Service: BOSCO - Distribution of financial aid

Responsible organisation: Secretary of State for Energy (Central-Government)

In November 2017, the office of the Secretary of State for Energy released some software, known as BOSCO, to companies providing electricity. The aim of BOSCO was to determine whether people were entitled to financial aid to help; them with their electricity bills. The reasoning behind the ADM was twofold. Firstly, that it would make the process much easier for aid applicants (although, this didn’t seem to be the case judging by the large number of complaints the system received) and secondly, that it would also make the process easier and more efficient for the public utility companies.After receiving many reports that the software was not functioning properly, Civio, a Madrid-based non-profit investigative newsroom and citizen lobby, discovered that BOSCO was systematically denying aid to eligible applicants. Civio asked the government for the BOSCO source code to identify why those errors were happening. The request passed through three different ministries before ending up at the Committee for Transparency and Good Governance, which refused to share the code saying that it would violate copyright regulations (even though the software had been developed by the public administration itself). In July 2019, Civio filed an administrative complaint arguing that the source code of any ADM system used by the public administration should be made public by default, in the same way that legal texts are made public. The case – which at the time of writing was ongoing – could end up at the Spanish Supreme Court, and could set a legal precedent.

Additional information

Source Open Innovation Regione Lombardia
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Start/end date 2017 - 2020.0
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