eGovernment platform for small and medium municipalities (PISTA LOCAL)

The project, that is mainly addressed to city councils of small and medium nucleus herd, has the purpose of providing them with a set of common interest tools that allows them to offer, at least, all basic eEurope eGovernment services. Small administrations not only should have an active presence in Internet but also should be able to offer eGovernment services to citizens. PISTA LOCAL is built as a viable system model at an economic and technical level, based essentially on the administrations cooperation and the economy of scale: supra-municipal entities are in charge of hosting, supporting and deployment (county councils, communities, consortiums, etc). Technical, economic and human resources needed are assumed by these entities, and no cost is assumed by small or medium city councils. It is developed with Open Architecture, open free software technology that offers information to citizens as well as interacts with them or other administrations, independently of the own management systems of each one of the administrations. Any web browser may be a web client with no additional elements needed. Companies and citizen associations (NGOs, cultural, sport, educative, enterprise, etc) which want to have Internet presence, can also benefit from this platform. Operation scheme used in PISTA LOCAL has been based on the signature of a cooperation agreement between FEMP and MITyC(SETSI) which has allowed FEMP to provide itself with an equipment for the maintenance of the product and to facilitate support to the interested county councils and city councils. The program has been based on sharing costs: SETSI finances the technical development group and the construction of portals group, and the FEMP support team. FEMP, with the collaboration of the city councils, is in charge of the diffusion, management, training, implantation, technical assistance and application updates; county councils provide application hosting and technical personnel for its operation; the city councils provide the web contents ; the city councils are in charge of the maintenance and the information update (also the county councils, in the case that city councils have a lack of resources). All different projects framed within PISTA, are jointly defined by Ministry technicians or competent organisms, as well as by a representative user group of considered sector. There are a collaboration among administrations: national, regional and local.

Main results, benefits and impacts

PISTA LOCAL is an example of coordination and collaboration among Public Administrations. - Co-managed by the MITyC and FEMP. - Users Group committed to implement the results, that collaborates in the definition and test of the developments. - The MITyC: -- Supports project definition -- Finances project -- Contracts the development of computer applications and their experimentation and dissemination in a first pilot phase -- Distributes the results to all the requesting organisations. Main impact foreseen is: - External. Through city council web space, the municipality is advertising small companies which did not have Internet presence. - Citizens. Direct relation and the importance of making known for associations and local non-government organisations. - Back office: Allows non resident citizens in a municipality performing administrative proceedings with a given municipality through internet. - Business. It is important to notice the rural tourism peak, is basically serviced by family enterprises, and small manufacturing companies. - Training. It is a chance to establish a one step access for all civil servants in Local Administration. - Standardisation. It standardises the content of the municipal websites, it fosters the building of directories of supra-municipal information (province, region and nation). - Social. Facilitates the access for the visualy impaired people. - Cultural. Linguistic diversity. By its own developing characteristics, it is multi-lingual (Each municipality defines the languages to be used in its web). In May 2005, PISTA LOCAL is installed in 25 county councils and working properly on 262 municipalities. The total investment in developing and initial installation during 2005 will be ?697.175. At the end of 2005, PISTA LOCAL will be extended to 15 county councils or supra-municipal entities and 800 municipalities, currently without internet presence. The forecast PISTA LOCAL growth is about 1.000 municipalities per year; during 2005 it will be launched the applications in the county councils in such a way that at the end of 2007, all municipalities will have Internet presence. Bearing in mind, the figures offered by the MITyC on January 2004, show that 5.611 Spanish municipalities have no Internet presence over a total of 8.108, that is 69% of Spanish municipalities have no Internet presence at the beginning of 2004, representing 14% of the Spanish population.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Lessons learnt

Good practices: - Cooperation and coordination among Public Administrations. - Optimization of costs and resources, etc. - Maintenance focus for assuring a long life cycle. - Reducing digital gap. - Fostering internet presence of city council, companies and associations. PISTA LOCAL also implies the professional training of civil servants involved in the ICT sector. PISTA LOCAL is available for all Spanish Local Administrations. The Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce will participate showing and demonstrating the project in the relevant events and forums. The managing and developing project team will be available for any interested entity. The Spanish Federation of municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) have a consultancy and support team for attending any doubt about the functionality, installation, management and configuration of the product. The code developed is free and can be handed over to any administration. Each administration can follow working and interchanging experiences and results among them. Public services transformation based on the adoption of e-government initiatives in local administration should be performed assuring the equal opportunities and service quality for all citizens, especially when they are living in small and medium municipalities or rural areas. Small and medium municipalities lack economic, technical and human resources for performing and offering to their citizens e-government services, for this reason, Public administration at all levels should foster public policies for the cooperation, coordination and financing of successful e-government services for those municipalities. PISTA LOCAL constitutes a strategic system for catalysing new services coming from other technological and municipal services environments. Nowadays, municipal programs of the Ministry and county councils are giving directions to PISTA LOCAL as the services provision tool, already included (GEOPISTA, SIBOP, Change of domicile, etc.) It is necessary to universalize public services to Administration at all levels. PISTA LOCAL is a real e-government solution for achieving this objective. Scope: National