“It is more than hostile land; it is enemy land"

The public administration is in low hours. This newspaper published a report last Sunday about the increase in citizen complaints. This is collected in different reports from ombudsmen who draw attention to the offices because they are putting up more obstacles every day for the procedures, some of them very simple. The news has had a great impact among the readers of La Vanguardia. In this information there was talk of “generalized feeling” when capturing the feelings of the citizens on this subject, but after reading the almost 200 messages raised by this news (this is not a survey and most of them use nicknames) I could point out that more than a “sensation”, the discomfort with the obstacles in these offices is a reality. This report echoed the devastating report of the Valencian Ombudsman: “The Administration has become a hostile land for the citizen”. A reader goes further: “And also in enemy territory”, he writes.

WAIT AND TELEPHONE

For the simplest procedure it is assumed that the day will be lost

The long waits or the unanswered phone calls to see the simplest procedure solved make many citizens uncomfortable. A reader, O. H., explains his experience at Barcelona City Council’s citizen service office. “You show up at the office on Carrer Bruc, corner Aragó, ready to spend the day there. But it turns out that the office works remotely, so make an appointment in advance, phone and wait eight days for them to call you.” Reply to this message C.S.: “If they have answered your phone, you have already achieved a very important milestone”.

E. C. complains that since November last year he has been waiting for the National Institute of National Security (INSS) to resolve his retirement file. “I have had no income for months and I have exhausted my savings. I have had two appointments with the INSS and they shrug their shoulders, they accompany me in my feelings, but they can’t do anything (…) and no one advises me what to do to unblock it. Then they will ask me to vote on Sunday. If the INSS wants to locate me, it can do so through this newspaper”.

P.S. has not had a good experience either. “My community of neighbors waited for a year for a building permit to repair balconies. The person who granted them was on leave. Incredible”.

APPOINTMENT FOR EVERYTHING

Citizens consider that the official is doing well like this

Another reader, E. P., had to arm himself with much more patience. “For three years I have been trying to get an appointment to change my German card to a Spanish one. There is never availability. And if you manage to talk to someone, they ask you to go on the date again. Exceptional!”.

The appointment for almost everything – this worked during the pandemic, but now the measure (the ombudsmen say) no longer makes sense – is what causes the most complaints. E. D. has his own theory: “It’s as simple as you don’t want to go back to work like before covid. It was discovered that with a prior appointment, free access to public offices could be limited and it favored the option of teleworking, and now no one wants to go back”.

Another reader, B. D., writes that “the appointment system is used to shield the official from the pressure of the citizen. And he explains his experience: “I had to try it 35 times over two months, and even then I didn’t manage to contact the Social Security”.

C. S. corroborates this reality: “Today it is impossible to access public offices or CAPs. Everything is blocked by previous appointments or online management; from the phone, without comment”. Another reader, R.P., shares his experience with the appointment. “In order to submit a document to the Education Consortium, they suddenly changed the previous appointment. No one was there, they were touching their noses: I couldn’t do the procedure. I had to make an appointment and they gave me one for 11 days later. This registration always worked well without an appointment, there was a queue and that’s it.”

NEW TECHNOLOGIES

The worst “humiliation”, entering a public website and getting stuck

Trusting everything to new technologies does not seem like the best solution. A. P. states that the worst humiliation for a citizen “is to enter this virtual world and do procedures on some administration websites, which seem to be created by cruel psychopaths”. Another reader, M. D., advocates that the telephone be used more, since trusting everything to the internet “has woken up the mafias and the managements are going crazy, since not everyone has a computer”.

GENERALIZED DISEASES

A reader dreams of the day when there will be a “revolution”

The citizens, that much is clear, are angry. J.L. is one of them. “This week (May 2023) the Civil Registry of Barcelona finally rectified a birth certificate that it issued with an incorrect surname in December. It has taken almost six months to correct a letter in a certificate, which already took three months to issue with errors”. This reader reveals that sometimes he “dreams that there is an anarchist revolution and burns the Civil Registry to start from scratch to build something that works better. Meanwhile, I don’t see any political party that doesn’t even deign to empathize with the citizens.”

OFFICIAL RESIGNED

Assume there is a problem, but not all the blame

A. P. has worked almost his life in a town hall. He assures that he has always tried to do things right and is aware that “his salary is paid by the citizens”. He claims he did not telecommute during the pandemic. “I never liked this system, neither for me, nor for the organization, nor for the citizens. The prior appointment is fine, but if arranged with agility (it costs too much) and speed (solutions can’t wait that long). Share citizens’ complaints. “I also saw that the operation of the machinery was not efficient. Attitude and disorganization had a lot to do with it. But the diagnosis is not complete if the lack of resources is not included. The latter must also be understood. And political positions focus attention and interest on immediate profitability”.

EXAMPLES THAT ARE BAD

The righteous pay for sinners. Generalizing is not good

Sometimes the examples of a few spoil the image of everyone. One of the episodes is explained by C. W. “They don’t lack so many hands (he answers the civil servants who say they are saturated), if it weren’t for the Generalitat’s Housing office, Carrer Diputació, the civil servants wouldn’t come down to smoke so many times a day like every day They go down there in a group and at the door of a school. All those minutes smoking are 30-40 minutes wasted.”

TELEWORKING

The citizen criticizes this measure: he wants the official in the office

Teleworking in the public administration is not a measure understood by the citizen. C. A. is forceful: “Implementing telework in services facing the public is an aberration. Who takes care of you? No one! And if you call them by phone, forget about them answering you. It’s enough to take the citizen’s hair.” M. A. agrees: “There is no sense in telecommuting in the administration, this is self-delusion”.

The reader A. Z. opens another front, unkind to the public employee. “Is there any party that has in its program to remove privileges from civil servants? Demand productivity? Enable dismissal? Well, no one dares to rattle the cat…”.