As you know, if you follow this daily appointment, the Almanac does not only have the celebration of the milestones of the future but also the thankless task of recounting some sensational failures on the way to innovation. Like the case of italia.it. If you are over 30 it cannot have gone unnoticed. We have rarely seen a project made worse, presented macaronically and paid for as if it were used to take us to the moon.
Rutelli and his “Please visit Italy”
In short, italia.it is a milestone, but of a road that we no longer have to travel. The site was presented on February 22, 2007: it was a project initiated by the previous government, but at the launch the Prime Minister was Romano Prodi, and the competent minister was that of Cultural Heritage Francesco Rutelli. A rather clumsy video is remembered of him, in which he briefly describes the beauties of our country in English and concludes with the appeal “please, visit Italy!”. That video is part of the compilation on YouTube in which our politicians speak English like Alberto Sordi in certain legendary films.
But I’ve just seen it again: Rutelli’s English wasn’t as bad as we remember it. The Italia.it site, on the other hand, was just a disaster. On the net, dozens of experts lashed out against the patched-up project, some organized to immediately make a better version, and when the amount it had cost was discovered, versions were proposed at no cost. How much had it cost? In the end, seven million euros (not 45 as it was said at one point). Rutelli himself said so, a year later, when he sent all the papers to the Court of Auditors. He said: “We tried to make it work, we tried them all, but it was an unsavable project.” And in a note the ministry added: “The portal project was launched by the previous government, wanted and validated by the then Minister for ‘Lucio Stanca innovation. If you are looking for responsibility for the ineffectiveness of the technological solution and the incongruity of the funding, then turn to the government of the past legislature “. Stanca replied, claiming the merit” of having promoted the Italia.it portal as an initiative of great innovation and significant prospects for promoting our tourism system, for having found the funds not only to make it happen, but also to manage and promote it internationally in future years “.
For some years Italia.it has been back, functioning, managed by the ENIT, to promote tourism.