83.75% of the digitalization agents of elKIT.CAT find it very difficult to receive the Kit Digital grants.
According to a survey conducted by Fundació .cat, 42.5% of the digitalization agents of elKIT.CAT believe that the Kit Digital has not contributed to improving the digitalization of businesses.
Fundació .cat wanted to gather the opinions of the digitalization agents of elKIT.CAT. In order to assess the situation, we prepared a questionnaire to give the agents in the elKIT.CAT database the opportunity to express their opinions on the following aspects:
1. Ease of accreditation as a digitalization agent.
2. Ease of receiving the Kit Digital grants.
3. Ease of attracting new clients thanks to the Kit Digital.
The survey was sent to the elKIT.CAT database (more than 3,500 digitalization agents) during March of this year. We consider the results to be significant and serve as a barometer to evaluate the sentiment of the digitalization agents who are part of elKIT.CAT.
The open dialogue with the digitalization agents allowed us to perceive that the level of satisfaction with this government initiative was not very high. However, we had not quantified the magnitude of the discontent.
Difficulty in accessing and receiving payment from the Kit Digital
The data shows that, according to the respondents’ opinions, this initiative presented problems from the beginning, as 52.5% find it difficult or very difficult to be accredited as a digitalization agent. And although over 66% claim to have gained new clients thanks to the Kit Digital, nearly half of them have only completed between 1 and 5 projects.
The most striking data is that over 93% of the surveyed digitalization agents negatively evaluate the process of receiving the Kit Digital grants (10% find it difficult and 83.75% find it very difficult).
Use of Catalan in digitalization projects
The Kit Digital initiative requires the main language of the projects to be Spanish; however, almost 37% of these projects have also been carried out in Catalan.
A challenging situation for small businesses
Finally, considering that the majority of the surveyed digitalization agents are companies with 2 to 10 employees, their opinions demonstrate their frustration regarding delayed payment, lack of rigor, support, and personalization, insufficient funds for precarious projects, and bureaucracy.
These opinions show that the Kit Digital has been perceived as an initiative filled with good intentions but has generated more dissatisfaction than motivation among the digitalization agents.
In June 2022, the .cat Foundation, together with the General Council of Chambers of Catalonia and with the support of the Department of Language Policy of the Government of Catalonia, created elKIT.CAT, a portal that allows searching for accredited digitalization agents registered with red.es that offer their services in Catalan, whether within Catalan-speaking territories or from any other part of the country.
It is a very precise search engine that allows filtering by proximity and conducting accurate searches for the services offered by digitalization companies.
At the same time, it aims to be a useful portal for promoting Catalan in the digital and business spheres, providing visibility to companies and software tools that work in our language.
