The current Article 117, paragraph r) of the Italian Constitution attributes to the State the exclusive legislation on "weights, measures and determination of time" as well as the "statistical and IT coordination of data" and the legislation on "original works". With the new Constitution, the exclusive competence of coordinating "the processes and related IT infrastructures and platforms of the state, regional and local administration" was added.
THEexclusion of IT processes and platforms from the Constitution it is understandable: the founding fathers of the time could not even have predicted the evolution of information technology, which however over time became a fundamental aspect in the life and administration of the State. This absence has caused considerable malfunctions over the years, favoring a growing fragmentation of our country's information systems, with enormous problems of coordination, interoperability, costs, efficiency of the services offered.
Just think of the multiplicity of IT platforms developed by different bodies to perform essentially identical functions, such as, for example, the management of car tax, the electronic health record, the labor information system and employment services, professional training and many more functions. A multiplicity that not only has meaning millions and millions of euros spent in vain but also one impossibility of "communication" between the different systems without costly interoperability interventions.
The data processed by Assinform show that the total ICT expenditure of the Public Administration in 2015 was 5 and a half billion. The Agency for Digital Italy (Agid) has drawn up a three-year plan in which it estimates that 300 million savings can be achieved only through the rationalization of existing IT platforms in the PA, to which must be added the savings deriving from the reduction of over ten thousand existing data centers and the reorganization of ecosystems and security systems, for un total savings of around 800 million euros in three years.
The possibility of having information systems organized and managed with transparent and homogeneous criteria will allow not only make existing processes and services work better and much less expensively, but will give the extraordinary opportunity to develop new and cutting-edge services that could make Italy recover in a few years many delays in terms of digitization of the public administration, reduction of bureaucracy and territorial gaps that are currently on this front huge.
The Government has already set up important and ambitious projects such as the digital identity system, the electronic payment hub of the PA, the rationalization of public data centres: all these initiatives will be able to be implemented in a much more complete, effective and rapid way thanks to the new article 117. Many others could be added to these.
A final aspect to bear in mind is that the exclusive assignment to the State of the coordination of IT processes and platforms will have important repercussions for safety as well. The extreme fragmentation of our information systems makes the protection of data and processes more complex and costly, a problem that can be more easily overcome with the greater coordination made possible by the new article 117.
To fully understand the implications of this constitutional change, let's suppose we want to create a database that publishes data on procurement contracts or public spending, or public transport timetables, in Open Data. In theory, it is enough to discuss, find a technical solution and ask all administrations to pour their data into a certain platform through certain tools and standards.
In practice what will happen (and what has happened most of the times that projects of this kind have been attempted) is that some administrations will do it and others will not. AND those who do not will be able to appeal to the Constitutional Court raising an objection of constitutionality since the current Constitution does not provide that the State can make such a request. So long as, currently, the state can only coordinate data, but not interoperability (i.e. the communication and data exchange mechanisms).
This is a situation that has already occurred with the economic data: at the beginning of 2003 the regions of Valle d'Aosta and Emilia Romagna contested a provision of the finance law approved at the end of 2002 before the Constitutional Court which, in summary, envisaged that the State "in order to ensure the pursuit of public finance objectives" could acquire all useful information on the behavior of public entities and bodies, that public administrations were required to codify receipts, payments and accrual data with uniform criteria and to transmit them electronically. A request considered inadmissible and unconstitutional by the regions that appealed.
Fortunately, the Constitutional Court established that, since the request was aimed at drawing up the state budget, which is also the subject of a constitutional provision, this provision prevailed and therefore did not conflict with the autonomy of the regions. But in the meantime two years had passed (the sentence is n. 35 of 2005), and, in any case, the sentence would have been of the opposite sign in the case of issues that have no constitutional relevance, for example, a database with the bus timetables.
The awareness of impending appeals and adverse sentences has blocked dozens of projects and initiatives in the bud over the years which could have brought enormous benefits to our country. And it has caused the launch of projects that have always ended up having a patchy implementation: because some administrations cooperate, others don't.
With the new article 117 all this will change: the administration that does not cooperate will no longer have the weapon of the constitutional appeal. There is no question of any centralization: the data will remain in the hands of the administrations that produce them, only one rule of the game changes whereby IT coordination will be possible, to the benefit of all.
Extract from “L'Economia del Sì”, edited by Irene Tinagli. Download the full document.
