In pre-confinement Spain, the digitisation of our economic and social reality was being worked on, but without rhythm. The apostles of the physical still found an echo for their arguments, especially in a community where socialisation is an essential part of the character.
In just a few days we have learned that pandemics can repeat themselves and that in times of confinement, long live bandwidth. That is why the process of digital transformation of this country is going to accelerate in such a way that the construction of a Spain 2.0 is going to be done at a speed that we would not have reached otherwise.
The telework is the first thing that companies and public administrations need to re-evaluate. Before the lock-in, remote working was seen as a way of facilitating work-life balance. Today it is the best way to keep the business up and running in the face of unforeseen events.
If you want to design a good remote working scheme, the most practical way is to extend as far as possible the obligation to implement contingency and business continuity planseven if you are not a critical company for society. When an organisation undergoes such a test, it quickly sees where the critical points and deficits are. It is time to give up the laziness of setting up these committees for things that never happen, because we can see that they do. We already know that a bus driver cannot telework or that a nuclear power plant cannot shut down because the core melts, but, beyond the obvious, there is a huge amount of work to be done to precipitate change.
This is the case of our education system. The open debate on what to do with the 2019-20 school year is a consequence of the fact that the digitalisation of education is in its infancy at all levels, including business schools. We lack everything: educational material built in online language, which has nothing to do with a repository of documents to be printed, there is a lack of tools for teachers and students, and, above all, there is a lack of practice. One does not go to bed analogue on the Sunday of freedom and get up digital on the Monday of confinement.
If the administrations and schools had made a contingency plan, they would have everything mapped out. The teachers who reject the virtual world and the students who don't make it due to lack of tidiness, lack of internet connection, or both. It is easy to imagine a flat with two adults and one or two children, it is the most common, but how many of these homes have three or four computers so that everyone can telework and follow the classes? Each neighbourhood has its own reality, not to extend the zoom to the urban world and to empty Spain.
The bosses of the public education system, not forgetting the judiciary and their files, must urgently contact their colleagues at the Tax Agency, which as always and every April 1st has launched its income tax campaign, thanks to the fact that it is completely digitalised. What's more, many other procedures of the dear taxpayer with the Administration operate on the platform built by the Treasury.
In the area of private enterprise, inequality is enormous.. There are companies that have discovered with bitterness that if they had prepared themselves, if they knew their customers better and were able to address them, they would not have had zero turnover for four weeks. Don't cry, get down to work now, because the critical point will not be that your company goes digital, it is the customer who has been diving into the networks for weeks and has lost sight of you.
What is working best in times of burrowing are those businesses that have embraced digital, whether by force or conviction. This is the case of the banks and the media, two sectors in full digital transformation and which are operating from their homes, or the telecoms. One day the enormous value of Telefónica's commitment to fibre optics to provide bandwidth will be recognised. That infrastructure is what makes it possible for everything else to work.
The telecoms, energy companies and banks and their means of payment are the ones that make a peaceful enclosure possible. These and others add up to what populism identifies with the demonised Ibex, which they avoid acknowledging its contribution to the reconstruction of this country and which will be key to the new Spain 2.0.
Aurelio Medel
PhD in Information Sciences and lecturer at the Complutense University of Madrid.
He has dedicated half of his professional life to economic journalism (Expansión, Diario 16, Cinco Días and ABC) and the other half to communications at Banco Santander, where he was Director of Corporate Communications.