Abstract:

The information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been identified in the last times as determinant elements for the economic (improvement of the productivity and the competitiveness) and social advance. For this reason the governments of the developed countries have been providing special attention to this new dimension of the growth and socioeconomic progress.
The European Union establishes in the year 2000, in the Agenda of Lisbon, the bases of a development plan, which has the aim of turning the common market into a highly competitive and dynamic economy. The Spanish government, not foreign to this need to reach the levels of development of the advanced countries and to comply with this European Strategy, designs a National Reform Programme. In one of the strategic cores of this Program, concretely in the impulse to R&D&I (Research & Development & Innovation), that has been started by the programme Ingenio 2010, is included Plan Avanza, approved in November, 2005.
Plan Avanza is based on the European initiative i2010: A European Information Society for the growth and the employment, presented by the European Commission on May 31, 2005. The orientation of this Plan is to obtain the suitable utilization of the ICTs to contribute to the success of a model of economic growth based on the increase of the competitiveness and the productivity, the promotion of the social and regional equality and the improvement of the well-being and the quality of life of citizens.
Its implementation, which calls for close collaboration between the government, the Autonomous Communities and the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces, is responsibility of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade, specifically of the Secretary of Telecommunications and Information Society.
Plan Avanza is constructed in four areas of action: Advancing Citizenship, Digital Economy, Public Digital Services and New Digital Context.
Each area of action contemplates a series of measures: direct action (to provide with the economic resources), impulse (to contribute public resources as subvention or credits), measures of diffusion, dinamización and communication and, finally, initiatives orientated to favour normative changes, which promote the development of information society.
The aim of our work is to carry out an analysis of the actions of the area “Advancing Citizenship” in the Autonomous Community of Galicia. The purpose of this area is to make citizens participants of the advantages of Internet and ICTs utilization in daily life.

Keywords:

information and communication technologies (ict), information society (is)1, citizenship, plan.