During the Smart City Expo World Congress, Barcelona City Council’s deputy mayor for the Economy, Treasury, Economic Promotion and Tourism, Jordi Valls, and the secretary general of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP), Luís Martínez-Sicluna, signed a collaboration agreement to disseminate the Matrix software, the aim of which is to facilitate the maintenance of personal data processing activity records, identify the inherent risks of each processing activity and, generally, monitor compliance with data protection regulations.

“This agreement positions the city of Barcelona as a national leader for personal data protection and the creation and use of technological management tools”, said Valls. “Barcelona is very well adapted to the needs of local public organisations”. The deputy mayor congratulated the municipal technical officers who, after exploring the market, discovered that this type of software didn’t exist: “This tool is a clear example of the innovative capacity of the municipal government, and the initiative and talent of its personnel”.

The Matrix tool was created by the City Council’s Office for the Data Protection Delegate and was presented in the framework of the Working Group on Data Protection of the FEMP’s Committee for Digitisation, Innovation, Transparency, Citizen Participation and Good Local Governance, headed by the council. Its aim was to share knowledge and establish criteria that would ensure a more uniform application and compliance with data protection regulations across municipalities, and the initiatives and measures worked on included finding open tools that would facilitate compliance with these regulations.

The Matrix programme was launched in 2022, as no other data protection regulation control tools existed, and since then it has been implemented by the Office for the Data Protection Delegate and requests have been received from other government institutions that want to apply it.

The aim of this collaboration agreement is to disseminate this data protection regulation control tool, which helps with the management of personal data, and to implement it in other local institutions.

In this regard, there is a firm commitment to ensuring proper compliance with the data protection regulation and the obligations stemming from the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data and the Framework Act on the Protection of Personal Data and Guarantee of Digital Rights, and complementary legislation.

The FEMP is an association of local governments in Spain that includes city councils, provincial councils and island councils, for the purpose of representing the interests of local governments to the central government. Its aims include the promotion and defence of the autonomy of the local government authorities and the protection and promotion of their common interests. To this end, its work includes facilitating the exchange of information on local matters, organising and participating in meetings, seminars and congresses and negotiating with government authorities to draw up legal regulations on local authorities.