Torrevieja goes 24-7 via the Internet

TORREVIEJA continues to embrace twenty-first century technology as the Town Council announces plans to enable residents to perform administrative procedures 24 hours a day via the Internet. Mayor of Torrevieja, Eduardo Dolon, the provincial deputy for Modernization, Adrian Ballester, Deputy of Provincial Tourism, Joaquín Albaladejo, the Councillor for Citizen Participation, Agustina Esteve, and the delegate of New Technologies, José Riera all put their heads together to form a working committee to launch the draft Plan for Modernization of the municipalities to improve citizen services at lower cost.

In essence the Alicante Provincial Council will assist the City Council of Torrevieja to introduce and maintain a computer platform of ‘e-government’ in municipal management. This will result in the standardizing of the use of the Internet in municipal administrative allowing citizens to perform many administrative procedures on line, saying both parties time and money. Mayor Eduardo Dolon said “The idea is to bring the council to the citizens; to be able to perform administrative procedures 24 hours a day via the Internet. It is expected that in 2012 the citizens will be able to perform many administrative procedures through the Internet.”

Eduardo Dolon stressed that this plan represents a technological advance of the first order in bureaucratic department management and will offer a significant cost saving to the City Council. He added “In 2012 the City will work with this plan through 3,000 administrative processes!” The County Council will meet the costs of implementing the system, organizational consultancy and training. The modernization plan includes the implementation, through ‘Cloud Technology’ allowing the administrative process through the Internet, input and output records, invoices, certified scanning, electronic signature or electronic notices, fee payment, census records among many other possibilities. From the Department of Modernization, Adrian Ballester, announced that the project guarantees access to new technologies to all municipalities in the province, regardless of the particular economic situation of each of them. This contributes to the technological backbone of Local Government in the province of Alicante and a saving of more than €1,200,000 in the municipalities of the province.

During his visit to Torrevieja, the Diputado Provincial de Modernización provided the Department of Citizen Participation multiple computers to be distributed to various local associations in the Municipality. Ballester also took the opportunity to visit the Local Police Station to see first hand the Vyriato Project (Intelligent Video and Radar Assertive Torrevieja). This ambitious and pioneering project has nearly 200 sensors positioned along the main streets and plazas of the municipality with a municipal communications network. This new project places Torrevieja at the forefront of traffic and road safety, making it one of the best-monitored Cities in Spain. The system allows for the control and license plate recognition of all traffic that enters and exits the city, monitors municipal heritage sites, provides surveillance and control of forest fires and green spaces, can control remote traffic lights, all of which goes to make Torrevieja one of the most complete in terms of surveillance control and monitoring in Spain.