LICO (List of Marketers of natural gas in Spain)

Acronym of the case:

LICO

Web address of the case:

https://oficinavirtual.mityc.es/lico

Country of the case:

Spain

City/region:

Spain

Posting Date:

1 August 2012

Last Edited Date:

17 September 2012

Author:

Pablo Burgos Casado (MINETUR (Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism))

e-business | interoperability | freedom of establishment

Type of initiative

Project or service

Case Abstract

The opening of trading and distribution activities to not only Spanish but also community enterprises was possible through application LICO, an application focusing on natural gas marketers.

The promotion of economic growth and the creation of jobs in a necessarily more competitive market like the European Union require the elimination of the numerous barriers that prevent service providers, especially SMEs, to extend their operations beyond their national boundaries and benefit within the internal market.

The main objective of the application LICO (List of Marketers of natural gas) is provide a solution to the provisions of the Act transposing the Services Directive (Directive 2006/123/EC). This should create a list that contains information about natural gas marketers, allowing the free exercise of the activity at European level. The RD 197/2010, in the third article, modify the procedure for joining the industry and supersedes several articles of Royal Decree 1434/2002, which to date was regulating the activity of natural gas marketing.

Once the information is recorded by the SG Hydrocarbons dependent D.G. Energy Policy and Mines, the available information may be accessed by the CNE (National Agency of Energy in Spain) and CORES Corporation (oil and gas reserves). The CNE based on such information is responsible for keeping the list above.

The Services Directive sets legally binding obligations on member states to cooperate effectively through electronic means, to ensure the supervision of providers and services. Requires that providers can carry out all procedures and formalities needed for access to and exercise of a service activity through a single point and electronically.

In the case of the List of Natural Gas Marketers approved liberalization of the sector will allow release of unnecessary administrative burdens on the traders who wish to start business in Spain. To begin this activity will require a simple communication startup activity, accompanied by a signed declaration that they meet the requirements of the regulations. This will obviate the need to obtain the relevant permits and prior administrative authorization prior to the start of activity that existed previously (see article 16 of RD 1434/2002). This shortens by more than 6 months the administrative approval process.

Description of the case

Domain

eGovernment

Topic

Services for Businesses

Sector

Electricity/Gas

Start date - End date

August 2011 (Ongoing)

Date operational

June 2012

Target Users

Business (industry) | Business (SME) | Citizen

Target Users Description

Lico is an application that offers those interested offering their services as actors in the energy sector in our country the opportunity to conduct all business with the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism, also enabling management and monitoring of the handling by the operators.

In order to not only comply with Community law, also to provide value, LICO's scope is to eliminate those barriers to a more beneficial to all competitiveness and, has the following objectives:
• the simplification of repeated, superfluous and unnecessary procedures;
• the replacement of the approval process for the initiation and statement of responsibility, allowing the commencement of operations as soon as possible;
• the emergence of single points of communication, that allows the operator to focus on his business (http://www.eugo.es );
• freedom of establishment, whenever possible;
• multilingual applications. The language should not be a deterrent;
• the opening of trading and distribution activities to community enterprises, not only Spanish ones;
• The promotion of economic growth and the creation of jobs in a more competitive, market like the European Union, requires the elimination of the numerous barriers that prevent service providers, especially SMEs, to extend their operations beyond their national boundaries and benefit within the internal market.

Scope

Cross-border | Pan-European

Status

Operation

Language(s)

English | French | German | Italian | Spanish

Policy Context and Legal Framework

The Directive 2006/123/EC on Services in the Internal Market intends to achieve those goals through establishing the right to provide services within the Community, eliminating barriers to the development of service activities between Member States such as language, cross-border limitations, etc. This Directive establishes general provisions facilitating the exercise of the freedom of establishment for service providers and the free movement of services, while maintaining a high quality of services (Article 1).
The Directive in question was transposed into Spanish Law 17/2009 on Free Access and Exercising of Service Activities. The Royal Decree (RD) 197/2010, specialized on Service Activities in the Hydrocarbon Sector and RD 198/2010, specialized on Service Activities in the Electric Sector. According to older rules, an operator who wanted to provide this service in Spain asked for an Administrative Authorization and, during a long process, the Administration had to deliberate, ask a considerable amount of information from the operator and decide if the operator could or could not provide this service. With actual procedure, described in RD 197/2010 and RD 198/2010, the operator communicates his wish to provide the service and declares the fulfillment of every relevant requirement established by law. The Administration allows him to begin providing his services and begins to control his activity, asking him in the meantime for every document or information necessary for this process of control. This way, the new RD facilitates the exercise of the freedom of establishment for service providers and the free movement of services, while maintaining a high quality of services.

Project Size and Implementation

Type of initiative

Inclusive services of general interest

Overall Implementation approach

Public administration

Technology choice

Proprietary technology

Funding source

Public funding national

Project size

Implementation: €15-49,000

Yearly cost:

€1-49,000

Implementation and Management Approach

LICO is the application which allows oil traders to communicate the beginning of their activities in the distribution of wholesale natural gas products.

The Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism is the entity responsible to receive these communications, allow the beginning of activity and also communicate it to other organisms such as CNE (National Energy Commission) or CORES (Strategic Reserves of Petroleum Products Corporation).

The application also allows the operators to communicate modifications on their data in the system, change the name of the agent responsible for the communication with the Administration, communicate the activity termination, and every other information related to service provision.

Ministry managers use the application to control every gas natural trader' expedient, consult this information, manage the whole Registry and also integrate communications received, not only through the application, in order to centralize any information related to this area in only one place, LICO.

Finally, it's completely necessary to access the application with an electronic certificate in order to confirm your identity and the process of registering is equivalent to face to face register.

Technology solution

The application has been developed in C # and ASP.NET and AJAX, to achieve a significant improvement in usability, under the Visual Studio development environment NET 2005.

The deployment of the same has been carried out on an IIS 6.0 Web Server on Windows 2003 Advanced Server.

The persistence of data is accomplished, for its part, through the recording of a Manager Relational Database SQL Server 2005 on Windows 2003 Server.

To fulfill its functions, the system makes use of the following components:

Electronic Registry of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade. For input and output of information from and destined to the public;
Standard simplified and BPM. To manage the flow followed by each procedure;
the reporting system to other agencies. In order to communicate relevant information to different energy agencies such as CNE or CORES;
Certificate Validation System. To ensure the identity of citizens who communicate with the application;
Module for automatic translation and language management. To facilitate the task of translation and manipulation of language in the application.

The use of BPM is a clear advantage it provides in relation to the management and maintenance of procedural flow.

Finally, the use of Web Services as a communication tool with other applications or services is also a clear advantage and offers independence it with regard to development of clients and servers.

Impact, innovation and results

Impact

The main benefits:

- the simplification of repeated, superfluous and unnecessary procedures;
- the replacement of the approval process for the initiation and statement of responsibility, allowing the commencement of operations as soon as possible;
- the emergence of single points of communication, that allows the operator to focus on his business (http://www.eugo.es );
- freedom of establishment, whenever possible;
- provide multilingual applications. The language should not be a deterrent;
- the opening of trading and distribution activities to community enterprises, not only Spanish ones;
- The promotion of economic growth and the creation of jobs in a more competitive, market like the European Union, requires the elimination of the numerous barriers that prevent service providers, especially SMEs, to extend their operations beyond their national boundaries and benefit within the internal market.
The objective of the application, fully in the spirit of Directive 2006/123/EC, is to continue building a more productive and competitive Europe through a single common market for all providers.

Track record of sharing

LICO will, as reflected in the Services Directive, continue building a more productive and competitive Europe, thanks, this time, to the real achievement of a single common market for all service providers who wish to do business in Spanish territory.

This has also been an extremely productive development for the Ministry by defining and working with components and features that can be re-used in other applications, for example

- automated and simplified management of multilingualism.
- automation of communication with agencies and citizens through business process definition and integration with Exchange and the Electronic Registry;
- multichannel access to consult the status of administrative files on any mobile device (PDA, smartphone ...).
The development of this application has laid the foundations for future applications since LICO is a great model to imitate.

The integration of electronic and face to face procedures is also another important feature of this application that should be followed by future applications in the Ministry in order to integrate all relevant procedures.

Electronic access promoted by Law 11/2007, facilitating the exercise of the freedom of establishment for service providers and the free movement of services promoted by Directive 2006/123/CE should be worked on in the next years.

LICO follows this principle and, according to the acceptance of its users and, of course, to our objectives, it will begin to provide good results in this sense really soon. Faster and multilingual communication, better management and centralized control are features that warrant the success of the application.

Lessons learnt

Some lessons learnt:

1.Legal innovation: Directive 2006/123/EC calls for a simplification of the procedure in order to achieve a more rapid and easy entry of providers in the energy sector. Innovation is not mandatory (except in certain sectors) in order to enter the energy sector in Spain.. The main innovation in this case is the replacement the previous authorization procedure with an initial submission process, which expedites the process and allows companies to act without delay.

2.Social Innovation: The application, thanks to its multilingualism eliminates barriers and opens doors to providers from other Member States. In addition, the possibility offered by the application to access administrative procedures and information through different channels (PCs, mobile phones, etc) is extremely important and opens the era of multichannel delivery.

3.Technological Innovation: The application was made using many standards: BPMN and XPDL (flow management), X.509v3 (to ensure the authenticity and identity of users of the application) and WSDL (for communication via web services with other systems, etc.). Citizens and enterprises are thus able to consult the state of this procedure in any mobile device (phone, pda, smartphone etc.)The innovative character of the application lies not in the use of these standards, since all applications today make use of them. The innovation is in the preparation of a platform for their use that will allow rapid future developments based on these standards. For example, it has developed an automated translation module, through connections to Opentrad or Google Translator.

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practice LICO (List of Marketers of natural gas in Spain)