In the current era of information and knowledge management and in an electronic administration setting, the web portals of the higher and executive bodies of the State administration, duly placed on the portal of the relevant Ministry, constitute an obligatory channel through which to channel, on the one hand, all the information that the Authority must provide to the Information Society, and, on the other, administrative procedures and services, both in terms of their processing and in terms of their follow-up.
This flow of information to be processed through the web portals is also growing rapidly thanks to the confluence of several determining factors: the citizen's demand for transparent management from public administrations, characteristic of democratic systems; globalisation driven by the Internet phenomenon and the increasing availability of digitised information and management capacity, characteristic of the digital society in which we are installed.
The importance of this service is particularly evident within the State Secretariat for Budgets and Expenditure of the Ministry of Finance, given that the nature of its functions makes the information generated and associated services particularly relevant to sectors as different as business, universities, national and international public administrations and institutions, as well as citizens.
The State Secretariat for Budgets and Expenditure is the superior body which, under the authority of the Minister of Finance, is responsible for directing and coordinating actions relating to the planning, programming and budgeting of the State public sector and its personnel costs, the design, planning and actions relating to Community funds and regional incentives, in particular, the management of funds intended for regional economic policy and the monitoring and management of Spanish participation in the European Union budget.
It is also attached to the State Secretariat for Budgets and Expenditure, the General Intervention of the State Administration, with the rank of under-secretariat, which is responsible for internal control, through the exercise of the role of financial controller and control, the monitoring and control of subsidies and public aid, the actions arising from the exercise of control of Community funds, with regard to the exercise of the functions of audit authority in those programmes in which the IGAE has such status, the direction and management of public accounting, the formation of public sector economic accounts and the planning, design and execution of the computer policy of the State Secretariat.
Since 1997, a web portal for the citizen has been available, containing a wide range of information and services, which is being expanded every day in order to bring the budgetary administration closer to the citizen and to the other bodies of the public administrations.