Loading player For years in Italy there has been talk of the need to manage public services and citizens' data in a more efficient and secure way: one of the technologies suitable for this purpose is the cloud, the external storage system that allows you to store and move data on different servers. to make them available anytime, anywhere via the internet. The cloud would allow the public administration to manage large amounts of data, eliminate old and insecure local data centers, and share databases quickly compared to the current and known communication difficulties between institutions.
The newspapers have returned to talk about it in the last few days after some interviews given by the Minister of Digital Transition Vittorio Colao, who explained that he wanted to start an “operational assessment” of the cloud for the public administration by the end of June, in order to make the project operational since 2022 for at least 200 central bodies and 80 local health authorities. In his speech at the Trento Economy Festival, Colao said that 95 per cent of public administration servers are not in secure conditions and for this reason “more secure clouds are needed so that sensitive data of citizens and less sensitive ones are kept safe “.
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Already last year, when the government then led by Giuseppe Conte entrusted Colao and a committee of experts with the study of a strategy for relaunching the country after the epidemic, in the final document called “Initiatives for relaunching – Italy 2020-2022 “We talked about the” Cloud PA “project (public administration, ed) with different objectives: to ensure significant savings in resources, greater security, consistency and interoperability of databases. The cloud would allow, among other things, to make many of the public services that are not yet digital accessible online, to disseminate digital identity and domicile, and to create a single national electronic health record to overcome the current system managed by the Regions.
Among the points indicated in the document there was also the creation of a National Strategic Pole (PSN), for which a concise explanation can be found on the website of the Department for Digital Transformation: “A legal entity controlled by the State which will have a number of reduced of national data centers, on which to convey all the infrastructures that today manage the strategic services of the central public administrations guaranteeing the functioning of the country's crucial services through safety, quality and efficiency standards “.
With the creation of the national strategic pole, all the other infrastructures that manage ordinary services and citizens' data will have to be reorganized through the disposal of the most obsolete data centers. Funds from the Recovery Plan will also be used to create the National Strategic Pole, which assigned 900 million euros to this objective and envisaged a collaboration between public and private for the award of the service.
As reported by Il Sole 24 Ore, Tim and Google could present a proposal together with a public partner such as Cassa Depositi e Prestiti or Sogei, a company 100% controlled by the Ministry of Finance. Fincantieri with Amazon Web Services and Leonardo with Microsoft have also begun to collaborate in view of a possible participation in a tender, which is not yet known when it will be banned even if from the reconstructions in the newspapers it seems that the first procedures may begin as early as July.
There are many other outstanding issues: at the moment it is not excluded that a public tender can be launched without providing for the model of collaboration between public and private. And again according to the reconstructions of the Sole 24 Ore, it has yet to be decided whether a newco should be created, a new company controlled by the Ministry of Finance, as an intermediate subject between the national strategic pole and the public administrations to help them in the migration of data and services. .
The involvement of huge companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft has raised some perplexity, in particular about the public control of data and services. In an interview with Repubblica, Colao made it clear that he wanted to follow the French model, to “bring together the best of both worlds: collaboration with private individuals, but also the protection and security that the state must provide”. In reality, France has announced that it intends to give the management of its public data exclusively to European operators to avoid foreign interference, in particular from the United States.
In fact, in 2018 the United States approved a federal law called the Cloud Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) which, in the event of a judicial authority mandate, requires operators to provide digital data also stored on servers abroad. albeit with some exceptions and guarantees. France has provided for the use of non-European technologies and software only under license or supply, thus maintaining total control over the data.
“The French model is based on the idea that public administration data is completely out of the control of foreign companies, even when they provide technology,” explained Innocenzo Genna, a lawyer and Internet and telecommunications expert, on HuffPost. “In other words, the cryptographic keys and the tools for deciding on data processing will be completely in the hands of European companies, while foreign ones will simply provide the technology. If this were not the case, the data of the French PA would be attackable by the American jurisdictions “.
Genna argues that the road to a national cloud is still long and not without misunderstandings, that the state will have to pay attention to the agreements to regulate the possible collaborations between public and private companies, and that only with true control of the data can a “Digital sovereignty”.
