The AEPD, awarded by the Association of Promoting Centers of Excellence for its actions carried out for the protection of children and adolescents in the digital environment

(November, the 3rd of 2023). The National Association of Promoting Centers of Excellence, CEX, made up of public and private organisations from twelve autonomous communities, has announced the Spanish innovations winning the national phase of the Quality Innovation Award, QIA. The Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) has been awarded in the category Innovation in the public sector for its project Practical initiatives to protect children on the Internet with healthy, positive and safe environments.

The organising committee of the QIAs has considered the AEPD’s project as a quality innovation, an innovation that meets five characteristics: novelty, usefulness, learning, customer orientation and effectiveness.

This international competition, created in Finland in 2007 by Excellence Finland, seeks to promote innovative projects in order to share experiences and project the best, to increase the competitiveness of the participating countries.

In addition to the Public Sector Innovation Award awarded to the AEPD, there has been seven more Innovation categories of awards: Potential, Circular Economy and Zero Carbon Footprint, Health Sector, Education Sector, Microenterprise & Startups, SMEs and Large Enterprise, which have been granted respectively to Dobecure, S.L., Aitiip Centro Tecnológico, Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, ONCE, Opground, Zeulab, S.L. and Sacyr.

The awards of the QIA Spain 2023 Awards will be presented on November, the 28th at the CSIC headquarters in Madrid. These innovations will compete globally to win the Quality Innovation Award, an international edition, to be held in 2024. 

This award for the initiatives launched by the Agency for the Protection of Children and Adolescents on the Internet adds to the 25 awards that the AEPD has already received for its actions to protect people in a digital world, seven of them in the last year.

The project's description

Among its priority objectives, the AEPD protects people on the Internet and especially minors, as a particularly vulnerable group. In line with the Corporate Social Responsibility Plan of the AEPD, work has been done to raise awareness among children and their families about the responsible use of the internet through various campaigns (More than a mobile phone, One click can ruin your life or For all that is behind) and specific materials, such as The guide that does not come with your phone, as well as promoted work groups with different agencies to carry out protection actions in a coordinated and acted way against websites of content for adults that do not correctly verify the age of the people who access them. In parallel, the Agency has a specialised childcare service and a specific website, in addition to the introduction of the term digital violence in the Organic Law on the Comprehensive Protection of Children and Adolescents against Violence, which includes the possibility of reporting the existence of illegal content on the Internet that seriously undermines the right to protection of personal data. In this sense, the Priority Channel created by the Agency is a pioneering initiative that allows requesting the urgent removal of sexual or violent content published on the Internet without the consent of the people who appear on them.