UPDATE: Project details updated during the EPSA 2025-26 edition. Awarded Special Recognition for continuous improvement and long-term sustainability.
The reality of digital administrative management services that are provided in the public sector (the axis of the relationship of citizen–administration and the internal functioning of the administration itself) is that there are a number of strategies. These involve many projects with consequent investments and if successful, they produce medium-term effects of technological captivity and suffer from little possibility of integration with external platforms (public or private).
SEDIPUALB@ arose as a result of a digital transformation plan of the Provincial Council of Albacete and its municipalities. The question was asked, if the regulations are the same for all public administrations, why can there not be single management system for all – public, integrated with the services of the central administration? It would have open interfaces so that any public or private platform can interact with it and be led by people from the technical field without political limitations or impositions. Thus, the objective of the project is the generation of a common platform, which allows the advantage of synergies and economies of scale in the digital transformation of local administrations.
The Diputación de Albacete began around 2014 with the creation of a public platform to allow a fully digital administrative management, integrated with the services provided by the central state (building blocks). The platform – SEDIPUALB@ was envisaged to be public, integrated, open and focused on providing quality services to citizens, respecting regulatory compliance. By mid-2016, SEDIPUALB@ was already implanted in all the city councils of the province of Albacete – the only province in Spain to generate these kind of services at that time.
At the beginning of 2017, due to the success of the project and the need to generate economies of scale and homogeneity in the provision of digital services to citizens, the Spanish central authorities suggested the possibility of extrapolating the project to any public entity that wanted to use it. During 2017, a governance and sustainability model was developed for the project and made the platform available to any public entity that requests it (using the State Technological Transfer Centre).
Developments
The project has established itself as the largest public management platform in Spain, used by more than a thousand public administrations in all Spanish territories.
The governance model already anticipated its potential growth, as has occurred, both in terms of its use and the funding required, as it established a model based on the use of the platform (number of users) and the storage required by each entity.
Additionally, due to the high economies of scale that have been achieved, the personnel assigned to the project have only increased by three people, despite the fact that its utilisation has increased by more than 300%.
Another relevant fact has been that technological advances allow more economical and higher performance resources (processing and storage), which also enables the development and reuse of the project.
Long-term impact
The project’s impact is significant, with an impact and level of use far greater than at the experiencing at the outset.
More than 35 000 public employees from all regions of Spain use these services daily, and more than 15 million citizens are affected by their management. Every month new public administrations make requests, wanting to join the project. To accommodate this, a recurring investment process has been implemented to improve the technological infrastructure, given the growth being experienced.
With the arrival of artificial intelligence, the development and management process has been adapted to be much more efficient and agile, giving a greater capacity for growth as an organisation and as a project.
Adjustment in the objectives
This project has become a symbol of this organisation as it highlights the capacity for innovation and technological creation of a (small) public administration, with an extraordinary impact on the country’s technology market. Additionally, it constitutes an alternative that protects from the technological lock-in that can be generated through excessive dependence on the private sector.
The concept of sovereignty, with respect to the technology and information managed by public administrations, is a very important strategic problem; moreover, with the implementation of artificial intelligence, the need for the public sector to have secure frameworks for its own information and technology is becoming evident.