MESSINA – Messina and digital are getting closer and closer. From a chronic delay in recent years we have arrived at portals where citizens can access fines, services of all kinds and taxes, although there is still much to do and the transition has not yet been completed. It was discussed in the third council commission chaired by Emilia Rotondo. Guest was the Councilor for Digitalisation, Roberto Cicala, who spoke about the state of work of the projects relating to the Pnrr – axis 1.
4 and a half million from the Pnrr for digitalisation
Cicala focused on the key steps: “There are 9 Pnrr axis 1 projects planned for Messina. A good amount of money has arrived to reduce the gap, which is being resolved thanks to this funding. We have received amounts of 4 million and 605 thousand euros for digital services and equipment. 516 thousand euros only for citizen services, such as the remodeling of the website and all related services, including multi-year assistance so as to have coverage for another two years after the end of the project. The site has been adapted to the other national ones, as per government directives, and in fact if you see all the institutional sites they are all with the same shape, to have homogeneous menus”.
“The other services – he continued – included the multi-purpose citizen desk, the praetorian register and transparent administration procedures which are now in the final certification phase and the Io app, for 54 thousand euros. The Io app is the app that is used to interact with various bodies and where it is possible to find out about taxes, fines and much more. These services also include PagoPA for which we have received 167 thousand euros already paid, which allows citizens to pay various things such as the Tari through home banking, tobacconists or QR codes. In July we will remove the F24 for the TARI, but it will only remain for the IMU”.
Servers and data security
The councilor continued with another key aspect: “The transition to the cloud of services will be completed with one million and 31 thousand euros. It refers to what we started doing in 2018, when we started relying on a server either independently or in partnership. Now what happens, that all this management software is secured throughout the portal, to work through the internet by relying on protected servers without having to worry about data loss, blackouts, lost activities. It is a legal obligation but obviously gives us greater security in data management. The Municipality’s data center has made great progress. With this same vision we have added software and utilities, such as the digitalisation of the canteen with the connection between school, municipality and companies that manage meals. We are doing the same with Atm for student subscriptions, so we aim to make digital subscriptions by the start of the next school year. We are in a position to provide it. Another software included is the one for dispute management which allows us to update and communicate everything with a digital file. This will not solve the problems we have but it will help us with the new practices and gradually with the old ones that will be digitized. The final objective of these Pnrr funds is to make a service accessible to a citizen”.
Training courses and timing
And again: “Then there is a loan of one and a half million, 846 plus 721 thousand euros. With the latter we will purchase the equipment to help us in the safety of the data and to this we will add training to employees and institutions. Knowledge is the first security, even more than an antivirus. If I can immediately understand that it is a fake email I will block it even before the antivirus. There will be online and offline courses for employees, officials, councilors, subsidiaries, everything to increase the level of safety. Prevention is always better than cure.” What timescales will there be? “All these projects will be completed by March 2025 and we were quick, so much so that they even praised us. We were far behind in terms of management software because most offices had their own management software. There have been some disservices but now we are at a good point in terms of services for citizens.”
