Since 2010, Galileo Ingeniería y Servicios S.A (www.galileoiys.com), Red Pópuli, and Control y Gestión (www.controlygestion.com) have been developing a collaborative framework with the Rey Juan Carlos University, the University of La Laguna and certain independent economic experts, to carry out a research project that has been approved and co-financed by the CDTI. This project led to the creation of the www.sielocal.com portal
Over the last 20 years, these companies have accumulated proven experience in consulting, auditing and applications development for local financial management, including budgeting and accounting and operating municipal services of all kinds. They have also developed tools for both displaying and georeferencing municipal information. They have used that experience in Spain and other countries, including Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay, Panama and Morocco.
In view of new demands and requirements for greater transparency (expressed in the Fiscal Stability and Sustainability Act and in the draft Law on Transparency, Information Access and Good Government), Sielocal has used this accumulated knowledge to develop the Local Administration Financial Information Portal.
"Our aim is to anticipate the information needs of the local public sector, information professionals and all citizens by providing a web space that makes it possible for them to view, compare and comment on town halls' principal fiscal and accounting ratios, by allowing free access to multiple types of reports, segmenting the reports by autonomous regions or provinces. We intend to work with other exeprts and the principal National and Europan Transparency foundation.
We have partnership agreements with the La Ley publishing house (Wolters Kluwer Group) and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to enable us to address strategic projects, and we intend to incorporate other experts and the principal National and European Transparency foundations. We also intend that it becomes a small social network, in which we are all participants, and that sielocal.com becomes a transparency portal in social networks, leaving us to be just the driving force behind the idea and the technology. In parallel, companies such as Red Pópuli aim to offer financial consulting services and to rent software to public bodies, through a parallel services platform.
It constitutes our contribution to the growing efforts to increase institutional transparency by taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the Open Data technologies and Open Government practices that are spreading steadily throughout the Spanish administrative system."