Friday, March 29

The Government launches the “My Citizen Folder” app to facilitate public procedures


The Government has presented this Wednesday the mobile application of “My Citizen Folder”, a service with which it hopes to make it easier for citizens to manage procedures with public administrations. From the app, which can now be downloaded in its beta version, you can check previous appointments with different institutions, the status of the files, download supporting documents and certificates or receive alerts.

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The next expiration of the DNI or passport, the driving license or the ITV of the vehicles in your name are examples of those notifications that the app can send. The system is configurable, allowing the user to select their most used services and access them directly.

One of the main objectives of the app is to provide citizens with access to information. Among the data that can be consulted, according to the breakdown of the Government, are those of educational field (university and non-university degrees, fellowship status or university enrollment); living place (real estate and census data); Health and Social Affairs (degree and level of disability and access to the request for the COVID certificate); Personal and family situation (large family title, no criminal record or no record for crimes of a sexual nature); Work and Retirement (demand for employment and benefits, and access to working life); Y vehicles and transportation (driver data and points balance and vehicle data).

The services of “My Citizen Folder” involve several autonomous communities. The Government is working with them to integrate their data consultation and electronic notification systems, since 10 autonomies still have processes that are not connected to the app.

“My Citizen Folder” it was a service that until now was only available in a web version. With its mobile application, the Executive intends to facilitate its use by the population by adapting it to the most used device to connect to the Internet in Spain: “We believe that citizens prefer to have services concentrated in one place”.

“It is a pilot project, in the testing phase, but it already has numerous services available. The idea is to incorporate more in the coming months”, explained Carme Artigas, Secretary of State for Digitization and Artificial Intelligence, whose department has led the development.

“We want to provide simplicity in the relationship with citizens, proximity and use new technologies to develop a new relationship model with public administrations”, added the press conference in which the app was presented.

Identification by video call

One of the new technologies that the app incorporates is the possibility of carrying out the identification process by video call. When entering the app, this method can be selected to authenticate, in which the citizen will connect with an operator who will verify their data and give them access to the system.

This option is designed for people who prefer not to identify themselves in person or have difficulties with the rest of the online identification methods for public services, such as the PIN Key system, the Permanent Key system, the Electronic Certificate or by electronic DNI.

The Government has also presented “Ada”, a conversational assistant capable of interpreting the citizen’s doubts and directing them to the section where the procedure they are looking for is found. At the moment, she is only available on the “My Citizen Folder” web portal, but Artigas has announced that she will be integrated into the app in the coming months.

Conversational assistants like “Ada,” powered by artificial intelligence, can get better as they have more data about the queries they are asked and the effectiveness of their suggestions. Artigas has advanced that the goal is for “Ada” to also be capable of it.

In testing phase

The “My Citizen Folder” app will be in the testing phase until the end of this year or the beginning of 2023. The Government’s roadmap proposes that in the first half of next year the possibility of starting procedures from the app itself will be added , as a request for appointments with the different administrations. Throughout the year, services provided by local administrations will also be added.

During this phase the app will have a form for any citizen or organization to send comments or point out aspects to improve in the system. The Secretary of State for Digitization encourages users to also use it to point out the services that they miss, so that those that are most requested can be prioritized to add them in the early stages.

The budget for the beta phase of the project is 750,000 euros. Sources from the Artigas team have explained to this medium that this figure not only includes the visible part of the app, but also all the internal changes that have been necessary to integrate services that were previously scattered in various portals into a single platform. The amount comes from European recovery funds.

The same sources have ruled out making a forecast of downloads of the new app, since the objective is that “the relationship with the citizen be multichannel”: “that you can choose which channel is best for you to carry out the different procedures. There will be some who prefer to do it via the web and others who opt for the app”, they expose.



www.eldiario.es