Digital divides and Italy 2025

In July 2015, the “Commission for Internet Rights and Duties”, following a public consultation, published the Declaration of Internet Rights “based on the full recognition of freedom, equality, dignity and diversity of every person”.

The Declaration in Article 2 defines the “Right of access” as follows:

1. Access to the Internet is a fundamental right of the person and a condition for their full individual and social development.
2. Everyone has an equal right to access the Internet on equal terms, with technologically adequate and up-to-date methods that remove all economic and social obstacles.
3. The fundamental right of access to the Internet must be ensured in its essential conditions and not only as a possibility of connecting to the Internet.
4. Access includes freedom of choice regarding devices, operating systems and even distributed applications.
5. Public institutions guarantee the necessary interventions to overcome all forms of digital divide, including those determined by gender, economic conditions as well as situations of personal vulnerability and disability.

These rights lay the foundations to fully enter the era of digital transformation with the awareness of the ethics that this entails and with the civic sense that is the basis of coexistence in the digital world as well.

The National Innovation Plan 2025 defines the “Strategy for technological innovation and digitization of the country 2025” and in particular 3 main challenges are defined:

1. the digitization of society;
2. the innovation of the country;
3. the sustainable and ethical development of society as a whole.

The existing gaps in this context have been highlighted for some time and with extreme clarity by the data: the DESI Report which sees Italy better than the European average on completeness of online services, digital public services for businesses and open data, unfortunately sees the Italy in last place for digital competence.

The recent and very hard experience of the pandemic has put the whole country (in reality the

whole world) in the condition of having to rethink new ways of working, communicating, interacting, collaborating and training from kindergarten to university. Each of us had to quickly adapt to new “rules of the game” by learning to make the best use of technologies.

The aforementioned National Innovation Plan 2025 provides that each action is guided by the following principles:

• accelerate the switch-off to digital and the redesign of the management and delivery processes of public services; increase skills in the PA;
• collaborate with SMEs and innovative start-ups;
• avoid focusing on technologies that are still immature or too old;
• monitor the results.

This implies that we must in any case start from breaking down digital gaps, which are not only infrastructural but also sociological, economic, cultural, generational and gender.

We must therefore certainly intervene in the spread of connectivity to the whole territory (Ultra Broadband Plan) and to all families but we must put digital skills training first according to the DigiComp European model where 5 areas of necessary skills are highlighted:

1. Information and data literacy
2. Communication and collaboration
3. Creation of digital content
4. Safety
5. Solve problems

Training opportunities must therefore be activated throughout the territory (for citizens and businesses) as envisaged also in the national strategy of the Digital Republic born precisely with these objectives.

Local administrations must also be activated in this sense with interventions to support citizenship to guarantee citizens’ digital inclusion and competence by offering support for access to digital services. Some examples of experiences in this direction are the Bread and Internet Points of the Emilia Romagna Region, the Assisted Access Points of the Tuscany Region and the Roma Easy Points of Roma Capitale to name but a few.

Digital skills are therefore the starting point for guaranteeing the country an alignment with European standards in an increasingly strategic sector and ensuring real digital inclusion for all Italian citizens.