Are you a Representa user or not yet? You know it but you don't dare to start the project in your town hall? If you want to get a clear idea of what the Representa is and what it does and how it is articulated, we present this decalogue to understand this electronic power of attorney registration service.
1.- Collaborative registration
Pursuant to article 6 of Law 39/2015, the General Administration of the State, the autonomous communities and local entities must have an electronic register of powers of attorney in order to articulate the capacity of a representative to act on behalf of an interested party. In this sense, from Catalonia, for reasons of efficiency, it has been decided to create an electronic register of powers of attorney of a collaborative nature.
The Representa is a common electronic register of powers of attorney that the AOC makes available to the Administration of the Generalitat of Catalonia, the Local Entities of Catalonia and public bodies and public law entities linked or dependent on the above.
This record is shared by all of them; that is to say, it is not an individual or independent record, which entails joint responsibility for the processing of the personal data contained therein.
The fact that it is a shared and collaborative register means that all user bodies can register, at the request of the public and/or companies, general representations, to the body and to the procedure, in the case of the latter two, not only in the your own organization, but also to any other organization that uses the service and consult the same database. Therefore, a citizen can create different representations to bodies or procedures, applicable to different administrations, without having to go to or access the headquarters of these other bodies, centralizing the management from the same Office of Attention to the Citizen or from the headquarters itself.
2.- Law 39/2015 and Royal Decree 203/2021
The Representa has been created and has incorporated functionalities to ensure compliance with the provisions of articles 5 and 6 of Law 39/2015 and Royal Decree 203/2021. In this sense, the Electronic Register of Powers of Attorney of the Catalan Public Administrations allows:
- Enter representations between natural and/or legal persons with the data established by the regulations and according to the typologies indicated (general, to body and procedures)
- Check if there is a representation between two people to accredit the representation in administrative practice
- Download evidence of representation in case of consultation of representations between two people
- Download simple notarial power of attorney notes from the Consejo General del Notariado
- Download documentation attached to a representation when it accredits the same
- Extend existing representations
- Appearing in its roadmap, functionalities provided for in the regulations such as the integration and consultation of other power of attorney registers such as the Mercantile Register or the Property Register.
3.- Representations adapted to administrative practice: capacities
The service allows the creation of three types of representations:
- General: allowing a representative to act on behalf of his/her representative in any body and for any procedure
- Body: allowing a representative to act on behalf of his/her representative in a given body and for any procedure
- Procedures: allowing a representative to act on behalf of a representative in a specific procedure defined in the power of attorney
In addition to the existence of these three typologies, the possibility of modulating these typologies has been added by adding the capabilities of this representation in administrative practice. This allows the ability attribute to be added to a representation:
- Consult: access the content of the information on the administrative procedures
- Process: carry out procedures on behalf of another person
- Receive notifications: access the content of the notifications intended for the proxy in the case of administrative procedures
In this way, it is possible to grant representations with full capacities (All capacities) or with partial capacities, limiting the representation to the representative.
4.- Operations adapted to citizens
The Representa service has two environments, apart from the possibility of integration via web service:
- Public employee portal: through the EACAT for:
- Manage representations on behalf of citizens (registrations, terminations and acceptances).
- Consult representations in an administrative procedure.
- Download evidence of consultation of representations
- Download documentation associated with a representation
- Enough representations
- Citizenship portal: through a personalized url for each body, for registration and management of representations by citizens and companies. In relation to the subjects obliged to relate electronically with the administration, they must use this route.
In this sense, the operation of the Representa adapts to the citizens, allowing them to manage their representations both in a face-to-face environment, through the Citizen Service Offices or, in a virtual environment, through the portals Representa of the electronic headquarters of the organizations.
5.- Roadmap guided by service users: the legal-organizational group
The service has a road map guided by the users of the service, through the legal-organizational group (henceforth GJO) of Representa. The GJO is made up of around thirty public workers belonging to different local bodies, the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Localret Consortium and the AOC Consortium who meet periodically to comment on the new features of the service and to debate and decide on upcoming functionalities.
