By David Pérez Osorio from FUNDITEC’s Project Office
For our March post we wanted to interview Alberto Martínez Lacambra, General Director of the Public Business Entity, Red.es, a key player in the promotion and encouragement of R&D projects. Currently, thanks to the support and funding from Red.es, FUNDITEC is collaborating with two companies in the execution of two R&D projects framed in digital disruptive technologies such as AI, cybersecurity and blockchain. In addition, from FUNDITEC every year we boost project proposals for the calls launched by Red.es.
Within Red.es, Alberto Martínez Lacambra plays an essential role as a promoter of public-private collaboration, key in the current and future management of Red.es. He holds a degree in Economics and Business Administration from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and in Law from the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and has an extensive professional career in financial and team management, within the public and private sector, as well as in the national and international entrepreneurial world, in the areas of services and activities, always closely linked to digital transformation.
- The trajectory of red.es is already very extensive (in 2022 you will celebrate your 20th anniversary), how could we define “in a tweet” the work and objective of red.es today?
I don’t know if we have 280 characters to summarize the work of Red.es, but we can try with a small thread. Red.es is a reference entity, both in digital transformation processes and in the management of European Funds, including those of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, NextGenerationEU.
From Red.es, we carry out programs to promote the digital economy, innovation, training for young people and professionals and support for SMEs by promoting the efficient and intensive use of ICTs. We also deploy programs for the implementation of technology in public administration services, especially in health and education, and we work for the development of smart cities and territories.
- The new National and European Strategies, driven by the post-pandemic mechanisms, have focused on digitalization as the backbone of economic recovery and of all technological and innovation programs.
There is no doubt that the digitization of our economy and our productive fabric is an unstoppable and necessary process, it is a true revolution that involves a paradigm shift aimed at putting the digital at the center of a more efficient, sustainable and inclusive production model.
The privilege of being part of the European Union gives us the unique opportunity to access Next GenerationEU funds, and it is the responsibility of all of us, public sector, private sector, society in general, that these funds reach this segment of our business sector that accounts for 51% of employment in our country.
To address this challenge, the Government has set out its roadmap through the Spain Digital Agenda 2025 and the digitalization axis of the Plan for the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience of the Spanish economy, which plans to allocate a third of total public investment to digitalization. The SME Digitalization Plan will mobilize almost 5,000 million to support SMEs and the self-employed throughout their digitalization process.
The role of Red.es is to manage various programs that are being implemented thanks to these European Funds.
One of these programs is Kit Digital, which will allocate 3,067 million euros to the digitalization of companies with less than 50 employees and the self-employed.
This program is part of Acelera pyme, with its double aspect of the creation of a wide network of almost 150 offices throughout Spain that will support the digital transformation of SMEs, self-employed and entrepreneurs, and the creation of the platform acelerapyme which is a dynamic platform with valuable content, good practices of digital transformation and self-diagnosis tools so that it is a digital meeting point for SMEs.
We are also working on the development of digital technologies to boost the digitization of companies by accelerating the processes of including AI and other enabling technologies in their production processes.
- What specific objectives are you setting for this decade in the different digital technologies?
The objectives we set ourselves at Red.es coincide with those defined by the Government in the Spain 2025 Digital Agenda and are aligned with the digital policies set by the European Commission. They are none other than to promote more sustainable and inclusive growth, driven by the synergies of the digital and ecological transitions, that reaches society as a whole and reconciles the new opportunities offered by the digital world with respect for constitutional values and the protection of individual and collective rights.
As far as Red.es is concerned, we have previously talked about the digitization of companies, but we are also working in other areas such as the digitization of public services or the deployment of 5G technology, which will make a significant contribution to increasing economic productivity, social progress and territorial structuring. 5G technology will be a true revolution and, aware of this, we have launched two calls for the selection of 5G pilot projects, with an aggregate budget of 79.7 M€, co-financed with ERDF funds, through which a total of 10 projects are being carried out in different parts of Spain, involving more than 120 use cases that identify applications of 5G technology in 16 different sectors, in areas as diverse as education, health, industry, agriculture and tourism.
- Both companies and research centers have to be at the forefront and position themselves through innovation for the disruptive technologies of the future. From red.es, what would you say will be the new “king” technologies at the end of this decade?
Undoubtedly, one of these technologies is artificial intelligence, although it is not necessary to wait until the end of the decade to consider it a “king” technology, at this moment, the present, it already is, and it is, therefore, the time to see artificial intelligence as a reality and as an opportunity for which there is a shared responsibility between the public and private spheres on how we incorporate it into our system. It is an opportunity because there are studies that indicate that in the coming decades, countries that do not bet on artificial intelligence could see their economic growth potential reduced by 50%. For this reason, for our business fabric -including research centers- it is time to take the initiative and differentiate ourselves from the rest of the competitors in a globalized market.
This is something that is possible if we take into account that only in the last call for artificial intelligence that we launched from Red.es, for grants for industrial research projects and experimental development in AI and its integration into value chains, almost 1200 applications were submitted and 75% of them corresponded to SMEs.
On the other hand, we in Europe have an important role to play in achieving an ethical and humanistic AI, in which citizens have a relevant role and can exercise their rights. In achieving this objective, which will surely have a differential value, all the actors involved in the application of artificial intelligence have a fundamental role to play, since it will depend to a large extent on them to integrate it into our lives and put it at the service of citizens.
- Technology centers play a key role in R&D&i as innovation drivers for companies and, especially, for SMEs. how can we, as centers, focus this driving action to align ourselves with the objectives and policies of red.es?
Public-private collaboration and the involvement of all the actors are fundamental in tackling something as transcendental as the digitalization of SMEs and the self-employed, in which we are all rowing in the same direction and no one can be left behind. And dynamization is undoubtedly one of the aspects in which this collaboration is evident. One example is the Kit Digital program, where we have set up the figure of a volunteer representative to process the aid on behalf of the beneficiary company. This voluntary representative can be not only other companies, but also business associations and technology centers that become a key element in providing advice and support to the small companies and self-employed recipients of the aid.
- From red.es you mobilize numerous aid and funding programs for projects and actions that promote digital progress, what main calls can we expect for this 2022?
Of course, at this point it is obligatory to refer to the Digital Kit program that I mentioned earlier and that has just been launched to contribute to the digital transformation of our small businesses and freelancers. It is an ambitious program with a budget of 3,067 million euros, funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU. On March 15, the deadline for companies corresponding to the first segment, i.e. those with between 10 and less than 50 employees, to apply for grants was opened until September 15, and throughout the year we will open two other calls for applications from companies with less than 10 employees and the self-employed.
I would also like to emphasize that we are doing everything possible to make it easier for companies to apply for aid. We are managing the robotization of the access to information available in the databases of the State public administrations, such as those of the Ministry of Finance or the General Treasury of the Social Security. Agreements have also been signed with the General Council of Notaries, the Spanish Registrars, the Association of Administrative Managers and the Spanish Chamber of Commerce with the aim of simplifying the process. The intention is to directly assume the greatest possible bureaucratic burden in the presentation of documentation, so that, with an authorization from the company or the self-employed to consult the databases, a responsible statement or basic information from the notary, the greatest possible amount of information can be obtained in an automated way to simplify the processing of the aids as much as possible, from the applicant’s point of view. And we have also enabled, as I was saying, the figure of the voluntary representative who can process the aid on behalf of the beneficiary company.
