Femp.IA Methodology: Assessing the AI maturity level of Spanish local entities

Abstract

The Femp.IA Methodology is the reference framework through which the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) invites Spanish local entities to assess their institutional readiness to adopt artificial intelligence systems. After summarising its structure — three maturity levels (Electronic Administration, RPA and AI), a six-dimension organisational capability matrix and a phase-based framework with KPIs and OKRs — the article provides an original critical contribution: it compares Femp.IA with the AI maturity models for the public sector published in 2025 by CNA and UNESCO, to identify which dimensions it covers solidly (strategy, data, technology, talent, use cases) and which remain underdeveloped (risk management, cybersecurity, appeal or human-review mechanisms, and fundamental-rights impact assessment); it examines the real conditions of applicability across municipalities of different capacity; and it formulates recommendations to strengthen its alignment with the European AI Act and the Spanish draft law on AI governance. The study, descriptive-analytical in nature and based on documentary sources, acknowledges as a limitation the absence of aggregate data on the actual use of Femp.IA by local entities. It concludes that AI maturity should not be measured solely by the technical sophistication of the systems deployed, but by the institutional capacity to generate public value with transparency, human oversight, accountability and effective safeguards for citizens.