Bad news. A statistic from the European House Ambrosetti states that, in the North West, one in three citizens suffers from functional illiteracy. It means that 30 percent of the population over 16 does not have full capacity to read, write and calculate, even in the most ordinary of everyday circumstances. In other words, it does not know how to fully understand, evaluate and use the multiple information with which one has to measure every hour and day. Misuse your phone, not to mention your computer. He struggles to follow the instructions and collides with bureaucracy, administrative and health. To put it simply, he has insufficient life maintenance skills and, in all likelihood, is faring worse than he could.
The inability to consciously manage the tools of the technological revolution is tested against the need for sustainable development linked to effective data management. Of course, it is a national evil, given that Italy is the European country with the highest percentage of heads with insufficient “literacy”, therefore with a poor attitude and ability to profit appropriately from the most modern tools, from electronic commerce to online banks, passing through the now inevitable digital identity. But that is little consolation.
The serious problem in the North West is the relationship between the best and the worst. 29 per cent of personal profiles are considered “high skills”, therefore with a high technological propensity, a figure slightly lower than the North East (30), but higher than the Center (22) and the South (12). It would be good, if it weren’t for the fact that the “low skills”, people with low technological capacity, are more numerous, just 30 percent. As in the South, but the statistic is almost three times higher than in North-Eastern and Central Italy. A bad record, no doubt about it.
It is a geographic, generational and bad system issue. It corrects itself with training, with a concert of private and public support actions. The administration must not take attention to the customer too much for granted, the school must improve, companies have the burden and the honor of investing in work, capital even more precious than money. The government promises to put a lot of cash into it, collateral to the employment and reoccupation plans. The numbers testify that this is an opportunity not to be missed. With a caveat. Training policies, with European and national money, are the responsibility of the Regions. They are programmed on site. It is another reason for a macro-regional alliance that shocks the North West that struggles too much to understand the data. In the awareness that, as Goethe wrote, one does not possess what one does not understand.