- The project includes other communication channels with the town council services with the return channel feature to search for employment, teletraining, classified ads and information relevant to the Segovia province.
- The system also incorporates certain regional applications which allow the rest of the town councils of Castilla-León to join the project in the future.
- Citizens can carry out local administrative procedures from their homes by using an innovative and interactive digital terrestrial television platform.
Indra, the premier IT company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe, has developed an advanced digital terrestrial television (TDT) platform for Segovia's town council. Citizens can gain access to the local public administration using the electronic ID card. Having passed the development phase and the trial period, the project reveals itself as the first of this type in Spain. It facilitates t-government and includes a more comprehensive service portfolio.
The platform was born of the cooperation agreement between Castilla y Leon's Regional Ministry of Public Works and Segovia's Town Council and it seeks to promote the implementation of applications to facilitate interaction between citizens and institutions through digital terrestrial television. The project started in 2007 and is within the framework of the Circle of Arts and Technology (CAT), an initiative of the “Ciudades Singulares”, a plan of the Ministry of Industry and Tourism which aims to boost information society at regional levels, in this case through digital Terrestrial Television.
Thanks to this service, citizens can access applications and interact with the town council using an interactive DTT decoder and the electronic ID card. For this reason, the town council has distributed 1,100 high-performance MHP (Multimedia Home Platform) receivers to connect with the system. This way, users can have access to local information, useful phone numbers, duty chemists, medical appointments, schools, tourism, working hours, sports centres, book restaurants, transport information or local news. Besides this, the platform includes a business finder as well as other services for the citizens such as: programmes, traffic condition and even an interactive trivia game about the region.
Most applications belong exclusively to the province, although others for instance, libraries, news subscriptions, job vacancies, emergency call number 112 which will be available for Castilla y León. This way, the rest of the town councils will be able to join the project in the future and customise the local sections.
Comprehensive services offer associated to the electronic ID card
The platform developed by Indra is equipped with all the necessary security protocols to support all innovative transactional services associated to electronic administration and the use of the electronic ID card. Segovia's town council provides citizens with a new option to carry out habitual procedures such as tax payments, urban planning and development permits, civil marriages, check out the electoral roll or the driver license points, among others. In addition, the interactive service allows to make appointments with the Mayor in order to discuss concerns of the region.
On the other hand, one of the most useful applications is the “Carpeta Ciudadana” through which users can check outstanding bills, files, or other procedures such as registration at the census bureau in a secure way. The “Ayuntamiento somos todos” application, allows citizens to submit requests and complaints or to participate in social surveys.
One of the most innovative services of the application is “Formación Ciudadana”, which is associated to audiovisual content about a specific subject. For example, if a citizen is doing a course of carpentry, through the teachers' explanation, he/she can access to complementary content, explanations, images or animations, description of the tools and where to buy them. At the end, the application offers the possibility to do a test for self evaluation and the information is submitted through a return channel to be processed later.
“Empleo local”, another service equipped with the return channel, filters job vacancies taking into account the following criteria: education, region and sector. Once the request is processed, the systems searches, among the published vacancies and offers additional information via the return channels (telephone, SMS or ADSL).
Indra's interactive system for the DTT also includes classified ads of housing, commercial premises, contacts, classes and workshops, community, employment, services, buying or selling or free offers.
Continuous innovation in TDT
This new project confirms Indra's outstanding role from the beginning of DTT in Spain and consolidates the company's position in the sector thanks to the development of applications for MHP interactive services, a promising market within the DTT. The MHP standard consists of a common platform for digital television interactive applications and does not depend on either the supplier of the services or on the television receiver.
The IT company has more than a decade of experience in consultancy projects and development of interactive services as well as in the launch and exploitation of digital terrestrial television networks. An evidence of this is its participation in the integration of interactive services and in the development and implementation of the T-Commerce platform of former Quiero TV operator, as well as in different pilots based on MHP platform. In this sector, we should mention “Micomercats” for Televisió de Catalunya (TVC), which was the first pilot in Spain of DTT with MHP involving real users and the implementation and the start up of the platform for the government of the Canary Islands with delivery of services such as advertisement, teletraining and news.
It was also involved in PROFIT projects of great importance within the DTT sector, for example: “Emplea-t”, the first public service interactive application associated to a TV programme (“Aquí hay trabajo”, 2 TVE) and website of interactive learning oriented to teaching Spanish language for foreigners; implementations of the electronic ID card and smart cards for TV decoders.
Indra has also used its DTT experience in Latin America, where it has led and coordinated the implementation of different pilots to promote DVB European standard in a critical moments as most of the countries had not decided which standard to use (European, Japanese or North American) due to the imminent deployment of the DTT. It started up the temporary transmissions in cities such as: (Montevideo (Uruguay), Santiago and Concepción (Chile), Lima (Perú), Cartagena de Indias and Bogotá (Colombia), Caracas (Venezuela) and Buenos Aires (Argentina).
Indra is the premier Information Technology Company in Spain and a leading IT multinational in Europe and Latin America. It is ranked as the first European company in its sector according to investment in R&D and is the second Spanish company in absolute value investments in R&D. In 2009 revenues reached € 2,513 M of which a 40% came from the international market. The company employs more than 29,000 professionals and has clients in more than 100 countries.