Client profile
Kit Digital is a program of the Government of Spain, managed by Red.es, funded by the European Union through the NextGenerationEU funds, as part of the Plan for Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience, the Spain Digital 2026 agenda, and the 2021–2025 Plan for the Digitization of SMEs, and aims to digitize the self-employed, micro-enterprises, and companies with fewer than 50 employees.
Managing public funding is often complex. Achieving the necessary balance between legality, agility and control is difficult. In this context, automation has become the Public Administration’s greatest ally in processing an enormous volume of applications in record time.
The Kit Digital program is a prime example of this. With a budget of €3.067 million, funded by the European Union through NextGenerationEU funds and framed within the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, its management has become a best practice worthy of recognition for the application of automation to support SMEs.
The Program launched a new call for applications in September 2023 aimed at joint ownership entities, civil companies engaged in commercial activity, professional civil companies and jointly owned agricultural holdings. As in previous calls, beneficiaries receive a digital voucher of €12,000, €6,000 or €2,000 depending on their size to formalize service agreements with digitalization agents and implement basic digitalization solutions from a catalog of 12 options, such as website creation and basic internet presence or e-invoicing.
To manage a project of this scale in terms of figures, deadlines, objectives and complexity, Red.es, a public entity attached to the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service through the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence, which manages the Program, launched a tender for support services.
The contract was awarded to NTT DATA, whose proposal was supported by its experience in public administration. In recent years, NTT DATA has worked on numerous public projects involving technological innovation, both with the central government (Social Security, the Ministries of the Interior, Transportation, Economic Affairs, Foreign Affairs, and Defense, the Official Credit Institute, etc.) as well as with the autonomous communities and municipalities, contributing to the modernization of the administrative system in Spain.
Why Kit Digital is not just another project
The program managed by Red.es is not just another project. It’s a unique and distinctive initiative for several reasons:
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The huge volume of operations.
In addition to the large number of potential SME and self-employed beneficiaries, nearly 11,000 digitalization agents are involved in the project, as well as a large number of voluntary representatives who act on behalf of applicants to start electronic applications and complete subsequent procedures.
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Changes in the way public grants are managed.
Traditionally, government assistance is granted directly to beneficiaries. In this case, the amount of the digital voucher is received by the digitalization agent once they have properly justified their work. Another innovation is the introduction of voluntary representatives, allowing any authorized individual or legal entity to apply for the subsidy on behalf of a company.
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Massive adoption of technology in procedures.
Public funding processes are normally handled manually with limited technological support. In Kit Digital, the ratio is reversed. Extensive technological resources, especially robots, have been introduced to handle the large volume of applications, verify requirements and process applications more efficiently. The ultimate objective is to accelerate procedures so funding reaches beneficiaries as quickly as possible.
Applicants do not need to provide documentation. They may authorize Red.es to verify the requirements and obligations needed to qualify as beneficiaries, ensuring transparency and security. This shortens processing times, reduces costs and encourages participation.
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Technological innovation through integration and interoperability among different public entities and stakeholders.
For the first time, the Administration gathers all required evidence from different information sources and makes it available to companies and self-employed professionals, optimizing resources throughout application, processing, management and award phases.
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Impact on the productive economy.
The scale of beneficiaries, the universal nature of the target group and the total amount of aid provide significant potential benefits for the economy, so far asthey address a factor critical to business activity, namely digitalization. According to estimates from a recent study by the Telefónica Foundation, the digitalization of the business sector could generate an increase in Spain’s GDP of between 1.5 and 2.5 percentage points annually through 2025, as well as boost the productivity of SMEs by between 15% and 25%. These figures give us an idea of the challenge facing the Kit Digital program.
For us, it was essential to launch the program as quickly as possible, given the expected volume of transactions, and we have succeeded in doing so. The results achieved so far can be considered one of the first visible achievements of the Recovery, transformation, and Resilience Plan, and of the funding program under the European funds (NextGenerationEU)
The result
The design, organization, and rollout of this powerful technology platform—which was completed in record time — is in itself the project’s first success. Since it went live, Kit Digital has achieved incredible results.
Without the widespread introduction of technology, it would have been practically impossible to undertake a program with such a high volume of applications, with such a high level of requirements, procedures and verifications, and within a reasonable time frame.
Lessons learned and looking ahead
The program managed by Red.es clearly demonstrates that automation and robotics are essential for the execution of public-sector projects of this nature.
The success of this initiative is at the same time a positive incentive for all public administrations (not only the central government, but also the autonomous communities and municipalities) to recognize the benefits of incorporating efficient automation mechanisms into the procedures for granting public aid.
That is the path that leads to a modern government that provides effective service to its citizens.
24 robots accelerating every process
The technology platform created by NTT DATA aims to automate and accelerate all processes required to grant Kit Digital aid, but not to make decisions about those grants.
Its two core components are:
1. A data lake (a repository where a large amount of raw information is stored, including unstructured data). Its configuration allows for the import of data files from multiple sources (ingestion, according to technical terminology) for subsequent extraction and analysis (outgesta)
2. Robotic Process Automation (RPA). It is a technology that mimics the way humans interact with software programs to perform a large volume of repetitive tasks, thereby reducing time and costs. In this case, the Blueprism platform was used, whose robots (24 of which were used in the program) collect information from multiple sources (the Tax Agency, Social Security, Civil Service, regional governments, notaries, registrars, chambers of commerce, etc.) to process and verify the applications and forward them to the processor.
In addition, we used Intelligent Operations, NTT DATA’s intelligent automation platform, which accelerates the creation and deployment of robots in heterogeneous system environments while monitoring and controlling their execution, among other advantages.
Proven Outcomes
Measured outcomes that demonstrate real impact of Syntphony in the market.
350k+
Validated agreements
300k+
Approved applications
37%
Applications processed fully automatically
More Information
To learn more about how Employee Communications can help your organization, contact your NTT DATA representative or visit: es.nttdata.es
Why Syntphony?
Syntphony is the result of the combined work of NTT DATA’s best and most diverse business and development talents, with a deep knowledge of each industry, consistently aligned in the creation of business technological products.
We analyse our clients’ use cases; we form the perfect orchestra to achieve their objectives and we add all the value of our consultancy with the best of our products to create unique and personalised solutions; solutions that sound like a symphony to our customers
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