Essential values of the programme

Shared municipal knowledge. Municipal data, in its broadest sense, has a significant social dimension and provides the general public with past, present and future knowledge concerning the government, the city, society, the economy and the environment.

The strategic value of data. The council must manage data as a strategic value, with an innovative vision, in order to turn it into an intellectual asset for the organisation.

Geared towards results. Municipal data is also a means of ensuring the administration’s accountability and transparency, for managing services and investments and for maintaining and improving the performance of the economy, wealth and the general public’s well-being.

Data as a common asset. City residents and the common good have to be the central focus of the Municipality of Barcelona’s plans and technological platforms. Data is a source of wealth that empowers people who have access to it. Making it possible for city residents to control the data, minimising the digital gap and preventing discriminatory or unethical practices is the essence of municipal technological sovereignty.

Transparency and interoperability. Public institutions must be open, transparent and responsible towards the general public. Promoting openness and interoperability, subject to technical and legal requirements, increases the efficiency of operations, reduces costs, improves services, supports needs and increases public access to valuable municipal information. In this way, it also promotes public participation in government.

Reuse and open-source licences. Making municipal information accessible, usable by everyone by default, without having to ask for prior permission, and analysable by anyone who wishes to do so can foster entrepreneurship, social and digital innovation, jobs and excellence in scientific research, as well as improving the lives of Barcelona residents and making a significant contribution to the city’s stability and prosperity.

Quality and security. The city government must take firm steps to ensure and maximise the quality, objectivity, usefulness, integrity and security of municipal information before disclosing it, and maintain processes to effectuate requests for amendments to the publicly-available information.

Responsible organisation. Adding value to the data and turning it into an asset, with the aim of promoting accountability and citizens’ rights, requires new actions, new integrated procedures, so that the new platforms can grow in an organic, transparent and cross-departmental way. A comprehensive governance strategy makes it possible to promote this revision and avoid redundancies, increased costs, inefficiency and bad practices.

Care throughout the data’s life cycle. Paying attention to the management of municipal registers, from when they are created to when they are destroyed or preserved, is an essential part of data management and of promoting public responsibility. Being careful with the data throughout its life cycle combined with activities that ensure continued access to digital materials for as long as necessary, help with the analytic exploitation of the data, but also with the responsible protection of historic municipal government registers and safeguarding the economic and legal rights of the municipal government and the city’s residents.

Privacy “by design”. Protecting privacy is of maximum importance. The City Council has to consider and protect individual and collective privacy during the data life cycle, systematically and verifiably, as specified in the general regulation for data protection (Regulation 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council) with particular emphasis on informed consent, minimisation of information and limiting to purpose, in an explainable, safe way and in accordance with the law.

Security. Municipal information is a strategic asset subject to risks, and it has to be managed in such a way as to minimise those risks. This includes privacy, data protection, algorithmic discrimination and cybersecurity risks that must be specifically established, promoting ethical and responsible data architecture, techniques for improving privacy and evaluating the social effects. Although security and privacy are two separate, independent fields, they are closely related, and it is essential for the units to take a coordinated approach in order to identify and manage cybersecurity and risks to privacy with applicable requirements and standards.

Technological sovereignty. When new equipment, IT resources or support infrastructures and services are planned, budgeted or purchased, the subsequent contracting process and specifications must be in line with the priorities of the “Barcelona Digital City” plan. In order to comply with the technological sovereignty objective set out in the Agile Digital Transformation Strategy and the digital service standards, especially for preventing dependency on suppliers (vendor lock-in), the following guidelines, which expand on the technology and innovation principles governing the Municipal Institute of Information Technology (IMI) are as follows: interoperability, agility, ethics and the opening up of knowledge and technologies (for both software and data).

Open standards. It is obligatory for the City Council’s digital services to use open standards, and in particular the content of the catalogue of standards from the Technical Interoperability Standard (as implemented under Royal Decree 4/2010) or the internationally accepted open standards that update, replace or complement these standards. Where no approved open standard exists in the required format, a proposed format shall be submitted pursuant to the applicable regulations and the requirements of the IMI’s open standards.

Agile methodology. The technological projects that are implemented for the management, analysis and dissemination of council data must preferably be carried out in accordance with the methodology defined in the Technology Code of Practice, published in the corresponding Barcelona City Council government measure in October 2017.

Transparency: at all times, both the City Council and the city’s residents know why and for whom the data is being collected, and the applicable measures for guaranteeing its ethical use.

Tracing: at all times the City Council knows the origin of the data, its permitted uses and the applicable restrictions.

Diligence: collaborators and the providers of data-related services comply with the same principles and obligations as the City Council, and the City Council oversees this compliance.

Privacy: any use of personal data must comply with data-protection regulations, and in particular with the principles applicable to its treatment, including fairness, integrity and accuracy, purpose limitation and data minimisation.

Trust: data must always be used in accordance with the general public’s expectations, and the City Council must implement control and feedback systems to gauge this compliance.

Responsibility: The City Council assumes responsibility for all data uses that are undertaken.

Benefit: the data must always be used for the benefit of city residents and society.

Transparency: the right of city residents (including the staff of the City Council and related organisations) to be informed about automated decisions and their underlying algorithms.

Due process: the right of city residents to take action and initiate appeals relating to data processing and the automated decisions that affect them.

Accountability and proportionality: ensuring that automated decisions are fair and proportional, and that they do not prejudice city residents (in particular, that they are not discriminatory in any way).