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The Italian Minister for Technological Innovation and Digital Transition has vowed to simplify bureaucracy by accelerating the deployment of a digital platform for citizens as part of a € 248 billion recovery plan designed to revitalize the eurozone’s third economy.
Former Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao said the online portal would make it easier for Italians to reserve vaccines from paying taxes and overlap with regional and state powers.
The pandemic, led by Prime Minister Mario Draghi, will act as an agent for economic renewal, he added.
“If I had to say why Italy is behind it, it is because of the legal and administrative complexity that we want to simplify as a government,” he told the Financial Times.
He added: “This is the time to do this. It hasn’t happened in the past, probably because the need wasn’t felt or it was probably hard resistance. Covid’s sad story is that in addition to taking lives, the economy has hit many important ways. Now the feeling of need and need is greater “.
Former European Central Bank President Draghi was ordered by the Italian president earlier this year to form a national unity government after the fall of his last coalition. Colao was the CEO of the British telecommunications group Vodafone from 2008 to 2018 and lived in London until he became a minister. A political beginner, he is one of the business experts appointed by Draghi.
He said he had decided to extend the use of the administration’s online portal to all residents before renewing “the notification platform which includes fines, taxes, court orders and vaccinations”.
“It sounds like science fiction, but it’s not. We already have 20 million people on this platform today, ”he said.
Roughly a third of Italians have signed up for a platform called Spid. Colao said that in the first quarter of this year, digital services processed 120 million transactions, up from 143 million by 2020.
Colao said the increase in digital interaction that Italians had with the state through the website would facilitate plans for the government to invest in digital education and skills.
The use of online services in Italy is among the lowest in the EU. Only 38% of Italians aged 16 to 74 bought goods and services online in 2019, the third lowest share in the EU – the same as Bulgaria and Romania, according to Eurostat.
Half of Italians between the ages of 16 and 74 used a laptop or handheld device in 2019 to access the internet outside of work or home, an average of 73% of all Europeans.
Colao said the size of the EU-backed investment package is “obvious”, “but the real core of our plan is reform and investment by people. Italy now wants to invest in its people and talent and improve opportunities for those here.”
He added: “You have to invest in the whole conveyor belt, from kindergarten to doctoral research. This country has been very uneven in the past and this is not a useless field. You have to be systematic because the production cycle of intellectual innovation is between 15 and 30 years.”
Colao said those efforts will help create conditions for the country to stop the exodus of talent abroad and attract foreign investors.
“The two things that foreign investors in Italy always say are these: we can’t find the right people, and the system is huge,” he said. “Am I one hundred percent sure we’re going to get all of this? Well, we have to be ambitious. We may lose some parts, but if we reach 90 per cent it would put Italy ahead of the race. “
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