Principles for designing and developing digital services

Every new digital service must follow the City Council’s Digital Services Standards and the Responsible Data Management Strategy.

Barcelona City Council’s digital services are focused on covering users’ needs. All systems and services are ultimately at the service of the citizens and have to bring utility and added value to their experience.

Projects have to show clarity in the objectives they aim to achieve, in the impact of these objectives and in how they are integrated into the City Council’s strategic plans. It is not sufficient for a project to be consistent internally and well developed; it must explain how the digital service will meet the specific needs of the City Council and the citizens.

Every new service must begin with a strategic analysis of the options, to determine whether it has to be built within the municipal organisation, by external providers or by a mixed team involving both. Similarly, it must establish the development method to be used (by default, Agile), as will whether free software will be created, used or reused. Part of this process requires looking at the implications in choosing technologies and methodologies as regards the management and training of the City Council’s internal and external staff.

The services to be developed will be designed by applying the principles of clarity and simplicity in their use and architecture. The aim will be to unify the various versions of applications used within the organisation and to avoid the proliferation of different versions. Transversal solutions to be used across the organisation will prevail over vertical (sectoral) solutions.

All of the IMI’s technological projects will by default use Agile development methodologies, centred on users, , putting the focus on continuous innovation in accordance with the principles of the Agile Manifesto. Projects will be developed using iterative and incremental processes, testing hypotheses and creating prototypes, and using analytical and experimental methods. Projects will use the City Council’s Agile methodology, Scrum@IMI.

Projects will reuse existing shared digital components and services wherever possible and, where these do not exist or can be improved, contribute to their creation or development, before considering creating parallel alternatives. This permits costs to be reduced and brings consistency to the users’ experience and to service maintenance.

New digital services must demonstrate how the components and technology needed to provide them will be vertically integrated. Systems must be designed taking into account all aspects from user experience to the implications for the system’s architecture and its maintenance. This will require collaboration between teams in various departments and specialities.

Services will follow the corporate classification of information (Service Catalogue) and operate following ITIL best practices. New digital services must maintain high quality documentation, including guides and manuals made available to the public so that they can be accessible to all stakeholders, both internal and external (such as providers), so that they may contribute to the documentation process. Documents will be kept in a centralised platform in standard formats, with version and authoring control.

Whenever possible, the City Council’s new digital services will avoid traditional client-server architectures, giving preference to web solutions that comply with W3C standards, as these offer more flexibility, interoperability and independence over the machinery and operating systems they run on. Every new project must contribute to the phasing out of obsolete services, to reduce the number of services and technologies in use. Where appropriate, development projects for the services will use application programming interfaces (APIs) which will be correctly documented.

Digital services will be conceived from their initial stage in both Catalan and Spanish and will be accessible for all users, both internal users and citizens, in accordance with the linguistic and accessibility style guides in force at any time for the City Council’s services.

Services and projects will be designed taking security into account from their initial conceptualisation. Services must follow the corporate security Policy and standards based on standard ISO27002 and the national security Framework.

The acquisition and procurement of technological services will apply Barcelona City Council’s procurement guides, namely, the Social Public Procurement Guide and the Environmental Public Procurement Guide from the Mayoral Decree on sustainable public procurement (S1/D/2017-1271 of 24 April), and the Guides on Technology Procurement and Innovative Procurement. New services will be procured as a matter of priority under procurement-framework agreements.

Projects must promote technological sovereignty, based on the principles that guide Barcelona’s Municipal Institute of Information Technology with regard to technology and innovation: interoperability, agility, reuse and ethics, as well as free knowledge and technologies. The IMI will incorporate free software and standards into its technological services and processes, integrated throughout the architecture of its systems.

Citizens and the common good must be at the heart of all technological plans and platforms within the Barcelona municipality that collect, create or manage data and other information. Citizens must be able to control their data, the digital divide must be minimised and discriminatory or unethical practices towards the data prevented.

Municipal institutions must be open, transparent and responsible towards the public. Municipal information and documents must be accessible, usable and analysable, so as to promote entrepreneurship, social and digital innovation, employment and excellence in scientific research, as well as improving the lives of Barcelona’s residents and contributing significantly to the city’s stability and prosperity.