Interview with Miguel A. Amutio

Miguel A. Amutio, Deputy Head of Unit of Coordination of ICT Units, Secretariat General for Digital Administration, Spain

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Miguel A. Amutio studied at La Salle School of Deusto and graduated in Computer Science at Deusto University (Bilbao) in 1988. CISA, CISM, CRISC. Currently he is Deputy Head of Unit of Coordination of ICT Units at the General Secretariat for Digital Administration.

He coordinates the development of the National Security Framework and of the National Interoperability Framework of Spain and their Technical Regulations, together with the supporting documents. He is member of the Committee of the ISA² Programme and previously of the committees of Programmes ISA, IDABC, and IDA II; also member of the eGovernment Action Plan Steering Group and of the European Multi-Stakeholder Platform on ICT Standardization (MSP-ICT). Writer and speaker at various media, conferences and courses. More information here.

What are the interoperability needs in Spain?

Providing digital public services in Spain happens in a very complex scenario full of diversity due to the multiple actors involved, their competences and the interactions amongst them. Some time ago, we understood in Spain that the cooperation amongst public administrations, essential to provide better quality services to citizens, and in a more efficient, effective and transparent way, required interoperability. Interoperability eases the realization of principles and the rights of citizens; and the cooperation in the development means the delivery of better public services. Indeed, the interoperability has become one of the principles included in the Law 40/2015 on Public Legal System.

As reaction to that need, we initiated the National Interoperability Framework, as foreseen on the Law 40/2015 and implemented through the Royal Decree 4/2010, in whose elaboration all public administrations took part. The document enshrines interoperability globally, from technical rules to tools for interoperability, also covering infrastructures and common services, reuse, recovery and  preservation  of  electronic documents, and electronic signature. In its elaboration and development, we always took the first version of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) in high consideration, and every action was designed in alignment with the European model.

How has the implementation of the EIF process been in Spain? What were the challenges you faced?

The implementation of interoperability in Spain is the result of the collective and multidisciplinary effort based on three main pillars. The first one is the development of an exhaustive legal framework which provides legal certainty and that boosts the modernisation of public administrations at global level. It includes the National Interoperability Framework and its technical regulations on interoperability, together with the supporting documents. The second one is the cooperation amongst the central, regional, local (through their association of Spanish local entities, the FEMP) public administrations and public universities (through their association, the CRUE), by means of the Sectorial Commission of Electronic Administration. And the third one is the development of common and shared services, together with the monitoring provided by the dashboard, called DATAOBSAE from the Observatory of Electronic Administration. All these questions and many more are covered by the NIFO (National Interoperability Framework Observatory) factsheet for Spain. The EIF has been the reference to structure and develop the multiple variables and elements of interoperability.

What is the role of NIFO in the implementation of the EIF in Spain?

The monitoring performed by NIFO together with its analytical model provided by the NIFO team proved very efficient at identifying and evaluating the efforts and actions needed regarding interoperability.

What are the biggest challenges of NIFO in Spain regarding the level of interoperability reached?

The recent eGovernment factsheet on Spain, dated from spring 2018, highlights that theoretically, the alignment between governance, principles and interoperability agreements in Spain reaches the 100%, and almost total alignment regarding the conceptual model and interoperability dimensions. Regarding the implementation and monitoring, there are several examples of practical application of both included in the factsheet. On the other hand, the study “State of Play of Interoperability in Europe – Report 2016”   stated that, amongst 26 analysed countries, Spain scores the third in the ranking of alignment with the European Interoperability Framework with a 97%. Regarding the monitoring, Spain scores second back to back with Denmark (88%) amongst 22 analysed countries.

What are the next challenges? What are you currently working on?

After the initial effort, the focus has been transferred to the practical implementation, for which there is a need to adequate ourselves to the real demands and current experience and forecasts.

The progress made in the legal layer, settling the bases for interoperability, allows a large scale expansion of services, particularly those advanced services to the citizens, as the "Citizen Folder", to ensure better administrative interaction.

We must maintain the dynamics of cooperation, which together with co-responsibility, is essential; Interoperability would hardly have been possible without the cooperation of public administrations..

This model of cooperation has also given rise to forums in which public and private agents participate together with representatives of citizens. These forums, for public-private cooperation, as they bring together the public sector, companies and associations, play an important role to achieve more innovation, transparency and participation of all stakeholders. Thus, open to the participation of society, they play an important role to allow the joint participation of public and private entities in key issues for the digital transformation of the administration. They have a broad impact on the launch and consolidation of the services developed in the fields of electronic invoicing, a recognized international reference, electronic document (back-end automation) and Citizen Folder (automation of relations with citizens and companies, from the front -end).

Thirdly, going on with the development of common and shared digital services, and more and more sophisticated and always interoperable, aggregated as bricks, as we have been doing with the exchange of files and folders in the cloud, the general entry point of invoices, citizen folder, the once entry point for the electronic notifications or the data intermediation platform, a key instrument to the implementation of the once only principle

In any case, we work for a Digital Administration, with the maximum degree of automation and proactivity that is possible.

We will also follow closely the actions under the ISA² Programme, the building blocks promoted by CEF Telecom, together with other actions, as the European Catalogue of IT Standards for procurement.

In relation to the alignment with the new version of the European Interoperability Framework, Spain participates in a pilot action about the questionnaire and monitoring; and, on the other hand, we have done an exhaustive analysis regarding the alignment that allows detailed knowledge of the situation and the features that require actions from our side.

As a conclusion, we fully believe that interoperability contributes to a fully digital administration, with digital public services available to citizens at any place and moment, without constraints or limits, ensuring the once only principle that prevents them from providing the same information once and again, and offering digital public services globally.