The future is digital, including in public administration. And in this transformation process, Spain is very well placed as one of the countries that is best developing electronic services - understood as the transition from physical to online administrative bureaucracy- to genuine  digital government, in which the user experience – accessible, intuitive, proactive and useful – is key in the design and implementation of communication tools between public authorities and citizens.

According to the first edition of the Digital Government Index 2020, drawn up by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Spain is ranked in 7th position in terms of the best digital government from among the 33 countries analysed (most are members of the OECD, together with Uruguay, Brazil, Panama and Argentina). 

With a score of 0.621 out of 1, Spain is ranked above the OECD average of 0.501, and particularly stands out in three of the categories the study focuses on: digital by design – the creation of new communication channels and new bottom-up procedures that are more local, simpler and more efficient; a data-driven public sector – the use of data to improve the planning, monitoring and management of services; and proactivity, understood as the ability of governments and public authorities to anticipate citizen needs and respond to them swiftly and flexibly. Spain is ranked in fourth position in these three areas.

In turn, it has managed to place itself as the eighth–ranked OECD country in the category of government as a platform and 12th-ranked in user-driven services. The former relates to the capacity to rely on clear and transparent guides, tools, data and software that permit the user to undertake the process in an intuitive and simple way. As regards user-driven services, this rates how far the public authorities place the user and their needs as the central figure, thus adapting their services, process and policies, rather than the reverse.

The lowest score – in 23rd position , below the OECD average – was obtained in the category of open by default, in other words, make publicly available, within due limits, information on policy-making processes and algorithms of their digital services.

Nonetheless, Spain’s buoyant figures are recorded in a global context of the slow development of the digitalisation of governments. According to the OECD, the results of this first Digital Government Index – relating to 2019 – are “promising, but modest”, since just a few countries are truly developing towards mature digital governments.

South Korea is the country that has most developed the implementation of digital government, followed by the United Kingdom, in second place, and Colombia, in third place. The top 10 is completed by Denmark, Japan, Canada, Spain, Israel, Portugal and France.

It is not only the OECD that very positively rates Spain in electronic government. According to the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), published by the European Commission, our country stands in second place in the European Union with the best digital public services. This is a rise of two places on the previous year in the category under study, which analyses the evolution of e-government, open data and digital services of the public authorities for citizens and companies.

The privileged position that Spain holds in digital public services is down, to a large extent, to its sound communications infrastructures and the high degree of penetration of the Internet in Spanish society. In the global ranking of the DESI report, Spain holds 11th position from among the 28 EU Member States in 2019, ahead of Germany, France and Italy. It has also improved its score in most indicators of the five dimensions included in the analysis, standing out once more in the extensive rollout of fibre to the home (FTTH), at 80%.