The Generalitat, Catalonia's regional government, plans to extend its programme to reduce administrative burdens to more than 210 public procedures and services during its current term. Residents, patients, teachers, farmers and businesses are expected to face fewer forms and shorter processes in services that are being redesigned.

The government says the first phase of its CaTgirem administrative reform has already redesigned 170 procedures and saved citizens and businesses more than six million hours a year. It plans to add 40 further procedures by the second half of 2028, with a total investment of €11.3 million.

According to the Generalitat, the programme has introduced about 350 improvements after 2,000 user interviews and an analysis of 20,000 public queries and complaints.

Patients can now provide informed consent for medical procedures through La Meva Salut, the Catalan public health platform, rather than attending hospital in person. The Generalitat says the service has avoided more than 6,000 face-to-face hospital visits.

The reforms also aim to reduce repeated requests for documents already held by public bodies. The government says automated data checks avoided the submission of more than 80 million documents in the previous year.

  • Nearly 1,800 PDF forms have been replaced with HTML web pages, about 90% of the forms covered.
  • The Generalitat plans to introduce 38 artificial-intelligence systems progressively to classify information, pre-set categories and automate tasks.
  • Procedures being redesigned cover health, education, business, agriculture and justice.

People using affected services can check the Generalitat's simplification of procedures page for information on the administrative reform. Patients needing to give medical consent should use La Meva Salut.

Further education and agriculture changes planned

The next group of procedures includes education-related services. The source material states that teachers can use the Bolsa de docentes app to accept or decline substitute posts in real time during working hours, while Catalan language-proficiency certificates can be downloaded digitally.

In agriculture, visual tools and mapping systems due to launch in September are intended to help farmers identify land-use changes. The government expects approval waiting times in that area to fall from 5.5 months to 2.5 months.

Primary sources: eb.gencat.cat. Reported by russpain.com, cronicaglobal.elespanol.com, elpais.com, Àngels Piñol.