Ángeles has to renew her senior card. It is the one that allows you to have a discount on the bus. At 82 years old, she has approached the Cabildo, the citizen assistance office to see what she has to do, if she has to make an appointment or go somewhere else. An orderly receives her and tells her that they can attend to her on the go, if she is not in a hurry. Ángeles passes by and sits on the benches designated for people over 65 years of age. After a few minutes one of the workers attends her. She still doesn’t have to renew it, she has a few months left. They write down the date on a piece of paper, so she doesn’t forget it, and they summon her to come back then.
On another side of the office, on the self-management computers that have been set up in the central office (there are already them in all citizen service offices). José Jeremías, is 72 years old, and accompanied by his daughter and another of the officials, is trying to obtain the necessary documents to carry out procedures in another administration other than the Cabildo. “Today for everything you need an appointment, and if you don’t handle computers you have a difficult time. In my case, my daughter helps me, ”he explains.
These are just two of the examples of the service that has earned the Cabildo de Tenerife, specifically the Citizen Attention area, the Aenor certificate for Commitment to the elderly, the only one that has been granted to a public administration in all of Spain, which makes the Cabildo a pioneer in specialized care for people over 65 years of age.
And it is that, if the confinement and the pandemic revealed something, it was that many older people saw how the digitization of public administrations was leaving them out. The Cabildo has been the first administration to realize and assume the challenge of offering differentiated attention to this population. With preferential and personalized attention, so far this year alone they have already attended 674 people through Easy Assistance and another 75 to carry out procedures with other administrations.
Maite Covisa is the head of the Citizen Attention service and is very satisfied with the achievements achieved in just over a year with this benefit.
“Since last year we started working with the elderly because we were testing the electronic office and we went to see what they thought about it. And from working with them we saw the difficulties they had in accessing electronic procedures”, explains Covisa.
From then on, and in the context of the Conecta mayores programme, the Citizen Participation area worked to see how to provide specialized care to the elderly. The result was to implement a preferential care system for those over 65 years of age.
“If they call us by phone, we tell them that if they are over 65, they press a button and they automatically skip the wait for service. If they request an appointment through the web, what we have done is that to prevent them from looking in the dropdown, it is to put a point called Easy attention, which is the first, and thus they do not have to do the entire dropdown, but who click there and are given an appointment directly, and we already know that a person over 65 is coming ”, details the head of the service.
The next phase in care is face-to-face. “When they arrive here, the security control verifies that they have already arrived, and then the appointment system, which is the one that gives you the order in which you will be attended, gives them priority, so that when they indicate that they are over 65 years, he skips the entire queue, so normally they don’t have to wait sitting on the bench but rather they are served directly”.
In this service they have even thought of the rest of the person they are waiting for so that there are no misunderstandings. “We have put a sticker on the wall that indicates that people over 65 have preference so that other users know that they are served first for that and not because they are sneaking in or something like that.”
But they not only help the elderly with the procedures of the Cabildo but also with other administrations that, for the moment, lack such specialized attention. “We saw that they had difficulties with procedures from other administrations, which request many steps electronically, such as obtaining a permanent password, and for them that is a barrier,” Covisa details.
Other administrations
The need to carry out procedures with other administrations led the Citizen Attention service to start a pilot project in one of the offices, with such good results that it has already been extended to the eight that the Cabildo has throughout the Island. “With this system Older people can ask us for an appointment called assistance, which is when they need to process with other administrations. This attention needs more time, and it can also be requested by phone or on the web. This service consists of “when they arrive here we have two self-management points, which can also be used by other users, for example if they do not have a computer at home or a scanner to attach documents, and we accompany them in the process they have to do ”. During this process, a public employee from the office accompanies them all the time, explaining the steps to take.
The head of the service qualifies that computers leave no trace of the procedures that are carried out on them, so that data does not have to be deleted between one user and another because it is done automatically.
This type of attention not only consists of the elderly completing the process successfully, but also learning how to do it for future visits. “We try to make them learn to do it well, and if they don’t keep up with the form, then they can make an appointment as many times as they need.”
The third way is the one that Ángeles use, that of direct attention in the office. “We have put an ordinance that attends them asking what they need, and if they are older, we attend them without an appointment or anything, they have to wait a bit on the bench and when there is a gap we attend them. And if they’re in a hurry, we’ll make an appointment for another day”.
All citizen service employees have been trained to provide greater and better care for the elderly, and precisely this specialization is what Aenor has certified. “This specialized service has come from us, that is, from the working committees that we have in place, which are the ones that propose the improvements that can be introduced,” explains Covisa.
There are many anecdotes, but above all, the need for attention that many older people have. “When they come here, they need their time for us to listen to them, they teach us their grandchildren, or they laugh with us when we prepare them for the photo of the transport pass and they ask us to go to the bathroom to get handsome,” says Covisa, who adds , which was precisely with the free transport, “when we saw how more began to come here, who needed more attention, a calmer conversation. People are very grateful for this attention, ”she adds.
A circle of help
José Jeremías finished carrying out the electronic procedure he needed with another administration with a smile. When asked what he thinks of the service, he assures that it is a very necessary service because “people like me, who have been autonomous all my life, organizing myself in my own way, without a computer, now even to ask for a piece of paper to renovate a bathroom, you need to do it online.”
This neighbor from Santa Cruz goes further and sees this care as a way to also help the youngest. “If they have to hire young people to serve us, it will be a way of giving them an opportunity.”
More than 500 people in digital training workshops
The older ones receive additional attention, which is training in computer issues. “We are working in digital skills workshops so that they know how to process, and for this we go to different associations, where, for example, we give them the permanent password there and help them to carry out procedures. We started little by little but they have been demanding much more, and now we go with our computers, our Wi-Fi, the person who has the competence to give the permanent password, and already there we help them to do the paperwork they need in the association itself, without the need for them to come to the offices”, explains Miate Covisa. In addition, “we also prepare workshops for people who are not associated and we put them together by zones, they call us by phone and tell us what they are interested in and we make groups.” Since the workshops began, 528 people have participated in them.
