CARD4ALL

The CARD4ALL project is a transfer network focused on the implementation of services and technologies through a citizen card system. The development of digital tools allows to improve the relation between citizens and cities, enabling interaction and access to services, whilst services provision become more efficient and optimised. Additionally, can also be used as a tool to promote social inclusion policies, sustainable mobility and quality of living, fomenting the construction of a smart city, collecting and correlation of data to a continuous improvement of its services.

The City of Aveiro is one of the Card4all project members, co-funded by ERDF, under the transfer networks for knowledge of urban polices – URBACT. The transfer networks are part of the URBACT, the biggest European programme for territorial cooperation, focusing cities and sustainable urban development. Each network encompasses an URBACT good practice city and other European cities, with whom it shares and supports the application of its good practice. The programme seeks to promote and transfer knowledge and experiences between member states, exploring conditions, requisites and methodologies to a success implementation in the local context.

In this project, the municipality is part of a group work led by Gijon (Spain), alongside with Suceava (Romania), Jurmala (Leetonia), Sassari (Italy) and Clermont-Ferrand (France). The network is commuted in the adoption of the best practices, sharing characteristics with the other middle size cites in the work group. By participating in Card4All these cities have the opportunity to develop their digital strategy, increase transparency regarding information to and from the citizens, promote healthier habits, socialisation and social inclusion and facilitate citizens’ engagement in relevant city issues.

Each network offers a maximum budget of 600.000€. The City of Aveiro presents a budget of 72.895€.

Good practice of Gijon

The Card4All project is based in Gijon’s Citizen Card, with its 17th anniversary celebrated in 2019. During this period, the card has allowed local citizens to access to a wide variety of public services, stimulating its modernization and engaging citizens and city’s services.

The Citizen Card was implemented in Gijon as a tool to integrate different services and it is an extremely useful resource for local residents and visitors. Since the beginning, the objectives of this card are: offer good quality services to citizens, merge in just one card all the municipal interactions, improve current services and add new functionalities. Today, is an essential tool to the quality of the smart life of Gijon. Citizens, companies and tourists of Gijon can have access to municipal services, reducing bureaucracy, saving time, promoting social inclusion, sustainability growth and mobility. The card is personal and untransferable, replacing all the other identification systems, such as, library card, transports card and other municipal services. Merging all the local services in one card means saving time and moving towards an efficient simplification. Bearing in mind all the improvements already in place and considering those who can be implemented in the future, the Citizen Card is an essential mechanism to promote proximity between citizens and public services managed by the City of Gijon, being nowadays a differentiation symbol of the city.

 



Challenges and benefits

One of the biggest challenges is the adoption and adaptation of Gijon’s Citizen Card good practices process in the other cities, since the reality and expectations from the other partners of the network varies. In this way, transfer methods are flexible and open in order to allow the transferability of good practices and the identification of risks. Another challenge is the complexity of public institutions and its strucutures to enable a continous evolution of the system throughout the years.

Each system will be different from city to city and services’ catalogue is tailored according to each partner’s needs, depending on the technological infrastructre adoped and the current and future interoperability possibilities between local entities. Nevertheless, all the participants share the same common objectives:

- Integration of various public services in a single system/card, replacing all the existing cards;

- Promote proximity between citizens/companies and pubic services through a faster and intutitive interaction;

- Improve citizens’ quality of living by easing up the resolution of administrative processes;

- Reduce costs and improve efficiency of administrative processes;

- Enable the implementation of novel policies and standardise services’ interaction with all citizens

- Sense of belonging and identification with the local community by sharing a common object.

Following the latest investments and efforts in the implementation of a digital and technological transformation, the City of Aveiro whishes to continue its commitment by developing the project Card4All as a starting point to implement a single access point to a veriety of municipal public services, and in further stages, the possibility to include services from private and public providers.

 

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