Barcelona Metropolis

The health and social emergency triggered by the COVID-19 crisis has represented a major challenge for municipal government administration in Barcelona. L’experiència de la crisi a l’Ajuntament n’ha mostrat les debilitats, such as the public administration’s limited digital transformation, but also its strengths, such as the capacity to anticipate, the creation of collective and shared leaderships, and cooperation with other agents to achieve a common goal.

Local governments have become fundamental when it comes to mitigating the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic due to their proximity to the community’s needs and their knowledge of the territory (see “The territorial impact of COVID-19: Managing the crisis across levels of government ”, OECD, 2020). They have made a decisive contribution to reducing the spread of the virus, to guaranteeing essential public services taking socio-territorial differences and inequalities into account, and to planning and simultaneously rolling out recovery measures that are better adapted to the reality of each municipality. This task has often been carried out silently, always behind the leading role played by the central government and the autonomous communities.

The Spanish State had a delayed response, once community transmission was detected in Italy, as it was in the rest of Europe and the European Union itself. In this context, Barcelona City Council responded in an agile manner and even in advance. Barcelona’s municipal response began on 26 February, when the City Council created the Coordination and Monitoring Committee for the COVID-19 Contingency Plan. The Mayor’s Decree, on 11 March, which set the preparation of contingency plans in motion, was approved two days before the Royal Decree declaring the state of emergency. Among the urgent measures taken, mention must be made of the assembly of Medical Pavilions [field hospitals]: on Wednesday 25 March the team was created to bring this goal to fruition and on 29 Sunday the first field hospital adjacent to the Vall d’Hebron hospital was officially opened, equipped and operational.

Barcelona City Council announced a total of 176 actions during the first wave of the pandemic, until the end of July 2020. While health services grabbed social and media attention, Barcelona City Council had to undertake measures in the following areas in particular: social services (23% of actions); education, culture and sport (19%); and the economy, trade and tourism (19%). The primary goal was to mitigate the spread of contagion, but also to help the groups and sectors most affected by the pandemic’s control measures. To fulfil these objectives, new public services had to be rearranged and generated, guaranteeing the safety of the municipal workers themselves and of the collaborating companies and entities.

The emergency has meant a great challenge for municipal government administration. It has shown its weaknesses, such as the public administration’s limited digital transformation, but also its strengths, linked to proximity and the capacity to anticipate.

What are the characteristics of complex emergencies? Firstly, they are more unpredictable and their causes lie in the context of global phenomena, so without good multi-level governance, they are very difficult to control. In addition, as their effects are differential according to the territory, they also call for proximity-based management.

Secondly, they are characterised as such because of the prolonged nature of the persistence of danger, the management of the emergency and the recovery. The first sprint-like response (swift and effective action to control risk) moves onto a marathon with different stages. To tackle them, not only must emergency services be set in motion, but risk mitigation actions must be combined simultaneously with compensatory and transformative actions involving other knowledge and services.

Thirdly, mitigation measures in such emergencies (e.g. the lockdown) call for social acceptance, as they bear negative effects for other areas (e.g. economic activity or mental health). That means that good communication and risk management are key.

Finally, due to the extension in time, the inability to provide clear responses and their direct and indirect repercussions, complex emergencies bear a destabilising effect on societies, although they also carry a transformative potential.

Barcelona City Council, like the other authorities, was not prepared to deal with an emergency like the one we have experienced. But COVID-19 has forced it to adapt to an exceptional situation. Adaptability is fundamental in a crisis like this one, and calls for organisational adaptation to the new situation without crumbling, ensuring the City Council’s basic functions are upheld and new demands are addressed at the same time. Four major areas can be distinguished under adaptability: regulation, decision-making, leadership and institutional capacity.

The decentralisation of contingency plans

The existence of a professional leadership and managerial structure, accustomed to the tasks of governance, coordination and management of human and material resources, also explains the institutional capacity to deal with this type of emergency. Much of the organisational stress has also focused on this managerial structure.

The implementation of contingency plans in a decentralised manner in the realm of management, entities and districts has facilitated rapid planning, adapting them to each area specifically. But a more in-depth appraisal is needed on how to improve this mechanism for future complex emergencies, determining what has proven useful and what has not in these contingency plans. The services declared essential also need to be revised, regardless of whether they operate face to face or online.

A driver for innovation

We can say that the coronavirus crisis has both generated and accelerated innovations within the municipal organisation and its policies. The crisis has represented a window of opportunity both to promote internal management changes and to set new social, educational, health, economic and urban policies in motion.

The innovations introduced or enhanced during the COVID-19 crisis at Barcelona City Council, rather than consisting of merely adapting to an exceptional situation, reinforce many of the desirable characteristics in a government administration: agility, responsiveness, shared and collective leadership, the leveraging of the skills of municipal staff beyond their positions, cooperation with other agents to achieve a common goal, more oriented towards results than towards adherence to procedures, and the capacity to experiment with and scale new solutions.

We must continue working to institutionalise many of the lessons learned and innovations tested during the COVID-19 crisis so that Barcelona City Council becomes a more resilient organisation when faced with complex emergencies in the future.
 

Note
The content of this article was drawn up on the basis of the finding of the study “La governança de l’emergència complexa de la covid-19: actuacions, adaptació organitzativa i innovacions de l’Ajuntament de Barcelona” [Management of the Complex Emergency of COVID-19, Organisational Adaptation and Innovations at Barcelona City Council].