New Spanish eGovernment law

I was a Spanish Civil Servant from 2006 to 2012 (technically I'm still a Spanish Civil Servant on leave). I've worked for different branches of the Spanish Government from September 2000 to November 2012. Civil Service in Spain is reputed to be lazy among Spaniards. But having worked for all kind of employers (startups, multinationals, NGO and Government Agencies), I can say I've found lazy people there but I've also found engaged workers. In fact the laziest people weren't in Government. And many of the most committed were.

That's a pretty long disclaimer.

When I came to London, I knew I had to register at the Spanish Embassy. But apparently the only way to do it is physically or sending your official ID/passport using special delivery mail.

There was a similar issue with changing vehicles documentation (my car). No way to do it online.

Fortunately (I thought), there is a Spanish law that says (s6.1) you have the right to be able to apply for anything using electronic procedures (as in web, digital signature...). There is a grace period (3rd ending disposition, ss2), that ended in 2009. I know the law because I worked on those issues (in particular digital signature, but in general electronic government) from 2008 to 2012.

So I decided to formulate a complaint through Spanish Ombudsman. Initial response was highly satisfactory. They were going to ask for information to the relevant authorities.

Public Administration Department confirmed that all central government procedures (not naming any in particular) should be fully adapted to initiate online and that maybe it was a temporary issue.

Foreign Affairs Ministry replied that forms where on the web page, you can download and that was enough (no pointer to be able to use general registry that would have been at least partial adaptation). I replied that the law is clear. I must be able to do it online (specially when I can do it offline by traditional mail).

Vehicles related agency initially didn't want to reply. And finally replied that it was related to taxes and they couldn't check the proper address and they depended upon municipalities. They expressed that this is a common issue with people living in Spain (as in "hey, we are not law abiding agency, but it is nothing related to people living abroad").

But what I found more disappointing (yes, even more than not enforcing the law) was the reply from the Spanish Ombudsman. After more than year asking information, they decided to close the complain because you can download the forms (again that's not what the law says).

I'm pretty sure all the authorities implicated know what the law says. I'm pretty sure people on the Public Administration Department have tried to change their car address. They all know there should have been the required processes in place for 2010, but now they're ashamed of it and they don't have money to a full adaptation. What I don't really understand is Spanish Ombudsman position, but it doesn't really matter.

These days there is some buzz in Spain around a new law for eGovernment.

We already have a law from 2007 that is violated by the own Public Service.

Escrache

Imagine you´re a Member of Parliament. And you have decided you are not going to give your support to something. And then you get a group of people protesting against you.

You would say. "Well, nothing new"

... calling you cockroach and threatening to kill you. 

You would say something like "Well, you know. People sometimes say things they don't really think."

... at the street in front of your home. 

... or even inside your building and hitting the door of your flat while your children are inside and you are not there.

I'm very worried. For several reasons

• They are Member of Parliament. They are representing thousands of people.
• MP are being harassed to make them vote something different (at best). Not trying to convince with reasons, but with fear.
• They are being harassed not only at the Parliament or giving a speech in some random place. But at their homes. Threatening their neighbors with "it's not safe to live near an MP". Threatening their families.
• The rhetoric (crockoachs, we are going to kill, you don't deserve living) shows the "objectification of the enemy". The enemy is everybody who does not think the same.
• I hadn't heard the word escrache until a month ago. But it is another symptom of a trend. It is not something new. It is not something big. It's some little thing here. That comic strip there. A little piece of news over there. 

And last but not least, because the unemployment rate in Spain is over 26% for the general population and over 55% for people under 25 y.o.

Some people say "Yes it's violence but...". Yes. Violence is justified against people who think something different. And even other members of Parliament support this form of pressure.

However, every cloud has a silver lining. There are other MP that oppose to this trend.

Spanish budget deficit, 3Q2012

From time to time I visit the page where the internal comptroller in Spain posts its budget deficit figures. Last week there was a link to the calendar of future publications. The calendar was last updated past September, and didn´t show anything for 2013. Usually at the end of January appears 3rd quarter budget deficit. So when January ended with no new data, I knew the figures would be bad.

And they are terrible.

Take this document, and sum up deficit for the first three quarters of 2012.

