On 19 February 2010, the Italian Council of Ministers approved the new version of the eGovernment Code proposed by the Ministry of Public Administration (PA) and Innovation.

Once the approval procedure has been completed, the new Code will be published as a legislative decree. This will launch the next step towards achieving a new, digital and simplified Administration within the next three years, in compliance with the E-Gov Plan 2012.

Following the Reform of the Public Administration (legislative decree no. 150/2009), the new eGovernment Code (its previous version was published in 2005 with legislative decree no. 82/2008) will be the second pillar supporting the modernisation and digitisation of the Public Administration project. The latter is defined in the Strategic Plan for Innovation presented in May 2008.

The revision of the 2005 Code became necessary due to the fast evolution of IT. It seeks to promptly respond to the need for tools enabling increased efficiency and effectiveness in the entire public system. The pursued aim is to stop obsolete structures and endless procedures from being a burden for the national budget and from discouraging foreign investment.

The main novelties of the code regard:

• The re-organisation of the PA through the establishment of a unique office responsible for ICT activities, the streamlining of procedures at organisational and IT levels as well as the introduction of the IT protocol and the electronic file ('fascicolo elettronico' in Italian);

• The simplification of the PA's relationship with citizens and companies through the introduction of ePayment means, the exchange of data between companies and PA, the generalisation and use of the certified electronic mail ('Posta Elettronica Certificata' in Italian - PEC), the access to networked services, the use of the electronic signature, the dematerialisation of documents and the provision of more transparent content on institutional websites. Within three months (May 2010), the Italian Administration will use the PEC only for communications requiring an acknowledgement of receipt. Within six months (August 2010) the competition announcements will be published on the public authorities' websites. In 2011, the technical regulations granting legal validity to the paper and digital copies of digital documents will be issued. Likewise, the Administrations will not be entitled to ask citizens/businesses to make use of specific forms before the latter are available online and citizens will provide their data only once.

• Security of data exchange through the adoption of emergency plans to face possible disasters, so as to ensure the continuity of public service delivery and of Government-to-citizen information exchange. The emergency plans are to be adopted within the next 15 months.

The new code is expected to enable considerable productivity recovery, that is:  

• Decrease in the time spent on administrative tasks (up to 80 %);
• Reduced judicial costs: within the six-months testing of electronic notifications in the framework of civil trials before the Milanese Courts, 100 000 such modifications were made, representing approx. €1 million savings;
• Approx. one million paper pages saved in one year as a result of dematerialisation. The target is to take this number to 3 million in 2012;
• A 90 % saving in the paper-related costs, including those pertaining to ecological impact for about €6 million;
• Wide-spread use of certified electronic mail (PEC) which is expected to generate a €200 million saving due to the reduction of letters with acknowledgement of receipt sent by the PA to the citizens, as well as less time and space dedicated to archiving the documents. 

Further information: 

• Official notice - Ministry of Public Administration and Innovation (in Italian)
• Previous Italian eGovernment Code (2005) - ePractice Library