Municipalities and digital, a game worth 2 billion but a quarter fails: here is the ranking

ROME. It is a game that is worth a total of 1.9 billion euros and, according to the research carried out by Fpa for Dada Next presented at the Pa 2023 Forum, a good part of Italian municipalities is ready for the challenge because it has already reached a good degree of maturity digital. However, there is almost a quarter that does not reach levels of sufficiency and now that we have to move from the project phase to their implementation, the request that comes from the experts to all administrations, even the most prepared ones, is that of a change of pace.
Also in this field, 2023 is the year of the effective launch of the projects for the digitization of local authorities as part of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, with 98% of the municipalities having obtained at least one loan in the various measures activated by PA Digitale 2026. Now the challenge of implementation begins, with respect to which the Italian capital cities fortunately arrive on average well prepared: 32 administrations (out of 110 total) show a high level of digital maturity and another 52 medium-high , highlighting a good level of digitization compared to the standards defined by the Pnrr. However, there is another group of entities (26 out of 110) which, however, present insufficient levels of digital maturity: 23, in fact, have a “medium-low” index while 3 have a “low” one.

The projects
Starting from 2022, 12 notices have been published for Municipalities intending to develop their digital activities. An opportunity to which the administrations responded with great proactivity: around 98% obtained at least one loan on the various measures activated. The highest participation rates are recorded above all in cloud migration, with over 691 million euros attributed to a total of 7,355 municipalities (93.1%), and in the improvement of digital services, with over 774 million assigned to 6,596 municipalities ( 83.5%). If you look at the capitals alone, all 110 have obtained funding for cloud migration, 103 for improving the citizen experience. 70.8% of Italian municipalities obtained funding to complete the adoption of Spid and electronic identity card, 65% for the transfer of services to the IO app and 54.5% for the integration of their services of payment on pagoPA, 63.3% for joining the new Digital Notification Platform, 51.2% for the development of APIs (i.e. application programming interface on the National Digital Data Platform (PDND).

Pass and fail
The protagonists of the new projects are above all medium-sized cities. Of the 32 municipalities with a high digital level, 13 have a population between 100,000 and 250,000 inhabitants, 8 between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants. To these are added 7 large cities with more than 250,000 inhabitants and 4 small ones (less than 50,000 inhabitants). The traditional North-South gap is gradually narrowing: in the 32 cities in the high range, only two realities from the South appear (compared to 21 from the North and 9 from the Centre), but those from the South are the relative majority in the medium-high range (22 out of 52). “The positive situation that emerges from the survey on the digital maturity of the Municipalities represents an excellent starting point for the implementation of the PNRR measures – comments Gianni Dominici, general manager of FPA -. In particular, it is clear that the primacy of digitization is now no longer exclusive to the large companies in the centre-north, but also to the virtuous cities of the South and the “small capitals” which have stood out on the innovation front for years”.
Both in the synthetic index and in the three dimensional indices elaborated by Fpa, most of the provincial capitals are placed in the higher ranges (in addition to the ones mentioned in the “good” level, 52 are in the “medium-high” level) and those lagging behind represent now a minority (23 medium-low and 3 low). Leading this particular ranking are the cities of Arezzo, Bergamo, Bologna, Brescia, Catania, Cremona, Ferrara, Florence, Genoa, Lecce, Lecco, Livorno, Lodi, Massa, Milan, Modena, Monza, Padua, Pavia, Perugia, Piacenza , Pisa, Pistoia, Reggio-Emilia, Rimini, Rome Capital, Rovigo, Siena, Trento, Verbania, Verona and Vicenza). In the queue, with a low index, Chieti, Foggia and Agrigento, while the 23 capitals with a medium-low index, however, are Avellino, Benevento, Brindisi, Carbonia, Catanzaro, Cosenza, Crotone, Enna, Fermo, Frosinone, Gorizia Grosseto , Isernia, Latina, Lucca, Macerata, Potenza, Savona, Sondrio, Teramo, Terni, Trani and Trapani.
From a planning point of view, public administrations are substantially promoted, explains the CEO of Dada Next Fabio Meloni. “Now – he adds – we move on to the second and fundamental phase: implementation. We need great concentration on the part of the administrations and all the private partners who, like us, have prepared themselves by investing in solutions and skills because they want and have the responsibility to accompany them in the execution of the project. Insoma “a decisive change of pace is needed in the ability to manage and implement complex projects – argues Dominici in turn – to avoid the risk of dispersing the huge amount of resources and wasting a unique opportunity to redesign administrations in a digital key municipal”.

This, however, requires a decisive change of pace in the ability to manage and implement complex projects, to avoid the risk of dispersing the huge amount of resources and wasting a unique opportunity to redesign municipal administrations in a digital key”.