Transparency: A Key Ally in Public Policy Design, Development, and Evaluation

Transparency enables the development of better measures and helps restore trust in institutions. In short, it is about sharing structured and comparable data. An example of this is the Kit Digital interactive portal, which makes the program’s main indicators available to the public and on which Víctor Rodrigo Raya, the Director of Innovation, AI and Enterprise at Red.es, shares his perspective.

Rodrigo Raya argues that the program’s website “is not a simple activity report, it is an exercise in transparency and real-time accountability.” In his view, the objective goes beyond merely displaying figures: it also seeks to present Kit Digital as “an innovative model of public administration” that could serve as a reference for other public programs.

Updated interactive data

Thus, projects such as the data evaluation of the Kit Digital program pave the way toward greater transparency and accountability. Through an interactive website, the public has already been provided with the program’s key values: what types of companies have received the grant, how the funds have been spent, how many applications have been approved and which have been rejected, etc.

The data portal is updated with real-time data, offering a dynamic snapshot of the program’s impact. It gathers key indicators and sections such as beneficiaries, calls for proposals, public-private collaboration and impact assessment, which allows monitoring the evolution of public policy from its design to its execution.

“This capacity for temporal and cross-sectional comparison, based on accessible and up-to-date data, is one of the elements that transforms transparency”

This constant update makes it possible to, for example, check how many grants have been awarded in each call, which groups of companies have accessed the different digitization solutions, how participation is evolving across territories or economic sectors. This capacity for temporal and cross-sectional comparison, based on accessible and up-to-date data, is one of the elements that transforms the transparency of a formal exercise into a useful accountability tool.

Red.es stresses that this logic also responds to the way the program has been managed. “It did not make sense to process files in three minutes —when it used to take an average of three hours— only to explain the results with static reports,” notes Rodrigo Raya. According to him, Kit Digital has relied on the motto “zero paper” and on automating more than 90% of the processing with 39 robots, which have carried out 26 million automated checks and saved more than nine million hours in administrative tasks.

From aggregated data to territorial impact

One of the most relevant elements of this publication is that it allows checking the program’s territorial reach. Rodrigo Raya highlights that Kit Digital has reached “92% of Spain’s municipalities and 100% of the provinces”. The figure takes on special significance in rural areas: according to Red.es, 6,018 rural municipalities have been reached, representing 90% of the total rural municipalities in Spain according to the definition of Law 45/2007.

The data are especially meaningful because they allow measuring whether the public policy has reached only the territories with greater administrative capacity or if it has achieved broader penetration. In the beneficiary rural municipalities, 49.8% of the companies had not previously received any other public subsidy, according to the National Subsidies Database. For Rodrigo Raya, this means that “for almost half of the rural SMEs benefiting, Kit Digital has been their first experience with public aid.”

“In the beneficiary rural municipalities, 49.8% of the companies had not previously received any other public subsidy”

The publication of this type of information enables evaluating not only how much money has been spent, but also who it has reached, where it has concentrated, and what gaps it may have helped close. In terms of transparency, the value lies in moving beyond simply proving that a call for proposals has worked, to showing whether that public policy has managed to reach those places where public aid typically encounters the most obstacles.

What data are made public and why

Another of transparency’s challenges is deciding what information to publish and at what level of detail. Aggregated data can be insufficient, but publishing information indiscriminately without structure does not guarantee better accountability either. Red.es explains that “We did not want to simply dump raw data without context, but to offer key indicators,” notes Rodrigo Raya.

This selection is organized around several dimensions. The first is territorial impact, which allows seeing the program’s reach across autonomous communities and provinces. The second is the real transformation of the productive fabric, with data on the solutions contracted by SMEs and self-employed workers. The third is public-private collaboration, with information about the role of the digitalization agents who participated in the program’s execution.

In this regard, the data show a meaningful evolution in the type of digitization funded. Although the most widespread solution by number of subsidies is a website and online presence, the category with the largest budgetary investment is process management, accounting for 24.42% of the total committed. For Red.es, this points to a qualitative leap: many companies have not limited themselves to improving visibility but have begun to modernize their internal operations.

There are also more advanced solutions, such as process management with AI or AI-powered business intelligence. Although they still have a modest footprint in terms of deployments, their presence allows tracking the technological sophistication of the beneficiary SMEs. At the same time, Rodrigo Raya notes that, in many rural Spanish businesses, having a website has been as fundamental as “being on the map” and gaining access to markets previously out of reach.

The challenges of good practices

In the Kit Digital case, Red.es links data publication to a different way of managing public policy itself. If processing has relied on automation, time reduction and mass checks, accountability must be able to keep pace with that rhythm. Therefore, the program’s website is not framed as a final report, but as a living tool that allows monitoring of execution, beneficiaries, implemented solutions and the program’s territorial scope.
 

“Many companies have not limited themselves to improving their visibility, but have begun to modernize their internal operations”

These data publication projects send a message of trust at political and administrative levels, since citizen scrutiny is not feared and, moreover, there is confidence in the design of the public policy. And, even if this policy does not ultimately deliver the expected results, if data and statistics are provided openly, it is easier to detect potential improvements. Either to continue the lines of action that are effective, or to modify those that fall behind.

Toward a better relationship with the public

Ultimately, transparency should come to be understood as a key element of democratic culture: one that allows public money to leave a trace, decisions to be explained, and results to be discussed with evidence. Projects like Kit Digital’s data portal point in that direction, because they turn a public policy into something measurable.

As summarized by the director of Innovation, AI and Enterprise at Red.es, the website has been conceived as a “navigable data intelligence tool”, capable of combining a global view with interactive maps, analysis of implemented solutions, beneficiary profiles and downloadable information. Transparency moves from being a mere folder of documents to becoming a public tracking infrastructure.