What is the National Plan Smart Cities?

If in a previous post we answered the question What is a Smart City?, today we focus on the Spanish Smart Cities National Plan, a proposal from the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism to promote technological industries, within the Smart Cities in our local territory, and to help local authorities in the process of developing Smart City.

In Spain we have 80% of the population living in cities, and much of those citizens already related to each other through technology, creating new services aimed to improve their quality of life. Within this digital framework, the technological revolution has reached the cities, encouraging the creation of Smart Cities.

The government is committed to a strategy that encompasses this network of 60 smart cities in Spain promoting the industry and the national economy through a Digital Agenda for Spain.

The National Smart Cities Plan creates and offers a more friendly and attractive urban spaces to citizens, where there is room for innovation and public participation. As a cornerstone of the concept of Smart City, the plan focuses much of its resources on the environment, the efficient management of energy, reducing emissions, intelligent consumption of water or sustainable waste management. Urban mobility and better traffic management is another key point in the Smart City concept.

The main structure of the National Plan Smart Cities revolves around four distinctive points:

Point I - Facilitate the transformation process to the cities towards the Smart City
Objective: To boost demand by facilitating municipalities the transformation process into Smart cities, by means of aids to the development and specialization of them. Standardization, interoperability, reuse and monitoring of the most important initiatives will be promoted.

Part II - Projects that demonstrate the efficiency of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) in cost reduction, improvement of citizen satisfaction and the creation of new business models.
Objective: To facilitate the development of projects that demonstrate the efficiency of ICT in reducing costs, improving citizen satisfaction and creating new business models through financial aid, support measurements and funding public-private cooperation and the promotion of innovative public spending.

Part III - Development and growth of the ICT industry
Objective: development and growth of the ICT industry, with activities to promote new technological solutions that contribute to the development of Smart Cities and promote their internationalization.

Part IV - Communication and broadcast of the National Plan of Intelligent Cities
Objective: communication and broadcast plan to ensure understanding, guide the development of smart cities through participatory processes and communicate the opportunity to guide the process of building new cities from open, interoperable and reusable solutions.

The last objective of the National Plan of Smart Cities is to contribute to economic development, "maximizing the impact of public policies on ICTs to improve productivity and competitiveness; to transform and modernize the economy and Spanish society through effective and intensive use of ICT by citizens, businesses and administrations, "according to the Digital Agenda for Spain.

And for that the National Plan of Smart Cities is focused on achieving the following objectives:

• -Increase the contribution of ICT to the industrial sector GDP.


• - Improve the effectiveness and efficiency of local authorities in providing public services through the use of ICT.


• - To advance in the governance system of Smart Cities.


• - To promote the standardization, regulation and legislation of Intelligent Cities.

Source: http://www.agendadigital.gob.es/