13,991+31,176+20,169=65,336

Now take the data for the GDP

258,537+269,169+252,753=780,459

And now get the percentage.

Budget deficit for 3Q2012 was 8.37%. Down from 8.54% 2Q2012. And a commitment of 6.3% in Q42012

Austerity.

Yes, I know I wrote central government budget deficit was going great. I don´t what have happened. Maybe financial institutions help. Probably regional deficit. Who knows.

Spanish Budget Deficit. What if ...?

EDIT: I've done again the calculations and are more unbelievable even. I won't update this post but IMO it is quite reasonable to hit the target.

From time I tend to write about the Spanish budget deficit.

Almost nobody expects that Spain will meet its commitment around budget deficit for 2012.

Well. I want to say, that, regarding central government, I do think they are going to hit the target. There are others components of the budget deficit (regional and local government, and social security agency). And I don't know how do they go. But the target for the central government is 38bn euros, and the data for the twelve month period ending in November is 44bn, down from 76bn in July.

Limitations of the chart (not quite proficient using Google Docs). No legend. Green line is target, red is cash flow data and blue accounting data. Bear in mind that the y-axis does not start in zero, and x-axis show days but should be monthly data.

Anyway, I find it pretty impressive. I've seen it since August and still can't believe it.

The most popular video in Spain this Christmas

Below you can see the ad that in my opinion will end up being be the most popular video in Spain this Christmas

It depicts Fofito (a clown very well known in Spain) with other well known comedians, actors and even journalists, sending parcels to "important people": from Angela Merkel and IMF to Moody's and Standard&Poor's. In those parcels, Fofito sends, bundled with "cold meat" (that's what makes the company that prepared the ad), some sort of Curriculum Vitae of Spain, telling those "important organizations", why Spain should be respected.

The ad is quite moving, because it mixes Spanish popular culture, jokes (i.e. considering Felix Baumgartner as Spaniard) with drama (i.e. elder people are paying the bills for their unemployed children and grandchildren).

Even the background melody is "Suspiros de España", which could be translated like something like "Sighs of Spain". Spain suffers. Spain sighs.

I find it very interesting from a pure "getting to know what think many people in Spain", however.

Many people in Spain do not understand the root of their problems. In fact, for many people in Spain, their problems are motivated by those "sort of villains": Angela Merkel, IMF, rating agencies and "markets". Nobody has explained them neither the root of their problems, nor the path to get out of them. When I was coming to London (to work for one of those villains), some people looked at me as if I was a traitor.

And for many people, speaking 6/7 different official languages (none of them English) in a 45 million people country is something to be proud of (despite the money wasted in making those languages official). Or having some 50 airports most of them have a couple of flights a day. Or being the country with the biggest high speed railway network in Europe. Or having the highest percentage of people with university studies ("la generación más preparada de la historia")

And many people do not connect the dots. They don't understand that their problems have many roots, but some of them are exactly those things they feel proud of. That every local authority in Spain wanted to have their airport, high speed railway, and university. Because those things were an easy sell to their voters, and because those things left money in many pockets (corruption).

And they blame the people could help.

Yes. In my opinion there are things happening in Spain to be proud of. Some of them appear in the video but from a wrong perspective.

But this post is long enough already.

June deficit was 8.54%

From time to time I write about politics in Spain in general and in particular Spanish deficit. Sometimes I try to do some simple estimations and comments.

More recently there has been some comments in Spain regarding the publication of regions' budget deficit up to second quarter. But I don't really understand why people insist to pay attention to quarterly data without reference to a twelve month period. Let's do the math.

First deficit: It seems that, if we leave out the help to the financial institutions, deficit in 1Q2012 and 2Q12 has been 39815 million euro. Deficit in 3Q2011 and 4Q2011 was:-16.616-34.054 = 50670 million euro. So, twelve month period ending on June 30th: 90485 million euro.

Then GDP: Acording to INE, GDP for 3Q2011,4Q2011,1Q2012,2Q2012: 255367 + 275032 + 259198 + 269739: Total: 1059336 million euro.
Now let's divide both. 90485/1059336.

Deficit in terms of GDP at June 30th using public data: 8,54%

Daniel Lacalle says it's 8,56%. Surely I missed something. But not too much.

Estimating Spanish budget deficit

This is one of my political/economical post (nothing related with computers) I write from time to time.

