The Government is going to appoint Óscar López as José Luis Escrivá’s replacement at the head of the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Civil Service, according to El País and confirmed to elDiario.es by government sources, following the latter’s appointment as the new governor of the Bank of Spain. López has been Pedro Sánchez’s Chief of Staff since 2021.
In his appearance at the Moncloa Palace on Wednesday afternoon, Sánchez highlighted López’s “commitment to the country” and pointed out that “he has been a great promoter of the technological and audiovisual revolution.” “He knows the public administration and has extensive experience collaborating with the private sector,” he added, which is why Sánchez insisted that as minister he will “serve with efficiency, honesty and dedication.”
López’s post will now be filled by Diego Rubio, who was previously Secretary General for Public Policy, European Affairs and Strategic Foresight, a position that was created at the end of 2023 to advise the President of the Government on the design and coordination of national and community public policies.
The appointment of López as minister is the latest chapter in the return to the political front line of this historical member of the PSOE who was ousted by Sánchez himself in 2017, after he promoted the candidacy of Patxi López in the primaries of the socialists.
López was first punished by the party’s management by removing him from the Senate spokesperson position in 2016 for having remained loyal to Sánchez in the turbulent Federal Committee of October 1, although he distanced himself from the sanchism immediately after not sharing the roadmap undertaken by the then ousted former general secretary.
López never completely disassociated himself from the party despite these distances. In June 2018, after the motion of censure, he was appointed president of Paradores, where he remained for three years until his signing for Moncloa.
He will now head the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Civil Service, whose main challenge is to modernise the Public Administration to make it more “agile and efficient”, as Sánchez himself promised a few months ago when Escrivá assumed these responsibilities.
There is an estimated total investment of 6,526.5 million euros in the objectives of Digitalisation of the administration and its processes, reduction of the temporary employment of public employees and improvement of their training and energy transition of the administration, through the rehabilitation of its buildings and the use of renewable energies.
But the first major decision that López will have to make will be on the Government’s mobile application to prevent minors from accessing pornographic content on the Internet. Escrivá had set the time for “after the summer” when the use of this app, designed to verify the age of the user and based on a European identification protocol, would become mandatory for websites with adult content.
The new minister will have to decide whether the plan follows the course set by his predecessor, a strategy that generated great controversy due to the accusation that the Government intends to draw up “lists” of porn consumers, despite the fact that the technology designed by the EU would not allow this possibility. Other institutions are also participating in the project, such as the Spanish Data Protection Agency, the National Commission of Markets and Competition and the National Mint and Stamp Factory.
Source: www.eldiario.es
