Five action points to make Catalonia an international ‘smart region’ benchmark

Action areas of smartCAT strategy

The Catalan Government has officially presented “Smart Strategy of Catalonia” (smartCAT), the recently approved strategy to extend the smart city concept to a level the European Commission calls smart region and to roll out a programme to include and coordinate local and supralocal initiatives, offer support to businesses and promote ‘smart’ initiatives on a countrywide basis. The smartCAT presentation was held at the Barcelona Gran Via Trade Fair during the Smart City Expo World Congress.

The smartCAT strategy is designed to make Catalonia an international smart region benchmark, taking advantage of digital technology and information to encourage innovation in public services, foster economic growth and promote a more intelligent, sustainable and integrative society. With this strategy the Government aims to improve the services provided for citizens, thanks to the more efficient use of resources and a more intelligent performance by handling the maximum amount of available information in real time.

Action areas

Smart City. Collaboration between the Administration and the private sector will be fostered to promote the roll-out of smart city projects in Catalonia. Within this area, route maps will be established for smaller town councils and the exchange of local initiative experiences and data and service sharing will be promoted.

Smart Land. Collaboration will be fostered between agents to provide Catalonia with a technological environment that favours the roll-out of the smart region: telecommunications networks, data processing centres, supercomputing services, etc. The aim is to roll out smart initiatives within the Generalitat’s areas of competence in the territory and in supralocal programmes.

Smart Economy. In order to strengthen the competitiveness of the sectors in which Catalonia wishes to focus its industrial growth, emphasis will be placed on developing sectorial actions and promoting business opportunities in the areas of tourism, commerce, education, health and social services. A commitment will also be made to the emerging Big Data technology sector to encourage a new data industry.

Smart Government. The Open Government strategy will be stepped up with bidirectional communications channels between the administration and citizens and transparency and participation portals, as well as making it easier to access public information through open data.

Smart Citizen. To develop an intelligent territory, we need “intelligent” citizens capable of deciding what kind of city, territory and country they want. To this end the Government will roll out digital training and involvement and participation initiatives to motivate citizens to participate in decision-taking and improving public services and to cooperate in information collection through “citizen sensor” projects.

Source: Gencat.cat