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Institut Municipal d'Informàtica
(Ajuntament de Barcelona)
Barcelona
is one of the major European metropolises. With more than a million and
a half inhabitants, it is the political, economic and cultural capital
of Catalonia, an autonomous community located in the northeast of
Spain, on the Mediterranean shores. It is the sixth largest
metropolitan and fifth largest industrial agglomeration in Europe.
Today the city and its surrounding area, act as a centre of economic
activities related to new technologies and advanced services in the
framework of the information society.
The Barcelona City Council is strongly involved in the e-government process using the Internet as an instrument to achieve three main strategic objectives: to reconsider and improve internal management; improve commitments to the inhabitants and expand them; and develop a participatory strategy for the city.
The Barcelona City Council’s official website provides access to a wide range of information and transactional services. Barcelona is one of the European cities with the highest number of on-line transactional services. The website displays contents in three languages: Catalan, Spanish and English and it brings together information destined for residents, business people and tourists. A content management system is currently being set up. It has won a number of awards: third Best Design at the European E-City Awards (2002), first Prize at Auna Foundation Awards (2002), Stockholm Challenge Award (2002), World Technology Awards (2002), Best Spanish Municipal Website (Ciberpais, 2001 and 2004).
The Municipality of Barcelona has a twofold strategic goal with respect to Attention to Citizens: improve its citizens’ quality of life and achieve a more transparent and effective administration. With this objectives in mind and an awareness of the value of universal access to information for the purpose of fostering the participation of citizens and improving the relations between administrators and the administered, in 1987 the Municipality of Barcelona created the BI department (Barcelona Informació).
BI is responsible for offering general information with respect to local management. According to municipal goals, BI has implemented a policy of Attention to Citizens that is reflected in six fundamental areas: personalised telephone attention through number 010; automated telephone attention through Audiotex; face to face attention through municipal offices; written support guides; and, finally, Internet attention through the official website of the Municipality of Barcelona: www.bcn.cat By means of this tool the Municipality aims at playing an active role in the development of the information society, directing new communication technologies towards the improvement of the citizens’ life quality and consolidating Barcelona as a leading city in this field. The Barcelona City Council website had 2,372,500 visits last year.
In 1989 the City created the Municipal Institute of IT – Institut Municipal d’Informàtica (IMI)- as a public organisation owned 100% by the City Council. This Institute grouped three internal departments of the Municipality: the Computing department (COM) dealing with mainframe, the Cartography department responsible for GIS, and the PC and Ofimatic department responsible of the general digitalisation of the main workplaces in the municipality and the maintenance of the PC and office software.
The mission of the IMI is to develop and centralise all the Information Technologies and Communication activities of the Barcelona City Council. It is also responsible for Business Process Re-engineering in the City Council offices and providing technical support to all BI activities for Citizens. IMI is the technical authority for the municipal web site and a key player defining the eGovernment strategy for the Municipality and the launch of on-line public to citizens. The IMI as representative of the City Council in ICT has taken part in many European projects as Gala, Dali, Exe, GAUDI, Eurociti, Permis, Elda, Ambar, Petri CoCo, Infocities, Sipac, Infopime, Medipolis... and it also belongs to a number of networks of cities: Telecities (currently holding the presidency), Eurocities, Metropolis, Major Cities of Europe, ELANET (through FEMP). IMI will contribute to ICING with 62.5 p-ms of effort and will co-ordinate the Dissemination and Participatory Information Spaces work packages (WP9 and WP4).