Past February, Spain published its estimation of whole year budget deficit.

Many well respected analysts suggested or explicitly wrote that maybe new Government was increasing 2011 deficit so that it could blame previous Government, and also in order to make it bigger so that it was easier to make it smaller. One for all, Xavier Xala i Martin:

Los números presentados hoy los ha construido el gobierno del Partido Popular y evalúan el año 2011, último año de gobierno del Partido Socialista. Bajo este punto de vista, hay que resaltar que al PP le interesa magnificar el déficit de 2011 (es decir, le interesa poder decir “hemos encontrado un déficit muy superior al esperado”) por varias razones: Primero, para “demostrar” la incompetencia del PSOE. Para los políticos de todos los colores, nunca está de más echar por tierra la reputación de tu enemigo político. Segundo, porque en la medida que puedan mover contablemente ingresos del 2011 al 2012 y puedan mover gastos en dirección contraria, el mayor déficit asignado al PSOE en 2011 se traduce en menor déficit para el PP de 2012. 

Even EU Commission was expected to open an investigation to clear if Spain had overestimated deficit for political purposes.

I couldn't believe it. If there had been any kind of manipulation in Budget deficit Spanish figures it has been downwards, not upwards.

I expected somebody could examine the data in a similar way, as I had been doing, and tell everybody 8.5% budget deficit in Spain for 2011 shouldn't have been a surprise. When I started to read this post of Edward Hugh, I thought "he finally got it", until I got to the part: "the deficit itself will not form the primary subject matter of this post."

OK. So maybe I've come a to a methodology to study monthly/periodic data so that we can anticipate its evolution before end of year. [laugh]

Usually for periodic data you get it compared with similar period of the previous year. For example, for a company you get quarterly data compared with same quarter previous year.

Sometimes you get the data for all the previous periods of the same year. For example, you get data for the 3Q2011, and accumulated with 1Q2011 and 2Q2011, compared with the first three quarters of 2010.

Both two methods (single period, natural accumulated) do not help estimating data series. I'm told econometricians try to remove variability using different techniques.

I use a simple method.

If you want to know some value at the end of the present year, but you don't have data of  the whole year, you should take data equivalent to a twelve month period.

For example: if you have accumulated data up to third quarter, and you want to estimate the data you'll have at the end of the fourth quarter, you should take the amount accumulated up to third quarter of this year, and add the amount of the the fourth quarter of last year.

Yes I know. It's not a great estimate, but for budget data shows a trend and it is very easy. On January 31st, 2012 we had available third quarter Spanish deficit figures. It was, in European terms (PDE,) 56719 million euros. So if we wanted to estimate fourth quarter 2011, we should form a twelve month period. We take fourth quarter 2010: 37042 million euros. Let's add up:56719+37042=93761 million euro.

Using a twelve month period for 2Q2011, you can get a total of 97956 million euro (in European terms).

So, with 2Q2011 data, estimation was 98 billion euro, with 3Q2011, estimation 94 billion euro. Is that a perfect estimate?. Of course not. But it shows a trend. And with that trend, it was obvious we were decreasing our deficit, but it was obvious we weren't decreasing fast enough.

February, 28th. Official figure: 91344(*). And everybody said the government was forging the data upwards.

Look the following data, and tell me somebody forged it (December 31st, 2011 data is official figure).

(*)The official figure is an estimation, and is not homogeneous with the quarterly data. The fourth quarter is still to be closed in accounting terms.

Budget deficit

Disclaimer: I'm talking about public data. I don't have any unpublished data.

In Spain there is some buzz recently about tax increases approved on December 30th. The government had changed and the new one said it was necessary to raise taxes because data said budget deficit where 8% GDP. The commitment was to finalize 2011 with a 6% GDP, from 9.2 previous year. 

OK. Here is my take. We will end 2011 with more than 9% GDP. And here is my reasoning.

From what I know, public data about budget deficit appears on this page. As of January 10th, the more recent data are for federal government data (Estado) the November 2011 data, and for all public administrations, 2Q2011. 

With November data for the federal government, you get a deficit of 52385 million euros for the 2011. But, in my opinion, to get the whole picture you have to take into account a twelve month period. Adding up December 2010, we would be talking of 64306 million euros. Around 6% GDP vs 4.8%GDP expected.