They are the product of the work of this group:
· Representa implementation guide: https://suport-representa.aoc.cat/hc/ca/articles/4417801367057-Guia-d-implantaci%C3%B3-del-Representa
· Legal warning model to encourage registration in the Representa: https://suport-representa.aoc.cat/hc/ca/articles/4417809771409-Quines-implicacions-t%C3%A9-la-inscripci%C3% B3-at-Representa-Model-d-warning-when-encouraging-its-registration%C3%B3
· Procedure to cancel a representation: https://suport-representa.aoc.cat/hc/ca/articles/5471862101661-Quin-%C3%A9s-el-procediment-per-anul-lar-una-representaci% C3%B3-
6.- Support for the organizational challenge: the Representa guide
The service consists of a support guide ( https://suport-representa.aoc.cat/hc/ca/articles/4417801367057-Guia-d-implantaci%C3%B3-del-Representa ) intended to facilitate implementation and putting into operation, within your organization, the electronic register of powers of attorney in compliance with the provisions of Law 39/2015, of October 1, on common administrative procedure of public administrations and Royal Decree 203/2021, of March 30, which approves the regulation of action and operation of the public sector by electronic means.
This Guide makes a series of recommendations for each of the following actions:
- What is an electronic power of attorney record?
- The discharge to the service.
- Parameterize Representa.
- Aspects related to files, procedures and forms.
- Integrations.
- Staff training.
- Regulation.
- Service operation.
- Diffusion
It is drawn up based on the practical experiences of several Catalan public administrations, within the framework of the Legal-Organizational Group of Representa and contains issues of a technical, organizational and procedural nature.
7.- Training for its use (video training + webinar)
The service consists of several training resources to help organizations implement and use the service. In this sense, on the campus.aoc.cat portal we can find:
- Webinar: Synchronous session lasting 4 hours on the functionalities and use of the service of the different roles available.
- Training video: Interactive and asynchronous training resource on the functionalities of the service.
- Presentation of the service: Explanatory document of the Representa
On the other hand, the organizations also have two support portals, with a collection of FAQs about Representa:
- public employee portal: to resolve doubts and common queries about the service
- citizen and business portal: to refer to the end users of the service about its operation
8.- Integrated/integrable
The service is integrated with:
- Copy: for the generation of true copies
- Registry of the General Council of Notaries: for the download of simple copies of notarial powers from the csv.
And at the same time it allows the integration of the same to other administrative processing services or file managers, allowing:
- Creation of representations
- Modification of representations
- Consultation of representations
- Download evidence of representations
- Download documentation associated with a representation that proves its validity
9.- Interoperable
According to article 6.2 of Law 39/2015, the general and particular electronic records of powers of attorney belonging to each and every one of the administrations must be fully
interoperable with each other, so as to guarantee their interconnection, IT compatibility, as well as the telematic transmission of the requests, writings and communications included in them.
The Representa was born with this desire from the beginning, so:
- The representations contain the minimum necessary data established by law
- The types of representations are in line with the options provided for in the Law and administrative practice
- It has a representation consultation webservice
- It has a web service for downloading documentation attached to the representations
- It is working to adapt the OER NTI (still in draft form and only for powers to act before any administration) in terms of metadata and formats to comply with its initial provisions.
10.- Indicators
The service has a roadmap to offer a dashboard so that organizations can see the representations that have originated on their portal, those that have been validated, etc.
At the moment, however, to find out the representations that have been requested from a specific body, either from the public employee portal or from the citizen portal, you can consult from two sources of public information (given that no personal data is given, but only aggregated data):
- Web indicators AOC : From this link you can view the activity of all AOC services, therefore you can filter by a specific body > service Representa > years that interest you and view the representations that have been created there, and even, you can also filter months and states of representations.
- Monthly report of the AOC indicators : This report collects the summary of the activity of the AOC services, from another point of view and we find the information of the Representa, on p. 27. It is possible to filter by years and months that interest me and by the specific organization and view the data of the representations by:
- Origin: citizenship portal or employee portal
- Type of representation: General, Organism or Procedures
- Status: Valid, Canceled, Pending Validation, Pending Acceptance, Expired, Denied, Revoked, Resigned or Under Review.