Bridging the digital divide – AL21, Ciberkioskos and Smart Centers

The project reduces the digital divide and accessibility problems for people with special needs and simplifies technology. It is a layer of artificial intelligence (AL21) that facilitates navigation and assists in carrying out electronic procedures, together with the deployment of cyberkiosks that allow access to technology free of charge and Smart Centres to train citizens in digital skills. The Public Procurement of Innovation methodology is used in its implementation.

Innovation Summary

Innovation Overview

With the aim of achieving the greatest possible impact on the most disadvantaged social groups, 3 key vectors were identified on which to base the actions to be prioritised:

Unify in a single access point, avoiding the dispersion of procedures and information on the municipal website.
Fighting the digital divide.
Inclusion for people with special abilities.

We use Artificial Intelligence to develop a layer that allows web browsing and electronic processing through natural language and inclusive and universal access methods. It can run on any device and is multilingual. In this way we centralise all municipal information and procedures in a single access point, simplify technology through the use of natural language and assist with the use of Artificial Intelligence.

We prevent the economic cost of the technology from impeding access to it by deploying hardware devices, with free access, called cyberkiosks, throughout the municipal offices, on which AL21 runs with all its operational functionalities.

In addition, we avoided the lack of training in digital skills for citizens by creating training classrooms (Smart Centres) to obtain them and converting them into ACCV User Registration Points to access recognised digital certificates.

This project was developed with funding from the Valencian Innovation Agency (AVI) for the part corresponding to the Preliminary Market Consultation and the drafting of the tender documents, and with full funding for the project from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Funds.

The aforementioned layer has been designed to be applicable to other public administrations, with minimal parameterisation, which will allow technological costs to be reduced in other administrations, promoting the circular economy, shared technology and public-private collaboration.

It opens new paths in the simplification of technology through artificial intelligence and access to technology for citizens. This project aims to reduce the digital divide, to increase the inclusion of the elderly and people with special abilities, and to prevent anyone from being left behind in the use and enjoyment of the advantages of technology.

We are registering very considerable volumes of use, which in turn are substantially decongesting the physical customer services. The return of citizen satisfaction is very good and with this return, new areas of use of the solution are being designed, such as the e-procurement portal and other external municipal offices.

Innovation Description

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

We use AI in an ethical, inclusive and responsible way, reducing the digital divide and simplifying the use of technology for citizens.

The AI learning was carried out, in a mentored way, through more than 100,000 citizen calls. It has three parallel AI modules, 1st is the Intention Classification Module for the execution of formalities, using Robotic Process Automation (RPA), 2nd is a Query&Answer (Q&A) module to engage in information broadcasting conversations based on scraping (conversational analysis and summary broadcasting robots), and 3rd is a moderation module that allows us to apply positive inclusion biases and conversational ethics.

The infrastructure is hybrid (municipal DPC with base information and cloud for the AI logic). This way we increase security, reduce costs and obtain sustainability by auto-scaling, using only the necessary resources depending on the number of concurrent users.

What is the current status of your innovation?

N/A

Innovation Development

Collaborations & Partnerships

Inter-institutional collaboration has made it possible to bring together public and private entities at different stages of the implementation process. The definition of the challenge was carried out through a PPI process in which important national companies participated, with European funding through the AVI of the Generalitat Valenciana.

The design and implementation has been carried out by technology sector companies that are widely established in the technological ecosystem of the province.

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Companies in the sector participated through the Preliminary Market Consultation, public entities (AVI and the Government of Spain-PRTR), entities specialising in innovation (ELLIS Alicante Foundation and the Digital Intelligence Centre-CENID) and the successful bidder was a start-up from Alicante. It has benefited citizens in general, people affected by the digital divide and people with special abilities. As it is easily exportable, it also benefits public administrations.

Innovation Reflections

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

It has meant a reduction in response times for the issuing of basic administrative documents (certificates, requests for appointments, general information), from an average of 1 month to just two days.

Reduction of waiting lists in face-to-face citizen services from 2 months to 3 days.

In addition, it has enabled the issuing of registration certificates in 17 seconds, from the time of request, through cyberkiosks.

AL21 resolves, on average, 500 procedures per day and more than 1,000 queries per day. Of the total number of queries made, 935 were in Spanish, 7 in English and 27 in Valencian. When the voluntary payment periods open, a 90% reduction in queues is expected.

Challenges and Failures

The development of a unified access layer based on artificial intelligence on web browsing and electronic processing by headquarters posed a challenge in two ways:

On the one hand, from the need for organisational transformation to improve the citizen-administration relationship, the methodology of strategic foresight has been used through trend analysis, in the changing environment of new technologies. It has proved difficult to examine data, trends and changes in an obsolete municipal organisational structure with signs of functional stagnation.
On the other hand, there has been little or no previous experience with similar projects in other public administrations.

Conditions for Success

N/A

Replication

One of the pillars of innovation was and is its capacity to be exported to other administrations. Spanish and European cities have already shown interest in its implementation.

The integration of policies and actions for the promotion of innovation in Alicante City Council is reflected in the projects that have been implemented continuously since 2019 to date.

Externally, there have been several acknowledgements of the innovation project, as well as the interest shown by other administrations.

We are participating in forums and sectorial institutional networks, in which reports of good practices have been presented, in order to transfer and disseminate the projects.

Lessons Learned

The socio-economic reality, the incorporation of new technologies into public management processes, as well as the principles of good governance, sustainability and social responsibility that Alicante City Council has been implementing and which, as a provider of services to citizens, it is obliged to carry out, have become the central axes of all its actions reflected in the policies it has been developing.

It is necessary to incorporate policies that promote innovation in its portfolio of services and work procedures. The consolidation of an integrating and innovative strategy will have a positive impact on the indicators of satisfaction, effectiveness and efficiency of the services provided to citizens.

Anything Else?

‘Idea Labs’, ‘Govtech’, ‘Open Innovation’, ‘Innovation Ecosystems’, are terms that have definitively entered the imagination of local administration professionals, which are increasingly present in the actions they carry out as providers of services to the public.

Innovation in public administration must be the tool that allows us to escape from the slow management derived from obsolete and archaic dynamics, in pursuit of a more agile and efficient management, adapted to the times of the Innovation Society, and based on the culture of experimentation, which pursues progress in the welfare of citizens, without leaving behind the most disadvantaged sectors.