Similarly, data for all public administrations. Last data available is 2Q2011, with a deficit of 41348 for the 2011. But again you need a twelve month period. Adding 3Q2010 and 4Q2010, you get a total amount of 98283 million euros. Yes. At 2Q2011 the twelve month deficit was greater than at 2Q2010 (although on a percentage of the GDP it was a bit smaller).

Until we get updated data, deficit will end 2011 over 9% GDP.

EDITED (31/01/2011): It seems that public data 3Q2011 for all public administrations is out. 93786 million euros for a twelve month period. Using a GDP for 2011 of  1058701 million euros, deficit was 8,86% GDP.

The rain in Spain(II): Government

Let's start with politics. I guess it's less known abroad, but it's probably more important than the economic situation. First the government. Forget about the past. Let's start by the end. Today August 2nd 2011, one of the more complex days from an economic point of view for the hole world. Every stock market falling through like a knife in the butter. Spanish bonds at what lots of people understand as intervention level (400 basis points over German debt). This guy was planning to take a few days off. He announces he's considering postponing those days...

... and at the end of the day he decides to leave on holidays.

Somebody just at the level of the common sense would have either not announce the postponing (considering that to postpone would be alarming for the people in the country, and that could lead to something worse like a bank run), either he would stay. What not many people would do is announce to stay but leave.

This is just an example. But we could explain he negated there was crisis up to June 2008, and he announced recovery later that year. He continued spending money we didn't have for a couple of years. And many other things. We could even explain this government negotiated with terrorists, apparently offering political concessions to the terrorists in exchange of stop murdering.

This is the government. But the other main political party is not better.

The rain in Spain(I)

I love this video:



A few days ago I received a message from one of my tweeps about the weather in Europe and in particular in Spain. This summer, the weather has been a bit strange so far. But I couldn't help thinking about a different climate. The political and economical climate.

I know people outside Spain are worried about the situation in Spain. What can I tell about it?.

Yes Spain have problems. Several kind problems. Fiscal at federal/state/local level. Economical problems:Zombie banking sector. More than 20% unemployment in the overall population and more than 45% unemployment in young people. Bursting of a real state bubble. Political problems too. Corruption all over the place. Politics far from Main street. We have two regions with a serious problem of independentism. And moral problems too. Again corruption all over the place, people full of rights and with no obligations, and a feeling that everything not strictly forbidden is allowed.

Every cloud has a silver lining, and there are also some good news. But overall, big problems.

It seems similar problems are all over Europe and also in the States. I'm not quite sure, but maybe it's that I live here.

State of Emergency: very serious

It's in the news. Spanish Government has declared "State of Emergency". This declaration gives special powers to the government like the ability to limit the circulation of people, commandeer things or even enter in private properties (but not homes).
It's somewhat similar to State of Siege, but lower in intensity. Being Spain a democracy one could think that this kind of declaration should be reserved to extreme cases. That's true in the law. It can be declared only due to four reasons:

1. Catastrophic events (like floods, earthquakes...)


2. Sanitary crisis


3. Stopping of Public Services but only in connection with one of the other points.


4. Shortage of first necessity products

The declaration of today seems motivated by what seems to be a salvage strike of air traffic controller. It's being restricted to airports. And the declaration invokes Public services (point 3) with references to point 1 and point 4.

Do we have any kind of catastrophic event? NO.

Do we have shortage of first necessity products? NO

Then???

In my opinion this is an extremely abuse of the law.

I don't like what air controllers have done. I would like that the government acted like Ronald Reagan did. But I don't feel comfortable at all with a Government that can limit my freedom because it has lost any perspective.

This is very serious.

Corruption

Wow. It seems Wikileaks is going to publish some documents showing implication of some world leaders in corruption practices. I don't have any other information but the Reuters piece of news.

I wouldn't have brought it to this blog if it weren't for the last paragraph of the first page:

Two of the sources said Assange has also made the documents available to at least two other European publications -- the newspapers El Pais of Spain and Le Monde of France.

That would suggest that government leaders implicated could be Spaniards or Frenchmen. Don't know if it's true.

But watching financial markets regarding peripheral European bonds I can't help thinking that this could have connections with Spanish politics.

