In Catalunya, AI can help local administrations in tackling social vulnerability.

The responsible organisation

The Open Administration Consortium of Catalonia (AOC), based in Barcelona, is a regional Consortium established after the approval of the “Agreement for the promotion and development of information society” among Catalan public administrations. The Agreement is signed by the presidents of all parliamentary groups, the Government of the Generalitat of Catalonia and the local governments represented by Localret. The mission of the AOC is to accelerate the digital transformation of Catalan administrations by (i) fostering the interoperability of Catalan information systems with other administrations, (ii) creating and providing common e-government services, (iii) reusing e-government applications and services, and (iv) protecting confidential information of citizens and of civil servants.

The problem

According to the Spanish Law (24/2015), citizens who are facing complex economic or social situations cannot be cut off from basic energy services (e.g., gas, water, or electricity). When energy suppliers detect unpaid invoices, they must consult the municipality to know if one household is facing a situation of social vulnerability, before cutting off the service. To enable this consultation, municipalities receive from such suppliers monthly lists of households who are not paying the bills. However, these data are gathered in heterogeneous formats. This generates a costly bureaucratic manual process to check who should be considered as in social or economic risk and, consequently, provide back to suppliers the list of households that cannot be cut off from services, the so called “energy poverty reports”.

The solution and its implementation

AOC is currently developing an in-house pilot project for the automation of “energy poverty reports”, in order to tackle the currently reported inefficiency. A first pilot test was carried out in three municipalities– i.e. Torroella de Montgrì (11,000 inhabitants), El Prat de Llobregat (64,000 inhabitants) and Esplugues de Llobregat (45,000 inhabitants) -, but it is necessary to conduct tests in other local contexts. The final deployment of the solution will lead to an AI-driven platform for complex process automation, utilizing Robot Process Automation (RPA) and Business Process Modelling (BPM) technologies. This service will make it possible to upload to the platform all the data that energy suppliers provide. Once loaded, data will be processed and cross-checked with other relevant databases through the BPM, which will automatically analyse them, generating the relevant results for the “energy poverty reports”. The solution works in a cloud platform provided by a private company.

Expected results

The solution is expected to bring multiple benefits to the administration, including:

Enhanced interoperability thanks to the enablement of automatic detection of complex economic or social situations faced by citizens, breaking the silos between (i) companies and municipalities and (ii) municipalities and other administrations to verify the data;
Centralised AI-powered support to municipalities that lack the resources for significant digital transformation projects, thanks to a single-access cloud service. It is also strengthened by a call centre which offers support for all legal and data protection issues;
Seamless integration with diverse and heterogeneous information systems, which helps to streamline the related administrative processes.

Current challenges

Nevertheless, AOC is also facing several challenges, namely:

Pushing integration across many information systems - ensuring at the same time compliance with a single legal framework - is a very complex and time-consuming process;
Municipalities need in some cases to undertake unexpected procedures which lead to enhance the length of the process (e.g., citizen may be asked to submit further additional documentation or authorisation to data treatment)