Citizen card

Every day, citizens, tourists and enterprises need to access a range of city services and resources, and in some cases to pay for them. Meanwhile, city councils are also developing various policies to boost healthy habits and social behavior to improve the quality of life.
The Gijon City Council (ES) fulfils both these groups of needs with a smart card (Gijon Citizen Card) that gives citizens access to the city's services and public facilities, such as shared transport, cultural activities and digital services. It also sets up citizenship profiles to better match citizens' needs with public policies. The Citizen Card has become both an integrated tool for public services and a coordination and loyalty mechanism. Launched in 2002, the Citizen Card is now used by more than 300.000 people to access and pay for municipal services and activities.

The following list shows the different uses of the Citizen Card:

• Citizen Terminals: there are one-stop shops where citizens can access different procedures around the clock and with terminals that are located in the neighborhoods (currently, there are 21);
• Public Transport: citizens can recharge the Citizen Card to use the bus. As it is a personal item, the card has information about citizens' situations and adapts the prices, and if someone loses their card the transport company refunds the credit previously put on the card;
• Virtual Office: access to online services;
• Parking tickets: to get a ticket to park the car in a restricted area;
• Libraries & Media Centres: the card allows members to borrow books, CDs and DVDs. There are 12 Tele-centres, each with approximately 15 computers where citizens can take courses or can connect to the Internet for one hour using the Citizen Card;
• Public toilets: with the Citizen Card, 18 equipped toilets can be used for free. Otherwise users have to pay for it;
• Free entry to local museums;
• Use of Bicycles: Throughout the city, there are 64 bikes that can be picked up and returned to eight terminals. The bikes are available for use free of charge for Citizen Card holders;
• Leisure Activities and venues: With the Citizen Card, it is possible to pay for and book different sport and cultural activities and venues;
• Car sharing of public electric vehicles: Free recharge of electric vehicles at five points in the city.

The Citizen Card will contribute to sustainable urban living because it promotes and facilitates the use of public transport and other sustainable ways of transportation such as car sharing or electric vehicles. Other uses linked to the promotion of sports and cultural activities are very important to foster integration, good health habits and to avoid social exclusion. The Citizen Card also contains details about users’ socio-economic situations, which allows us to adapt the rates of the different services, contributing in this way to the reduction of poverty. One of the current aims of the Citizen Card is to work with a holistic and participative approach, because it combines different services that are interconnected and can share relevant information. It also allows citizens to participate and use the services throughout different tools (Citizen Terminals, online, etc.). Additionally, a free training session is offered on how to use the Citizen Card, favouring the digital inclusion of some groups and connectivity, and minimizing unnecessary trips. To sum up, the Citizen Card plays a key role in the development of sustainable mobility by encouraging behaviours and habits of a healthy life, promoting a culture of energy efficiency and sustainable growth.

The Citizen Card will contribute to sustainable urban living because it promotes and facilitates the use of public transport and other sustainable ways of transportation such as car sharing or electric vehicles. Other uses linked to the promotion of sports and cultural activities are very important to foster integration, good health habits and to avoid social exclusion. The Citizen Card also contains details about users’ socio-economic situations, which allows us to adapt the rates of the different services, contributing in this way to the reduction of poverty.
One of the current aims of the Citizen Card is to work with a holistic and participative approach, because it combines different services that are interconnected and can share relevant information. It also allows citizens to participate and use the services throughout different tools (Citizen Terminals, online, etc.). Additionally, a free training session is offered on how to use the Citizen Card, favoring the digital inclusion of some groups and connectivity, and minimizing unnecessary trips.
To sum up, the Citizen Card plays a key role in the development of sustainable mobility by encouraging behaviors' and habits of a healthy life, promoting a culture of energy efficiency and sustainable growth.

People and legal entities including associations, migrants and foreigners can have a Citizen Card. Currently, there are 363.966 cards held by people and 1.496 by enterprises. Gijón has a population of 272,202 (you can check the data in real time on our open data portal), but people who are citizens and carry out any activity in Gijón can also have a Citizen Card. The city schools also have Citizen Cards to take part in the programming of cultural and sport activities. During the launch phase of the project, all citizen groups were involved. It is worth mentioning the incorporation of participative movements in the development phase. The methodology was focused on the active participation and collaboration of municipal departments in charge of each civic sector (Sport, Education, Social Services, Mobility, Governance and Sustainability) which have been acting as mediators with different citizen groups. Examples of contributors were the associative movements incorporated from neighborhood groups and economic and social sectors of the city, such as architects, engineers, the hotel industry, building and transport enterprises, traders, etc.

Gijon has sought to turn the citizen card into a living element that accomplishes the new needs of the citizens and the city: to offer citizens good quality services, have one card for all municipal actions, improve existing functions and add new ones. It has become an essential tool to the quality of life in Gijon City: "Smart living". Citizens of Gijón, businesses and tourists could access municipal services, allowing a reduction in bureaucracy, time saving, ensuring access to services, promoting policies of social inclusion, sustainability, smart growth and sustainable mobility.

During the lifetime of the URBACT Transfer Network, Gijon has enhanced the portfolio of services and turned the citizen card into the driving force to achieve a smart society for innovative and sustainable city by implementing the following measures:

• Study the use of Gijón Citizen Card with a Commerce loyalty Card to encourage retail trade
• Possibility of including credit linked to Social Services Subsidies
• Access to trash bins with citizen card: policy of tax incentives to recycle
• Access to charging points of electrical vehicles
• Interoperability of citizen cards between European cities. Evaluation of conclusions given by Eurocties Citizen Card Lab
• Communication with urban equipment and facilities (IoT)
• Energy efficiency: streetlights, smart management of equipment
• Advantageous use of data provided by the citizen cards Big data management
• App for mobile devices development
• Appointment management in public offices due to Covid-19 limitations
• Control access to different venues due to Covid-19

The Citizen Card has an average of 32,000 uses/day and around 1,000,000 uses/month.

Gijon led the Card4all Network over 2.5 years, transferring its practices to 5 other cities: Suceava (Romania), Aveiro (Portugal), Clermont Ferrand (France), Jurmala (Latvia), and Sassari (Italy). You can, in particular, check Aveiro’s Good practice here. The approach was based on the 3 learning approaches: Experiential, Reflective, and Contextual support. All these covered topics (I.T integration, standardization, interoperability of Citizen Cards between European cities, business models, governance, data protection, integration with smartphones, web applications, local cross-sectorial services, pool of services to be considered, policy support, and, marketing strategy to reach visibility and a sense of owning) whose outputs can be found in the Final report of the Network available online. Card4all and Gijón as mentor city was also a key contributor to the Eurocities’ Knowledge Society Forum on Citizen Cards.