ends of the demographic pyramid.
Women present 55% of complaints, a figure that rises to 63,7% in the area of social policies. This shows that they are the ones who assume the majority of the care burdens.
Only 9,9% of complaints come from people born abroad, despite representar 23,8% of the population. This gap shows that the most vulnerable groups encounter too many obstacles in relating to institutions.
