The main measures implemented during my department were included in the programmatic guidelines and in particular in the 4 areas of intervention of the Rome Simple Department:
1 open government
2 digital skills
3 digital agenda (digital services, process simplification, connectivity)
4 smart city
They will be 5 posts on this macro topic, one for each area of intervention:
1. inclusion
2. transparency
3. open and universal digital transformation
4. participation and listening
5. equal opportunities
Inclusion
The first resolution, less than a month after taking office, relating to the establishment of the Easy Rome Points (PRoF), is the one I am most proud of because simplification, participation, transparency, smart city, are possible objectives to be achieved only if at the same time we deal with the digital culture of citizens and digital inclusion. The PRoF Network now has more than 20 active offices in all Municipalities, located within municipal offices, libraries, association centers. The purpose of the Network, animated by Capitoline employees and young people of the National Civil Service, is to counter the digital divide, spread the use of online services, facilitate citizens in the context of digital participatory processes favored by the new site and provided for by the new Statute of Roma Capitale. Thanks also to the collaboration with the Libraries Institution of Rome and the training projects put in place with the Department of the Person and the Fondazione Mondo Digitale, some PRoFs were inaugurated in libraries and senior centers, as well as in schools and private spaces .
The initiative also counts on the support of trainers made available by associations, institutions and universities, which with their contribution make possible the “Widespread School for Participation and Digital Citizenship”, whose purpose is to organize seminars, courses and workshops for the promotion of culture and digital skills at the PRoF. In 2017 and 2018 we organized various initiatives in this sense, such as those related to collaborations with the Safe Schools Project of the Rome Police Headquarters and the “Road to Grand Tour” project, created together with Google Arts & Culture, Outdoor Festival and the Department of Cultural Growth, which involved, as part of the “Google Grand Tour”, hundreds of students in a unique experience of experimenting with the most innovative technologies at the service of Art and Landscape.
I like to remember that the PRoF initiative earned a Special Mention in December 2017 from the Digital Agenda Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano (Digital Agenda award, category “Digital Agendas of Local Authorities”) and was awarded at ForumPA (“Sustainable PA award, 100 projects to achieve the objectives of the 2030 Agenda”).
On September 20, 2019, 3 days before my departure from Rome, I wrote an article in which we defined the objectives and boundaries of the diffuse school. “With the public notice open to public and private subjects interested in joining the initiative promoted by Rome Capital of the Diffused School for participation and digital citizenship and PRoF (a sort of call to action on a fundamental and transversal theme) the picture of the lines of action put in place for implement the model for digital skills of citizenship in the Roman territory.
The ambition is that this model can be of reference to local administrations to address the issue of digital illiteracy and the development of digital culture in the territories. The belief is that only a capillary and organic program can allow Italy to recover, vis-à-vis other European countries, the current gap that is materializing with 56% of the Italian population with digital skills lower than the basic ones, 19 % claiming not to have never surfed the Internet, 90% of SMEs that do not use online sales, 63% of the Internet user population that does not use public digital services even if they have the need.
A program of this magnitude must be supported and guided by a national strategy, as repeatedly suggested by the European Commission and the OECD in their reports, but it is also true that the construction from below, from the territories, of an intervention model can be the most effective and quickest route to seize the first, concrete results, quickly mobilize the energies already present and make evident the task that the central administration must carry out on the basis of concrete cases, visible experiences. It is precisely on the territory that the integration and connection of the initiatives of the institutions and of the various public and private subjects can be concretely achieved.
The macro-action dedicated to digital skills included in the fourth national plan for open government becomes an example of this approach. the commitment of Roma Capitale with the initiative of the Easy Rome Points and the Scuola Diffusa, coordinated by AgID “.
And so it was, the former minister Pisano has adopted solutions similar to those proposed for the widespread school, in particular with the Repubblica Digitale project and, with an agreement with the former minister Spadafora, promoted the Digital Civil Service similarly to what was designed and implemented in the PRoF. A data to understand the importance of PRoF is the number of monthly accesses which are estimated at around 2 thousand.
In the context of digital inclusion we have activated, among the priority actions of Roma Semplice included in the Digital Agenda of Roma Capitale 2016-2021, the project Citizen’s digital home, consistent with the 2016-2018 multi-year strategy for the development and rationalization of ICT resources of Roma Capitale, in the context of which the creation of enabling platforms is envisaged the development and delivery of services, conceived in a transversal and citizen driven logic.
Citizens are the end users for whom the Digital Home is built. The project is also part of the larger national program Italia Login – The citizen’s house (included by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers in the National Strategy for Digital Growth 2014-2020). The objective of the national initiative is to facilitate the use of public digital services by defining i requirements for the construction of the PA sites and design an interaction method based on accessibility through the Public Digital Identity Service (Spid), and on the National Resident Population Registry (Anpr), with the enabling of profiling and the creation of a system of notifications to citizens and businesses.
In this same direction, the Digital Home intends (in line with the projects initiated and coordinated by the AgID and by founding and integrating with the intangible infrastructures Spid, Anpr and PagoPA) to satisfy the needs of citizens a closer, simple and open PA to their needs. In line with the national program, the initiative facilitates access to the services of other PAs, through the API (Application Programming Interface) made available by the PA, with a progressive extension to all the main Service Providers in a logic of personalized configurability of the Digital Home.
In addition to becoming the unique interface for profiled access to online services currently already existing and available, the establishment of the Digital Home will become the vector through which services already under development or that will be released in the future as the subject of projects will also be made available. distinct, such as the One-Stop Shop for the Taxpayer. The possibility of integrating additional services developed by the investee companies of Roma Capitale. The Digital Home is also suitable for hosting direct links to new environments being defined, such as the Participation Portal and the URP virtual desk.
The restructuring of the Roma Capitale site was also an intervention in favor of digital inclusion. In fact it has been refurbished in one logic centered on the citizen, with shared and participatory planning but above all digital services have been made easier to use.
Based on a work that involved the Administration and citizens, who actively took part in two online consultations by sending more than 4,500 contributions, we have reduced the average number of clicks to find the requested information from 9 to 3 and we have moved from an old, inhomogeneous site, made up of 39 independent sites based on the organization of the Capitoline structures, to a new site that has shared all the information and services of the Administration, within a single space, divided into 18 Thematic Areas. And above all we went from a administrative-centric site, to a site that focuses on citizens and their needs, with uniform services and forms.
Was created the new Join area (not foreseen in the tender awarded by the previous council) also supported by the new Statute of Roma Capitale; in the new site the contacts of the offices are highlighted as well as the possibility of reporting inefficiencies and problems: on each page there was the “Report” button (Single Reporting System) with which suggestions could be sent, reports or complaints regarding the activities of the Capitoline offices, with reference also to the Local Police of Rome Capital, Agencies and associated companies. The signal button has recently been replaced by “Citizen’s digital home” which can be accessed with SPID.
The old site was usable effectively only from a computer, while in the new site the pages are responsive (adaptable to all devices regardless of their size); the new site has also favored the knowledge of the territory with updated and searchable maps to acquire useful information on the services and at the same time, through “faceted filters”, to allow citizens to choose what to view based on their interests.
Speaking of digital skills, internal interventions had to be activated within the Administration, not only with regard to training but also for enhance existing skills. To this end, in December 2017 we approved a memorandum of the council to establish the Community of Innovators within the Capitoline Administration. The initiative is part of the Digital Agenda of Roma Capitale, and is aimed at supporting the change in the administrative machinery through the enhancement of skills and experiences of employees of the Capitol. In fact, digital innovation and simplification also pass through a commitment aimed at improving performance that involves workers and trade union organizations.
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