Lies, damn lies and statistics

Disclaimer. I'm not an economist or a statician, and I don't have any governmental internal information. I'm only a spaniard.

I've just read a piece of news about Moody's considering Spanish outlook stable. Although I don't foresee a default's risk, I completely disagree. I think Spanish conditions are deteriorating very fast. I recommend reading this article on Moody's decision.

Anyway, I remembered reading that in recent months Government's income and expenses figures have been alarming. Usually, when I get contradicting information I tend to go to the original source. In this case I went to this official paper containing income and expenses. The report is in Spanish, and considers two methods for calculating data. One would be in terms of cash flow, and the other in terms of obligations. It shows data up to June 2009. I went to pages 22 and 23, and compared this year cash flow data with data from 2006 to 2008, so that I could figure out total non financial income and non financial expenses for this year.

Expenses seems to be rather predictable. For the past year month by month one can see similar expenses in terms of the total expenses amount for the whole year. This year seems odd, but I don't thing I'll miss if I write that total expenses for the whole year would be in the range of 180 billion euros (180,000 million euros).

However, when looking at incomes, one can see the problem. And the problem is that incomes figures have crashed. To the point that from April to June, income was 470 million euros, which is roughly 1/20th the amount in recent years for that period. I don't see it recovering in coming months, so I wouldn't expect more than 60 billion euros.

Subtracting expenses from incomes, I get a total deficit for the year of 120 billion euros. Which means that expenses are three times the incomes.

Hey. I wish I could spent 3 times what I earn.

Anyway, what's more shocking for me is that usually we don't get deficit as a part of expenses, but as a part of GDP. If I divide 120 billion by 1060 billion (total Spanish GDP), I get 11,3%. The usual prediction you can get it's in the range of 10%, so probably my figures are wrong (see disclaimer above).

But then I thought "What deficit would Spain have if incomes were 0?". 180 billion divided by 1060 billion. I get 17%.

Deficit as percentage of GDP has no value for me as a citizen. Because I cannot evaluate how good or bad is the figure.

What can I do for my country

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.
J.F. Kennedy

A couple of weeks ago Jose Manuel Campa was nominated new Secretary of Economy in Spain. The position was being held by David Vegara, but he had expressed his intention to leave the job when his former boss Pedro Solbes was removed from the Ministry position.

That seems something uninteresting even for Spaniards. Not the kind of post I should write in this blog. And certainly with no apparent connection with the quote at the beginning.

But the fact is that I find this piece of news rather inspiring.

Jose Manuel Campa is a Bussiness School teacher, respected academic, and a successful professional. He seems wealthy enough, and Spanish Secretaries don't make more than say $110000/year (which for the record is much more than I earn, but seems pretty low if compared even with people managing a medium-sized company, not to say a whole European country)

And the more puzzling part of this story is that current Spanish administration seems to have an economic leftist view, whereas Jose Manuel Campa seems to have more rightist views. The Government is more "liberal" (in the American meaning), and he seems more "conservative". His views seem quite the opposite of current government views. He even signed a petition advocating for a change in labor market, something that is very controversial in Spanish politics.

And the job is going to be an "ugly" one. The whole world is under economic turmoil, but Spain seems to have an even more difficult position, because of a number of reasons. First, for 15 years we've been building houses, and now don't know how to do anything else. Second, we don't have control over interest rate (we depend on ECB who set rates on whole Europe). And although our banks didn't buy American subprime mortgages, they DO have loans to housing developers, with land of little to no value as collateral, and now those loans are starting to default. Also, we have 4 million people unemployed, and 100k more each month, for a total population of 44 million. And last but not least, current government did take a bunch of measures, but without a long term goal, hoping that in two years World will be better and Spain will recover. In conclusion, in the coming months, Secretary of Economy is going to be a hard position, giving bad news, and proposing tough measures.

So Mr. Campa won't earn more money (in fact, probably less). He already had a respected position. He'll have to fight every measure, every law, and every budget. And he'll be the bad guy in a government ready to give money everyone until money disappear.

Many people in the Spanish financial sector think that he won't last in the position.

Then, why did he accept the job?.

Maybe he wants to be well known. Maybe he's going to lose money a couple of years, then make much more.

Or...

... maybe he has asked himself what can he do for his country.