This month, at the OECD headquarters, the Spanish Government presented the main lines of its upcoming Digital Transformation Strategy 2026-2030, with artificial intelligence as the central lever to modernise the administration and strengthen citizens' trust in institutions. In parallel, the project to integrate citizen service offices with AI and unified services has begun.
The underlying idea is a change of logic: organising public services around "life events" (the birth of a child, the purchase of a home, the management of an inheritance) rather than around administrative competences, so that citizens no longer need to work out which office is responsible. It rests on a shared technological hub connecting the general electronic access point, coordinated appointment booking, the citizen folder, the 060 phone line and queue management systems, under the so-called Consensus for an Open Administration.
The investment context explains the ambition: between 2021 and 2026, more than 600 million euros have been mobilised for AI projects in the Spanish public sector through the national AI plan, Red.es and European funds. And the most mature use cases are precisely three: citizen service, document management and fraud detection.
The practical opportunity, however, is not reserved for central government. A mid-sized town hall, a provincial council, an autonomous body or a professional association does not need to wait for the great national project to solve what its citizens ask for every day: reliable information about procedures at any hour, in several languages, with referral to a civil servant when the case requires it and a record of everything handled. Service agents scoped to a catalogue of procedures, answering only from verified official sources and escalating to a person when appropriate, are mature technology today. It is the kind of service we provide at Lexpower to law firms and public administrations, and the experience has left us two rules that hold for any project, ours or anyone else's: the agent states nothing it cannot cite, and there is always a person at the end of the circuit.
For law firms and advisory firms working with the public sector, the move has a further reading. Public tenders over the coming years will systematically incorporate AI requirements: the transparency duty of Article 50 of the EU AI Act (assistants must identify themselves as AI from 2 August 2026), data protection, accessibility and interaction logging. Knowing those requirements before they arrive is the difference between helping draft the tender and merely enduring it.
Central government has set the direction and put up the money. The advantage, as almost always, will belong to those who arrive prepared at their own scale: the town hall that solves service for its residents before the neighbouring one, and the firm that can advise that process with the Regulation in hand.
Sources
- Spain presents at the OECD its roadmap for applying artificial intelligence in the public administration — España Digital 2026
- Project begins to integrate citizen service offices with AI and unified services — España Digital 2026
- Spain outlines its strategy to integrate AI in the administration — Computing
- AI and digital sovereignty set the agenda at DES 2026 — La Ecuación Digital