City of Madrid: leveraging technology to provide better services for citizens

The City of Madrid is currently undergoing a digital transformation process aimed at modernizing its workplace and services. This has been made possible by the introduction of cloud-based solutions for remote working, internal communications and phone-based services, which are allowing its employees to continue operations while working remotely.

“COVID-19 has triggered a shift in mentality with regards to technology, undoubtedly emphasizing the value of digital transformation. And this is something the City of Madrid is fully embracing – through its citizens, employees and enterprises who have really understood the importance of technology.”

Fernando de Pablo Martin, Director General of Digital Office at the City of Madrid, is talking about the cultural change that the capital and its inhabitants have experienced over the past year.

Much like the rest of Spain, the city was heavily impacted by the pandemic, which forced most of its 3.3 million residents to remote working. But unlike many cities, the administration was well equipped for the challenge.

Long before COVID-19 started spreading in Europe, the capital’s administrative office kicked off a process of digital transformation that proved crucial in keeping services going during lockdowns.

The process, which saw the City migrate to the Azure cloud and roll out a host of solutions, was completed last year – at a time when Madrid needed it the most. This has allowed the 27,000 civil servants who work for the administration office to carry out essential work while from remote, paving the way for more digital transformation within the City.

“We were able to change our working culture in the space of just two weeks,” he says. “This is something that previously would have taken us one or two years, but thanks to the strong sense of solidarity that our civil servants showed and the help of technology partners, we were able to accelerate and implement right away.”

Modernizing ‘little country’ Madrid

Stretching over 604.3 km² in the heart of Spain, Madrid is the country’s beating heart, a center of culture, entrepreneurship and history that is home to 3.3 million people – reaching an excess of 6 million when counting the communities located in the city’s metropolitan area.

“From a technological point of view, I like to think of Spain as a little Europe – since it’s a very decentralized country – and Madrid as a little country”, says Fernando de Pablo Martin. “Our highly decentralized government means that the City and its 27,000 employees are responsible for a variety of areas such as security, citizen attendance, social services, economy development, mobility, employment, urbanism, tourism, culture and sports.”

Over the past three years, the city’s administration has been working to digitalize its services and modernize its workplaces as part of the mayor’s wider plan for urban economic recovery.

This has culminated with the migration to the cloud and the introduction of tools such as M365, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft’s voice solution in order to make work more efficient.

“The past few years have seen a strategic push to optimize and unify our approach to IT across the administration,” he says. “We realized that this was the future of working, but we didn’t have the resources to make it happen.

“That’s why we went to Microsoft, who helped us to modernize our workplace while we simultaneously worked on other large projects, including the digitalization of both our communications systems and other services, from taxes to human resources.”

COVID-19 and the Business Voice

Madrid’s administrative office was already a year into its workplace modernization project when COVID-19 hit, though it wasn’t until then that The City truly saw the benefits of its initiative, as well as greater adoption rates among its employees.

“We had already digitalized a lot of our services, but we could see that usage remained low,” says Fernando de Pablo Martin. “The pandemic was a real catalyst in these regards, as it forced our employees to change their working habits and adapt to a more home-based reality.”

With the transformation journey well underway, the City found itself extremely well positioned to tackle the wave of disruption caused by COVID-19. And in the space of just a few weeks, had made sure that all its critical employees had access to Teams and M365, OneDrive for Business and more.

At the same time, they also realized the importance of transferring their communications system to virtual lines to allow employees to operate phone services while at home. This led to a landmark project to adopt Microsoft 365 E5 Business Voice, a cloud-based solution that integrates into M365. Provided by Microsoft and a local telecommunications partner, the technology allows users to make and receive calls from a single app, Microsoft Teams.

“Almost all of our employees are now using the Business Voice tool, and this is triggering a much-needed cultural change within the organization,” he says. “That’s because they were used to having their telephone available in the office and now, they have all the information on Teams.

“And this really shows how critical our initial decision to become cloud-based was, as it helped us carry out our normal administrative work with new tools and from anywhere.”

Training the city workforce to operate remotely

As they proceed with the rollout of Microsoft 365 E5 Business Voice, the City of Madrid has launched a parallel set of training courses to help its employees use all their new tools with confidence.

“Internal data shows that before COVID-19, only 4% of people in Madrid had the capacity to work from home efficiently,” says de Pablo Martin. “But the crisis has represented an opportunity for us to train our people for remote working and use Microsoft solutions proficiently.”

The city had already organized some training sessions on how to use Teams prior to the pandemic. But things quickly escalated at the peak of the crisis when more solutions – including Voice – were introduced.

“We’ve now created a program that allows different areas of the city to receive the appropriate training on all M365 tools,” he continues. “That’s because we want people to be aware of the possibilities that these provide.”

The program is expected to take two years to complete, although de Pablo Martin is sure that by that time, there will be plenty more Microsoft technologies that will need to be taught.

“Whatever we will introduce in the future - whether it’s data analytics tools or solutions that help us better cooperate with the rest of Europe – we're determined to maintain a continuous training process to ensure that we’re on top of our technologies,” he adds.

Next steps

The pandemic has played a crucial role in the City of Madrid’s digital transformation journey, but as de Pablo Martin reiterates, this was merely the starting point.

“We’ve seen COVID-19 accelerate our adoption of technology but also exacerbate a digital divide issue in the city that we, as an administration, have to help to address,” he says.

“This means making sure that everyone is properly equipped to work remotely, as well as leveraging more technology to provide services that our civil servants and citizens can use without hassle.”

During his more than 30 years of experience working across different government and public sector organizations, de Pablo Martin has been witnessing first-hand how the internet revolution has revolutionized his field in the last decade. And he knows that this will need to continue in the years to come.

“I see the future of our administration revolve around four things: strengthening our digital identity, bolstering cybersecurity and trust, giving internet and phone access to all, and promoting the exchange of data across government organizations in an interoperable way”, he concludes. “This would give citizens the opportunity to really benefit from our services digitally and be better prepared for whatever lies ahead.”