It aims to improve the communications between the service and the users and to promote citizen empowerment to guarantee energy rights
After several months of co–creation sessions with the parties involved, the Climate Ready Barcelona project team started to define the functionalities of My Energy app. The app-web is one of the products developed to improve the service of the Energy Advice Centers (EAC) and to offer a more personalized attention to citizens, as well as to promote their autonomy in the access to energy rights.
Representatives of the partner organizations of the project (Associació Ecoserveis, Associació Benestar i Desenvolupament – ABD Group, Barcelona City Council, BitGenoma and CIMNE) and the coordinators of the EACs took part in the co-creation sessions to identify the needs they have from the service and ensure that the application fits these needs.
The objective of these sessions was “to see together what form this app would take, what circuits people who enter and register would follow, and how to make the application as simple and intuitive as possible”, explains Sofia Recio, technical and energy rights coordinator of the EACs.
The application currently used at the EACs is from 2018, Recio points out, but the service has grown and consolidated as a reference in the city of Barcelona. Therefore, a need has been observed to “improve the daily use tools to facilitate the tasks of professionals and improve care for users” she says.
The first versions of the application are already being tested with energy poverty agents to validate the functionalities and define the processes that they will have to carry out in their day-to-day work at the EACs. The idea is to be able to start the pilot test with users in November.
New functionalities to improve communication and autonomy
Some of the needs to be addressed with the app-web are the possibility of establishing a fluid communication channel between the professionals and the people assisted by the EACs, the management of appointments, obtaining information on procedures and formalities, promoting the autonomy of the users and making the service and information on energy rights available to all citizens.
“The users will be able to directly receive documents created from the EACs, they will have an appointment system, they will be able to see the status of their paperwork, the status of their documentation, what they need to add and what they don’t…. and as new functionalities, the agenda system will integrate what the EACs professionals need, which is to be able to have different types of appointments at different times”, says BitGenoma’s program developer, Michelle Lema, as an example.
One of the most important functions is the ability to register independently. As Sofia Recio explains, this “greatly facilitates accessibility to the service”. Each person will be able to register their home or homes, so that all the information will be available according to their conditions and consumption. In addition, users accessing the application will be able to answer questionnaires providing information on their energy consumption and bills. Depending on the answers, the application suggests procedures or determines the urgency of the service. “A professional will contact you or you will continue navigating through the app until you can make an appointment yourself at the service if you need it” she explains. Once the appointment with the EAC has been made, the professional will be able to generate procedures associated with the appointment or recommend them, and the person will be able to see the status of these procedures and track them through the App-web.
More autonomy and citizen empowerment
The use of the App-web promotes self-management. “All users and citizens, even if they are not eligible for the EAC, will have a list of procedures available and within each procedure a document explaining step by step how to do that procedure so that they can do it independently” Lema adds. In addition, the surveys will also generate recommendations for actions “that will help you to optimize your bills at home today” says Recio.
“It is another step towards the universalization of municipal citizen services”, says Marc Tejedor, ABD’s La Meva Energia technician.
“The objective is that the supplies management and the energy rights stop being a very complicated thing and to facilitate this information transparently so that any citizen of Barcelona can have access to it and can make use of it”, concluded Sofia Recio.
Although the design and use of the application begins in Barcelona, it’s being built in a way that can be replicated in other cities in Catalonia.
La Meva Energia (My Energy App)
La Meva Energia (My Energy App), funded by the UE – NextGenerationEU, is one of the products that are being developed with the Climate Ready Barcelona project, coordinated by Associació Ecoserveis with partner organizations Associació Benestar i Desenvolupament, CIMNE, BitGenoma and Ajuntament de Barcelona.
Climate Ready Barcelona is funded by the Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) with the support of Google.org.
