“We are just a few months away from the launch of the new Citizen Card,” revealed Mário Campolargo, Secretary of State for Digitalization and Administrative Modernization in an interview with Dinheiro Vivo at the Web Summit. A physical card with more security elements and that “connects with the most necessary European parameters and standards”. The big news is that it is a Citizen Card contactless, “enabling simpler, more intuitive and more direct use, in a range of applications that we will develop over time”.

The Citizen Card law, unveiled by the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Administrative Modernization, has already been approved by the Council of Ministers. At the same time, the government official added, all “new features that the Citizen Card brings” were also approved. The document “is in the Assembly of the Republic” and Mário Campolargo hopes that it will be approved before the dissolution of parliament.

Transition to digital

Every day we use our mobile phones to perform more and more actions. Nothing to worry about, Mário Campolargo, who considers this situation “a natural tendency of a society moving to digital”. A movement that should not be seen as a threat. On the contrary. “The state must be a leader in this dimension of the digitalization of services.”

Or, in other words, “bring the Citizen’s Store to your mobile phone”. Something that is already being done. “We have a unique digital document portfolio in Europe,” said Mário Campolargo, referring to the id.gov.pt which, together with the digital mobile key, “is really a catalyst for digitalization and our relationship with public administration,” he believes.

The Governor gave as an example the relationship that currently exists between the public administration and citizens, with greater proactivity from public services, for example informing them when it is necessary to re-validate a document. “Until about a year and a half ago, we didn’t inform people that they had a driver’s license that needed to be renewed.” Nowadays this is done via text message. But that alone is not enough. And the new thing is that the message now comes via notification and that, from the moment “they click on the notification, all the information contextualized in our national notary registers does not have to be written again”. A kind of ‘virtual assistant that guides us through our relationship’, based on ‘generative artificial intelligence, which allows us to have a dialogue in natural language.

Mário Campolargo also said that “we will have more and more services available on our ePortugal and on our phone”.

PRR and support for startups

As a way to improve the attribution of vouchers for startupsthe governor says that this must be done objectively. In other words, taking into account the number of applications, since ‘only 50% of startups who participated” were considered. Mário Campolargo added that “we give about 750 startups the possibility of starting a new product or service.” The government official recalled the importance of the various initiatives of the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR), especially in “component 16” and the fact that they are interrelated are articulated. “It is the merit of the virtuosity of the different components of C16 and that we will continue to develop the ecosystem of entrepreneurship in Portugal.”

Dinheiro Vivo journalist