Mobile Madrid – Digital Services for Citizens - Observatory of Public Sector Innovation

Madrid Móvil is Madrid City Council's commitment to bringing citizens closer to and facilitating their use of and access to municipal services and interaction with the Administration through an app. Madrid Móvil is a one-stop shop through which citizens can carry out all their administrative procedures, request services in sports centres, workshops and cultural activities, as well as communicate warnings and incidents related to city services. The application has achieved 1 million warnings per year.

Innovation Summary

Innovation Overview

Madrid is a large city, with 3.3 million registered citizens, which provides services to a group of approximately 5 million people. Madrid Móvil is the commitment of the Madrid City Council to bring the citizen closer and facilitate the use and access to municipal services and interaction with the Administration through a mobile application, available for both Android and iOS platforms. It acts as a one-stop shop adapted to the omnipresence in the lives of citizens of the mobile phone. The Madrid Mobile application is the way to prioritize Mobile First design, which seeks to promote and facilitate the easy use of services by citizens from their mobile terminals, improving their usability and accessibility, involving citizens and allowing citizen leadership. With Madrid Móvil, people from Madrid can carry out all their administrative procedures: consult data and access "My Folder", obtain personal certificates, apply for aid, pay taxes, etc. Citizens also have a direct line with the citizen service and can request an appointment if they wish to carry out any of these procedures in person.

The electronic administrative processing is carried out with the maximum guarantees, by using a general electronic identification system valid for any Spanish administration. They can also request services at municipal sports centers, such as reserving tickets for the swimming pools, participating in sports classes, renting courts, or renting a bicycle from the BiciMad service. Citizens can also request a place in municipal workshops and cultural activities through the specific section of the app. Madrid Móvil also provides transparency and responsibility by allowing citizens to communicate warnings and incidents -geolocated on a map of Madrid, with attached information such as photographs (optional), and a brief description- related to street furniture, lighting, cleaning and urban waste, green areas or trees, etc., as well as making requests for new equipment, such as fountains, children's areas or containers.

The app allows the user to search for nearby announcements, follow them, reiterate them and see the status of completion. Although it is not directly related to the app, but rather to the design of municipal electronic procedures, Madrid Móvil benefits from the joint effort of the Madrid City Council, which is immersed in a continuous process of reducing administrative burdens through actions such as the Plan of Shock of Rationalization and Simplification of Procedures and of Promotion of the Digital Administration. The services accessed through the app are provided completely digitally, although they can also be invoked through other means or channels. With the app, the City Council tries to maximize citizen engagement by providing a simple, user-friendly and accessible delivery model for citizens. The app itself represents a clear incentive for the use of digital services thanks to the ease and ubiquity of the participants to chat and stay in touch with their network of contacts in the app. Also, thanks to the ease and possibility of use from anywhere and in any situation, whether it is to carry out a procedure, book a future sports activity, or notify the municipal services of an incident in the municipality; all comfortably and from the palm of the citizen's hand. Finally, the City Council promotes accountability, transparency, participation and citizen leadership thanks to the app's features. It also makes it possible to build a community and the commitment of citizens by involving them in the identification, solution and improvement of the city's problems.

Innovation Description

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

Madrid Móvil represents a new way of providing public services and also a new channel of communication with citizens. The initiative has evolved over the years to include new services and functionalities, including the ability to carry out administrative procedures. Madrid Móvil is an easy way to contact the Administration and also a way to propose new functionalities or report malfunctioning of the solution through first level options in the app. The app itself represents a clear incentive for the use of digital services thanks to the ease and ubiquity of participants to chat and stay in touch with their network of contacts in the app. All thanks to the ease and possibility of use from anywhere and in any situation.

Innovation Development

Collaborations & Partnerships

Madrid Móvil is a product that is the result of combining the efforts of the general management of the digital office, the IT department and the different areas of government of Madrid City Council, which work together to implement digital services throughout the management of the city. Software development and service design are carried out in collaboration with private companies and with focus groups of end users, the citizens.

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The main beneficiaries of the City Council's digital transformation are the citizens and businesses that use Madrid's services, as they have a digital channel accessible from both computers and mobile devices through which they can identify themselves and carry out transactions electronically at any time without having to go to the citizen service offices in person.

Innovation Reflections

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

The Madrid mobile application has had more than one million downloads and close to 300,000 users in two years. The commitment to digital transformation and the provision of digital services, which a large proportion of citizens access via mobile interfaces (phones and tablets) is enabling a significant improvement in the management of our services, such that:

Electronic processing is going to lead to overall estimated savings of more than €100 million per year in administrative costs for citizens and businesses over the next 2 years. The use of the Madrid e-Office has increased 6-fold since 2019. Face-to-face processing in offices has gone from 85% to 35% and the target for 2023 is to reduce it to 20%.
80% reduction of paper in internal administrative management.
The decrease in the number of people in person at registers has allowed specialised attention without prior appointment for the elderly in the Citizen's Advice Bureaux.

Challenges and Failures

A major challenge for digital services is to have a reliable and user-friendly electronic identification system. The common national system of telematic access to public services CL@VE has been implemented in the City Council, which has increased the electronic relationship of Madrid's citizens with the City Council by 50%. This identification is provided from the City Council's own offices in cooperation with national authorities. The use of electronic signatures in the internal management of the City Council has been generalised from 10,000 electronic files per month in July 2019 to the current 400,000. Another challenge is the availability of the infrastructure that supports the IT systems and their security. The city's cybersecurity has been reinforced with technical and governance measures, including the creation of a cybersecurity centre that is part of the National Network as the first large city to join.

Conditions for Success

Digital transformation should be a strategic line of action for a city council and should be adopted and led from the highest level. This is true in the case of Madrid City Council, which has a transformation strategy both internally, for the functioning of the council's administrative structure, and for the city, to provide better services and to attract the installation of companies with technological potential and investors, which will enable an external digital transformation. There is a synergy between this internal transformation and the City Council's technology and the external transformation with the city's services and technology. Madrid is already a leading city in many fields of technology use and we want to reinforce this situation, positioning Madrid as a reference for digital transformation in the world.

Replication

Getting to a situation where all public services are available digitally, and in particular through a mobile app is a replicable task, but it is not something immediate and dependent solely on technology. It is a total change of mindset and culture of all its workers. E-government requires interconnecting a common set of services (identification, registration, notification, etc.) with specific governance and well-trained staff.

Lessons Learned

When delivering digital public services, it is essential to:

Maintain a robust, resilient and resilient infrastructure that can withstand peak loads, cyber-attacks and ensure a secure 24x7 service.
Tone from the top and ensure that in all areas of government digital transformation is driven from the highest levels.
Focus services on citizens, design them with them in mind, and simplify them to avoid the digital divide.
Train internal staff and carry out training and dissemination actions to encourage citizens to opt for digital channels.