The Minister of Justice, Local Administration, and Public Function, José Antonio Nieto, and the Mayor of Jerez de la Frontera, María José García Pelayo, have signed an agreement to incorporate the city into the Electronic Catalog of Local Administration Procedures (cep@l), a tool developed by the Junta de Andalucía to assist municipalities in their digital transformation.
During the event, Nieto thanked the City Council for their willingness to take advantage of this tool that the Ministry makes available to local entities «so that the administration closest to the citizens does not fall behind in digitization.» Cep@l is a pioneering catalog in Spain, designed in collaboration with the Andalusian Council of Secretaries, Auditors, and Treasurers of Local Administration (Cosital), and developed with European FEDER funds. It unifies and standardizes over 600 municipal procedures consolidated into 446 standard procedures, offering legal security, agility, and administrative efficiency.
Agility, security, and no need for travel
Nieto emphasized that the implementation of cep@l in Jerez will represent a qualitative leap in the goal of «making life easier for residents and businesses,» allowing municipal procedures to be carried out entirely online, without the need to physically go to the City Council. Any person or company can, for example, apply for a building permit, a business license, register in the census, apply for affordable housing, or participate in a public tender, all with standard models, guides, clear deadlines, and total legal certainty.
In addition, the catalog includes alerts for regulatory changes, facilitates the training of municipal staff, and fully respects local autonomy, as each municipality can choose which procedures to implement from the catalog. Municipalities, in addition, «can update the procedures as they are updated in cep@l,» the minister said.
Cep@l is a free tool that does not require the use of a specific processor, as it can be integrated with any system already used by the City Council, whether owned, from the Junta, or contracted to third parties.
Nieto explained that agreements have already been signed with the eight provincial councils and with capitals such as Malaga, Cordoba, Jaen, or Antequera with the aim of extending this tool to the 785 Andalusian municipalities, especially the smaller ones, which can access the catalog through their provincial councils.
«Digitization is a key piece of the Andalucía Simplifies plan, promoted by the Andalusian Government, which aims to reduce obstacles, eliminate bureaucracy, and attract investment. With cep@l, Jerez takes another step towards a 21st-century Administration,» Nieto concluded.
For her part, the Mayor of Jerez, María José García-Pelayo, thanked the minister for being once again in Jerez with his team from the Ministry of Justice and Local Administration, as «we are facing an agreement that we have signed with great enthusiasm and that highlights the importance that the Junta gives to Jerez, it is the fifth one signed in person after those signed with Cordoba, Malaga, Jaen, and Seville,» so «it is a great gesture that underlines the importance of Jerez for the Junta de Andalucía, after the President of the Junta, Juanma Moreno, participated with the minister in the inauguration of the Governing Board Meetings of the 83 Bar Associations of Spain, which met under the auspices of the General Council of the Bar in our city to reflect on Justice.»
García-Pelayo stressed that «the Jerez City Council has a procedure for processing files called SIM, it is over 25 years old and needs to be refreshed and updated to ensure agility and administrative simplification. This agreement will allow us to continue working to modernize our file processor with this goal: to provide agility, simplify, and bet on the gratuity» so that «addressing the administration to process files does not imply an additional cost for citizens.»
«This agreement will allow us, as municipalities that are homologated, in the form of processing and content, and ensures compliance with the Law, updating the content of the documents,» added the mayor, who emphasized that «it is an agreement that improves the lives of citizens and makes it easier for them.»
