The PP will digitize the Administration to save 15,000 million in spending

Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s team will approve a profound reform of the Public Administration if the popular party agrees to Moncloa. The PP will be able to start a remodeling of officials, which includes relocating staff to make services more “efficient” and substituting “people for technology” wherever possible. Specifically, his deputy secretary of the Economy, Juan Bravo, Defends to replace part of the public employees who are retiring due to a digitization process to streamline bureaucracy and save “from 15,000 million euros” to the State, according to popular sources, who clarify that the figure is a political estimate that will depend on many variables, such as “working hours, capacity, effort or the template modification.

Feijóo’s economic area defends that the measure be applied “in all areas where it is possible”, an intention that Bravo has been defending for months. “Where a machine can work, it can be done,” he noted months ago. According to Genoa’s calculations, between 35% and 50% of public employees will retire by 2030, “if we don’t do it now, we will never do it,” he defended during an informative breakfast. His team recalls that the digitalization of the administration has already allowed progress in the presentation of Income.

The popular ones already included a similar measure in the electoral program with which they presented themselves to the past 28-M. His campaign team dedicated a chapter to the functioning of the administration. “We promise to delve into the process of digitalization of the Administrations to guarantee attention 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” promises the PP, which insists that “relating with institutions cannot be a nuisance or inconvenience for a majority of people , but a way to solve their problems in the most agile, fair and effective way possible”.

The CCAA accumulate 60%

The measure would continue to be outlined, despite the fact that the PP has been considering it since September 2022, and it will be presented later. The State Administration has 227,492 troops to which are added the 263,913 from the State Security Forces and Corps. The number has been declining for the past 20 years. In 2002 the State had almost 300,000 employees, in July 2022 the figure has been reduced by almost 35,000, according to data from the Ministry of Finance. On the contrary, the number of employees of the regional public sector has grown by 26.1% in the last two decades, almost 7% since 2012. In total, regional governments have 1,617,142 employees, that is, 60% of public personnel work for the regional administration. Local entities have 598,526 workers, 21.92% of the total.

The reform of the Public Function Law that Feijóo intends to approve if he becomes president, would extend to the Basic Statute of Public Employees. In its article 2 it establishes the application in all Administrations, including autonomous communities, town halls and councils, so it would affect these administrations to a greater extent, which together account for 81.1% of the total body of public employees. On the other hand, employees dependent on the State barely represent 8.3%, discounting the personnel of the State Security Forces and Corps, a department in which the popular would have less room for maneuver given that in most cases their Labor is not replaceable by a computer system. The reform would also affect positions in public bodies and agencies and public universities.

Doubts, in front of the good data

The measure is included in the deep audit that Feijóo intends to apply if he accesses the Executive, through which it will seek to analyze the public positions that may be covered by technological platforms. Even so, the main idea of ​​the popular is “to make a good diagnosis” with the main objective of detecting possible deficiencies in accounting. In this way, Genoa seeks a strategy to confront economic models with Pedro Sánchez through suspicioninstead of the data, which continue to support the management of the socialist.

Feijóo’s intention is to resuscitate the electoral turnaround that led Rajoy to La Moncloa, after the defeat of the PSOE after two legislatures of Rodríguez Zapatero. Specifically, Feijóo wants to raise doubts about an alleged “hidden deficit and unpaid bills” in the president’s drawers, an accusation based on the intuition of Rajoy -coordinator of the electoral program- and on the intention of dismantling Sánchez’s policies. However, he suspects that Genoa wants to wake up, he does not have tangible evidence to support it.