Security and speed of service delivery: the citizen thanks
Endless queues for a stamp, outbursts against the “cunning people in line”, squabbles with bored and too often arrogant operators. Welcome to those public offices in Italy that have been buried in paperwork and glued to totally anachronistic analog work models and firmly anchored to the last century, light years away.
The story we are about to tell you, however, goes in a completely different direction: that of digitization and Cloud Computing.
The first element is to improve service levels, accessibility, usability and security. Then there is the interoperability of services within the Cloud model of the public administration; the reduction of the risk of “vendor lock-in”, i.e. the creation of a relationship of dependence with the service provider; the upgrading of the offer with the expansion and diversification of the supplier market. Then there is resilience, scalability, reversibility and data protection, as well as opening up the market to small and medium-sized enterprises.
No, it’s not Switzerland. What we have just listed are the principles that have inspired the Cloud strategy outlined by Agid, the Agency for Digital Italy, in line with the Strategy for the digital growth of the country and the Three-Year Plan for IT in the Public Administration.
The adoption of the Cloud infrastructure makes it possible, in fact, to improve the operational efficiency of ICT systems, to achieve significant cost reductions, to make software updates easier and cheaper and above all to improve security and data protection and to speed up the provision of services to citizens and businesses.
Among the regions of Italy, the most avant-garde is undoubtedly Piedmont, which has financed with an economic endowment of 5 million euros the “Cloud computing and Piedmontese public administration” call which allows, starting from 2 February 2021, Piedmontese municipalities to submit an application to access the migration services provided for in the call.
Municipal administrations that request it will be able to benefit from services to migrate their applications to the “Nivola” regional cloud, created by the CSI or Consortium for the Piedmont Information System, and comply with the national plans for the rationalization of public data centers and with the “Three-year Plan for Information Technology in the Public Administration”.
The regional measure will fully finance the costs of migrating the application part to the Cloud, leaving the Municipality to pay only the related annual fee for Cloud services. Municipalities will be admitted until funds are exhausted and the procedures for joining are described in the public notice.
To be sure of the benefits and necessity of this program is the young regional councilor for Innovation Matteo Marnati. “With this project
,” comments the councillor, ” entities that decide to voluntarily join the initiative will be supported in the migration process of their application systems, which will not have to be changed, but rather can be improved from a Cloud perspective, with the aim of ensuring security, continuity of service, integration between systems and meeting the requirements required by national guidelines. We are therefore confident of a significant adherence to the measure, with the aim of strengthening that spirit of cohesion between the local public administration on innovation and thus creating that local community on digital that represents an important success factor for the evolution of our territory, at a particularly critical time for the economy and competitiveness”.
A particularly significant challenge whose urgency and necessity is there for all to see. “The adoption of cloud infrastructures
,” says Pietro Pacini, general manager of CSI Piedmont, “allows entities to provide services to citizens and businesses more quickly, improves security and data protection, and makes software updates easier and cheaper
.”
Here, the safety of citizens and the speed in the provision of services. These are two key points that play the most important role in the process of digitization of public administration: improving the quality of life of already exhausted citizens.