On May 29 2024, as part of the “Local Solutions” series of SDG Local Action, the Barcelona Provincial Council shared its experience as a municipal association to improve the delivery and quality of services to their municipalities.
If you missed the event, you can watch the full webinar here (French and Spanish versions also available) in our YouTube Channel.
Many municipalities wonder how to provide better public services with limited resources, while citizens are always demanding new and better public services. These challenges are especially relevant for small, rural, or remote municipalities, where it is very difficult to have human resources or capabilities to innovate, or to provide certain services enjoyed by residents of large cities.
Municipal associations have a long history, specially in Europe; but this is a formula often unknown or difficult to implement in many other contexts. In practice, it’s a very simple idea: different municipalities form a municipal association to jointly manage certain services, such as interurban transport, garbage collection, water treatment, etc.
In Spain, the Constitution recognizes provinces as an integral part of the state organization. Article 141 defines them as “a local entity with its own legal personality, determined by the grouping of municipalities and territorial division for the fulfillment of state activities”. Provinces are governed by Provincial councils. Provincial deputies are elected from among the mayors and councilors of the province, meaning there are no direct elections to govern in the province.
Service delivery is concentrated at the provincial and municipal levels. In the case of Barcelona, the province has 311 municipalities distributed over an area of 7,726 square kilometers. While it comprises strong municipalities with a high level of service provision, it also has medium-sized municipalities between 10,000 and 30,000 inhabitants and 150 others with even less than 100 inhabitants. This results in very significant differences in terms of capacity among the municipalities.
It is in this scenario that the Province of Barcelona acts to promote the coordination and redistribution of the capacities of the municipalities, generating an interesting model of municipal association.
LESSONS LEARNED
The following issues were raised during the webinar:
1. Governance, putting the citizens at the center
In order to achieve consensus and actions that respond to the needs of citizens, it is essential to know their interests, putting them at the center of strategies, transcending political agendas and generating a strong governance structure. To this end, two strategies have been developed in the province that have shown good results: bilateral dialogue with the municipalities and the network of municipalities.
The bilateral dialogue between the province and the municipality identifies the priorities and services required by the latter, and thus progresses with each municipality. With this information, the province makes a list of demands that it prioritizes and identifies in common in roundtables with other municipalities. In the network of municipalities, they select the elements and connections between cities and define of a list of common needs, creating micro-networks of municipalities. A catalog of services or activities that the province can offer is created and municipalities sign up to receive the services they require.
It is essential to understand the articulating role played by the Province. Taking into account the different capacities and ways of working, the point of union and contact is the Diputación de Barcelona, providing economic and material support or represented in other types of actions. The services are provided through the province, which has its own resources, a stronger technical and administrative capacity.
The joint of services provision requires an administrative body that allows this management. If the municipalities act autonomously, even if they want to do so and have the best will, it is difficult to coordinate without the province, since they lack a central administrative point to manage and coordinate. There may be an initial agreement, but this is weakened because the management element of service provision is missing. A group of small municipalities must be organized around a stronger administrative unit; many small ones with little capacity do not achieve the desired objective.
Among the challenges identified with respect to governance, it is found that in many cases there is resistance on the part of the municipalities to lose their local identity and the possibility of showing that they have the capacity to provide these services individually; some political voices resist the systemic vision, fracturing the political will.
There have also been situations in which consensus is not reached and the provincial government also ends up deciding, losing the possibility of participation from the municipalities. In other cases, there have been experiences of association that have ended in failure due to lack of effective governance systems, professional management, capacity, or situations of financial deficit or even diversion of funds for illicit purposes.
For this reason, it is essential to create a governance that goes beyond the municipality, it must be a “supra-local” governance, municipalities need each other, to meet the needs of citizens. The different political forces must reflect and reach agreements. In the case of the Province of Barcelona, a political balance has been found between local decisions and provincial or national priorities, generating consensus. In the Deputation, sectorial or national policies are not discussed, the conversation is limited to municipal or local services.
2. Sustainability
Together with governance, economic, technical, and administrative sustainability is a priority for the associations to function adequately. It is important that the actions or services that are provided can be maintained over time, meeting the expectations of the citizens.
At this point, a good practice is the provision of services in which the province provides the investment or economic component, and the municipality provides its human resource capacity or administrative management. Such is the case of the library service, in which the infrastructure and one worker belongs to the provincial government and the rest of the workers are assumed by the municipality. In other cases, the services are accompanied or complemented by the municipality.
It is also important to foresee and pay for the costs of maintenance and sustainability in the long term; a shared and sustained investment should be sought. In this exercise, prioritization, costing and clarity of models where the role of the province and the role of the municipalities are established is necessary.
3. Interesting cases in the pooled provision of services
The Barcelona Province is an excellent example of how, for smaller municipalities, or those with fewer resources, it is essential to have the services provided by the provincial councils. The success of this model is shown in the concrete cases of services that have been provided which include: a network of mobile ATMs in municipalities where they do not exist, libraries (some of them mobile), rural roads and mobility at the local level, public lighting, services such as accounting, legal services to carry out contracts or a team of engineers to design public works.
The central purchasing office for supply management, is another good example. In the case of public lighting, it centralizes purchasing from the province, making it more economical and efficient; it also makes management simpler, with the same effort putting interests in common.
Many of these services are provided at the provincial level, ensuring that, regardless of where one lives, quality services similar to those in the capitals can be accessed.
4. Population approach and attention to people with vulnerabilities
In the provision of pooled services, there is also a population approach that includes gender, disability, age, among others. With the local assistance network, for example, in the smaller municipalities a network is created to share the attention to this population, generating social assistance that rotates among municipalities.
An interesting case is the respite services for caregivers, who receive an offer of services where they are relieved by professionals who can take care of people in need, while their caregivers can rest, take care of themselves and take a break. The municipality identifies the number of people who need it and the province organizes to attend to them. Here the gender approach is evident, taking into account that most of these caregivers are women.
5. The SDGs as an element of prioritization
For the Barcelona province, the SDGs have become a determining element in the prioritization of the services and activities provided. The list of needs of the roundtables is analyzed in light of the SDGs and their localization; those that clearly contribute to the concrete advancement of the SDGs are prioritized.
The case of the Barcelona Provincial Council is quite interesting, as it has traditionally been a relevant institution, accumulating its own heritage throughout its history and knowing how to adapt to the new challenges of public management, becoming an example of innovation, good management, concern for the environment, and contribution to its European and international context.
