Digitization: an Italian tragedy

The state of the digitization process in Italy and direct experiences. What is happening and what is still to be done.

After witnessing live the epic failure of the INPS portal on the occasion of refunds last spring and the most recent national crash of the SPID service with state cashback, the time has come to sum up the digitization process in Italy .

The first problem that presents itself in all its drama is that we are terribly late. We are lagging behind on an infrastructure level, with a national network that is struggling to keep up with the surge in internet use at the time of the lockdown. We are lagging behind in the quality of the online services provided, with public portals developed with technologies of at least 10-15 years ago which are now kept up only thanks to the fear of the consequences of an upgrade or a complete migration to more modern technologies. We are lagging behind in terms of the usability offered by the aforementioned services, with sites and applications that seem to completely ignore the sane rules dictated by experts such as Jakob Nielsen and Steve Krug.

The second problem, even more serious, is represented by the failure in the computer literacy of citizens. Even entrepreneurs who decide to create their own online presence often demonstrate an almost total ignorance of how the Web and its services work, as well as an equally dangerous underestimation of the potential offered by this medium. In practice, they want to be online not so much because they are aware of what being online entails, but rather to imitate their competitors who already are.

The other media do not deal with these topics except to report the latest news about the latest security exploit and to talk about hackers, figures who fill the news very well given the decidedly romantic impact they have on the collective imagination.

As a result, the remaining 99% of professionals in the IT world remain in the shadows, which doesn't surprise us too much given that job advertisements in the sector abound with requests for "know-it-alls" rather than true professionals. So if not even companies in the sector understand the difference between a systems analyst and a developer, how can you expect entrepreneurs to know how to consciously choose between the various proposals that are offered to them?

And given that citizens now know everything about the probability of a new impact of a meteorite with the Earth such as the one that occurred in the late Cretaceous but are not educated in the least about the use of computer tools, how can they be expected to understand that Can't a computer be equated to a common household appliance?

The third problem is the irreconcilable contrast between the bureaucratic apparatus and the digital. The mantra that a document doesn't exist if it's not in the folder is far from gone. In fact, the PEC and the digital signature are nothing more than a clumsy compromise with the analogical nature of the bureaucracy that uses registered letters and an unknown number of stamps and signatures to be affixed to documents, purely paper documents. The doubt that our PDF files strictly sent via PEC and equally strictly digitally signed are then only printed and placed in folders remains anxiously alive. And if so, what is the point of all this?

If we can really talk about an "Italy 4.0", an expression that often recurs in official announcements, we owe it to those Italian digital companies and to those professionals who continue to innovate and resist by sailing against the tide in a sea of ​​laws and quibbles that would discourage anyone from 'to take such a path. The "deus ex machina" at the end of the drama is precisely them, which leaves great hope open for the future.