The race for the national Cloud officially starts. And a Newco is born between Inps, Inail and Istat for the digitization of the PA with a focus on software. With these two moves, the “state IT” construction site is moving, driven by compliance with the deadlines of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Pnrr).
723 million project
Difesa servizi spa, a company of the Ministry of Defense, has published the call for tenders for the construction of the national strategic hub: the infrastructure, provided for by the Pnrr, which will have to host the most sensitive data of all the central PAs and companies in cloud mode local health and the main local administrations. The call, following the rules of the public-private partnership provided for by the procurement code, puts up for tender the proposal, for 723 million euros, presented jointly by Tim, Cdp, Leonardo and Sogei (IT company of the Ministry of Economy). The consortium had been identified by the Department for Digital Transformation as the basis of the procedure, beating the alternatives of Fastweb-Engineering and Almaviva-Aruba. In practice, now the competitors will have to present a better offer but the “pre-selected” team will be able to match it by winning the tender. Not only. If the promoter did not exercise the pre-emption he would be entitled to the payment, at the expense of the successful bidder, of 18 million for the preparation of the proposal.
The crux of security
The tender, launched under the supervision of Anac, does not provide for subdivision into lots and offers can be submitted by March 16. The group selected, the ministry for technological innovation that coordinates the project underlines in a note, will have to set up a company that will be subject to the “golden power” legislation on strategic assets. The supplier will manage the infrastructure, organized in 4 data centers, for a maximum period of 13 years and must allow the PA to ensure compliance with the requirements regarding the national cyber security perimeter and the European NIS (Network and information security) directive. From the outset, the Polo project has led to discussions about the risk of access by non-European subjects to sensitive data of the Italian PA under the American Cloud Act and Fisa regulations. The role of US cloud provider, moreover, is obvious. In its offer, the promoting team specifies that the technology partners will be Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud, three American companies. A chapter of the proposal is devoted to encryption and key management initiatives. In the economic and financial prospectus, the consortium estimates that it will derive 4.4 billion in 13 years from the management of services to the Pa, with a Mol of 1.1 billion.
The Newco for the digital PA
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, the digital transition department, the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Public Administration are finalizing a regulation, to be included in the first useful provision, which will launch a Newco for the digitization of central PAs. The new company, envisaged by the Pnrr, could be called “3I” from the initials of the three public shareholders who will be Inps, Inail and Istat. The new entity will not overlap Sogei’s range of action in the cloud, while there may be margins of competition on the activity relating to application systems. The Newco will consolidate the data processing centers (data centers) of the partners and will provide application services, as an in-house company, to the Ministry of Labor and the Prime Minister and, in addition, within the limit of 20% of the activity, also to other central PAs.