The national strategic hub continues amidst a thousand vicissitudes. Including a ruling from the Council of State declaring illegitimate the assignment of the order to the consortium made up of Tim, Cdp, Sogei and Leonardo on Google cloud technology. Oracle and Microsoft. Digital sovereignty, however, is talked about less and less. Yet, while the government slumbers on the issue, three public companies have seen fit to join together with the aim of creating an all-Italian public cloud.
The idea came from Digital Liguria, Csi Piemonte and Aci Informatica. Together the three companies have decided to develop the cloud services that are necessary for the public administration of their members. And not only. The alliance is unique in the national panorama and it is not excluded that it could also open up to other public IT companies. Companies that overall have a turnover of around one billion euros and over 8 thousand employees.
Meanwhile, the voucher operation continues
The aim is to computerize almost 8 thousand institutions by 2026. There are around 3.5 billion on the plate. Of this figure, 500 million are used for migration to the cloud, for the renewal of administration sites and for the implementation of payment systems. For cloud enablement of municipalities, 7.9 million are currently still available. The outcome of the applications will be known on 29 March 2024.
The national hub is also progressing at a brisk pace
Despite the decision of the Council of State, Tim is moving forward with the migration of public bodies to the national hub created by the former monopolist with Cdp, Sogei and Leonardo. The problem is, however, that the assignment which took place in August 2022 was rejected by the second degree administrative justice.
In detail, the consortium led by Tim Sei was awarded the 1.9 billion tender, with the same offer, taking advantage of the right of pre-emption. But in the ruling of 24 October, the Council of State decreed the illegitimacy of the exercise of pre-emption because it would imply that the concession would have been awarded without tender.
In knot
Assignment without tender is unthinkable in light not only of national legislation, but also of community legislation. “If the rules of the game were allowed to change during construction, the result would be to alter the level playing field between the competitors” the magistrates had written regarding the assignment decided at the time of minister Vittorio Colao.
An operation that benefited Tim, of which the State is a shareholder, as is the case with Sogei and Leonardo, and is therefore in open conflict of interest. Not to mention the fact that the maneuver did not even serve to secure Tim who at the April meeting will be at the center of a very harsh clash between the State and the largest private partner Vivendi.
Risk of compensation for public coffers
At this point in history, there is no turning back. However, the sentence of the Council of State has opened the doors to an increased compensation in the millions by the opposing consortium, made up of Fastweb and Aruba.
The quantum is yet to be defined, but it is certain that the two companies will not miss the opportunity to make up for it at taxpayers’ expense. Meanwhile, public companies will continue. To realize what politics partly imagined and then did not contribute to: a national cloud with entirely public capital.