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Open document management system in the city of Sant Feliu de Llobregat for better public service delivery

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Spain

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Central & local administrationDigitalisatione-GovernmentGovernance

Organisation name City of Sant Feliu de Llobregat

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Contact person: Manuel González Maya

ajuntament@santfeliu.cat

The City Council of Sant Feliu de Llobregat has a long history in the development of a digital public administration. With various actions, the City Council wants to adapt to the new technological environment as well as transform its management model and the way it relates to citizens.

The new model entered into force with the adoption of the City Council’s Digital Transformation Strategy in 2018, and the Comprehensive Open Government Strategy in 2019. Both strategies are in full alignment with the European Commission’s policies and strategy focusing on generating value for the economy and society through the reuse of public sector information (PSI). A key element to advance in this is the Information and Document Management System (DMS), which is considered by the City Council as a basic infrastructure for the digitisation of the administration and the development of open government.

The DMS, named GDMatrix, is a modular document management system that provides an integrated set of services and applications designed to capture, manage, store, preserve, deliver and dispose of documents across the administration. This tool works as a large container of public sector information (PSI) where the rest of the applications and platforms are integrated, enabling the automation of the data at the source, and a fast and easy exploitation of the information.

GDMatrix facilitates the interconnection with other components of the city’s electronic administration system, enabling the connection of back office to front office and making possible the automatic publication of the information and easy access to data by other applications. It also provides a fail-safe environment for the correct treatment and safeguarding of all documents until they are securely transferred to the electronic archive of the Catalan Public Administrations.

Therefore, the DMS becomes an essential element for enhancing transparency and accountability, as well as a guarantee of control that citizens can exercise over the Administration and its documentary heritage. In addition, it enables the digital transformation of public administration (PA) and the streamlining of administrative procedures. This solution has become a key factor in facing the new challenges posed by the economic and social crisis generated by the coronavirus pandemic. It allowed the city administration to continue working and teleworking, and providing its digital services to the citizens and business community.

The main development of the software is financed by the City Council. The sustainability in the medium to long term is guaranteed thorough aspects such as the number of municipalities that use GDMatrix, which economic contribution would be enough for the development of new functionalities. Furthermore, the interests of these municipalities are aligned with those of Sant Feliu City Council.

The governance structure and principles are being defined in accordance with the usual guidelines for open-source projects, with formalisation of relationships between institutions and

transparency in terms of technical and organisational participation, as well as the management of legal aspects. The creation of an open-source community enables the strengthening of  collaboration between administrations, ICT companies and with all those third parties who voluntarily want to collaborate and participate in the project.

GDMatrix has shown great potential to be successfully incorporated into public sector organisations, but also other types of organisations that are required to manage a large volume of information. More specifically:

  1. It has been developed to establish a comprehensive document management model in accordance with internationally accepted quality standards such as ISO regulations, allowing easy exploitation of data and making corporate information profitable.
  2. It is licensed as free software under the conditions established in the EUPL v.1.1 licence, free of charge, and it is available in GitHub.
  3. It consists of the tools necessary to be able to perform the function of document manager, which can be adapted to the requirements that other potential users may have:
    • a corporate and comprehensive classification table;
    • a description model and basic and complementary metadata (GDMatrix dictionary);
    • a catalogue of electronic document formats, and a catalogue of documentary typologies;
    • a security and access policy, a document disposal policy and a secure digitisation model;
    • a policy for the preservation and obsolescence of electronic documents and files.
  1. It has been designed to be easily integrated with other systems with a modular structure that allows easy interoperability with other applications and platforms, and under the umbrella of a multiproducer and multiconsumer philosophy.

To support a wider implementation of the GDMatrix in other organisations, the City Council participates actively in events such as exchange and dissemination knowledge platforms, as well as in more specific working sessions, advising administrations that are interested in the software.

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