Spain
Ada Colau
1,640,000 (2019)
Michael Donaldson
Improve internal government operations
Improve service delivery
Engage residents and other stakeholders
Provide better social care services
Understand better the needs of citizens
Focus on measurement
Human resource support
Culture of innovation in city
Leadership from Mayor
The City Council of Barcelona leverages all innovative digital tools available to facilitate easy access to public information for residents and to engage various stakeholders in solving urban problems. Their current innovation strategy has been supported by the Urban Innovation Centre—a hybrid body of the City Council tasked with fostering innovation. The center plays a crucial role in the urban innovation ecosystem by inviting start-ups and SMEs to submit proposals for innovative solutions to urban challenges, and by coordinating the participatory process for all stakeholders in a shared effort to rethink Barcelona’s unique innovation district 22@.
Along with 50% of cities surveyed, Barcelona has an explicit innovation strategy. Similar to more than half of cities surveyed, Barcelona approaches innovation capacity both from a holistic/macro level, as well as in specific policy areas.
Urban innovation: Barcelona has created an Urban Innovation Platform with up to 100 external members, including innovation experts of several fields from the public sector, knowledge institutes and academies to the civic society. The platform helps co-defining the main challenges the city needs to address in innovation terms. The City Council also has an Urban Innovation Center, which aims to foster innovation in four ways: co-creation, transformation, divulgation and education.
Social/civic innovation: In Barcelona, the digital participation and democratic platform "Decidim.Barcelona" gives citizens a voice, allowing them to decide on the future of their surroundings. It is a digital platform that engages citizens in a participatory process, allowing them to debate, respond and gather proposals. The tool has been developed using open-source software and open code, in order to enable re-use and continuous improvement.
Barcelona’s innovation work is sprinkled throughout the municipality, with 15 staff working specifically on innovation.
Taking risks or testing new ideas
Data-driven analytics/public data management
Engaging residents in new ways
Developing new solutions based on digital technologies
Organizational change within the municipality
Human-centered design
Rethinking your city’s approach to financing partnerships
Like 81% of cities surveyed, Barcelona has dedicated funding to support innovation capacity.
Similar to 61% of participating cities in the 2020 survey, Amsterdam's funding for innovation capacity is also directed towards training staff and building capacity*.
*"Training staff and building capacity" is not an option in the 2018 survey, while "Launching or sustaining a project" is not an option in the 2020 survey.
Barcelona has developed partnerships to promote innovation capacity with other public agencies, private firms, not-for-profit organisations, and city residents/resident associations.
To improve data use, the city has also developed data partnerships with the private sector, academia and research institutions to collect and analyse data. Barcelona is exploring how to scale up partnership agreements with good results.