The Kit Digital program has concluded its application period after distributing over 3.500 million euros in aid to SMEs and self-employed workers in 92% of Spanish municipalities. Managed by Red.es, it exceeded the European Commission's initial targets by 127% through technological innovations like AI robots. This initiative boosted not only business digitalization but also administrative processes.
The Kit Digital program, funded by NextGenerationEU European funds, closed its application intake phase in October, having granted over 880,000 aids that could exceed one million after reviewing the last requests. These subsidies were distributed across 7,500 municipalities, covering 92% of Spanish territory and providing a significant boost to the digitalization of SMEs and self-employed workers.
Red.es, the public entity in charge, deployed 39 artificial intelligence robots to process applications, performing over 25 million automatic checks using data from the Tax Agency, Social Security, and the Notary Public. This enabled legal representation validation in seconds for 99.7% of cases, speeding up what previously took weeks. Víctor Rodrigo, Director of Systems and Kit Digital at Red.es, stated: “In Red.es we will not work as we did before.” The saved time was used for 700,000 proactive calls to assist companies, humanizing administrative service.
Collaboration with the Spanish Chamber of Commerce facilitated access in rural areas, such as a livestock farm that used the voucher for geolocated collars on its cows. Julián López Arenas, Competitiveness Director, emphasized that “Kit Digital plants the seed” for ongoing structural digitalization.
Digitalizing agents, mostly SMEs (97%), saw their sales grow by 65%, surpassing the technology sector's 24%. María José Rodríguez from La Clave Gráfica noted: “Kit Digital has been great for removing self-employed workers' reluctance to invest.” Beneficiaries like Elisabet Jiménez from Control Entálpico switched from paper to digital systems, observing that “the first thing they will do is check the website”.
Regarding rumors of a 'free laptop', Rodrigo clarified that devices must be used for 12 months, with log monitoring; incidents are only 0.3%. Recently, Kit Digital 360 was launched, a portal to visualize real-time impact, promoting transparency with 28 million managed documents.
