Policy Observatory

EDRi obtained documents revealing different drafts of the Code of Conduct against Hate Speech and the correspondence exchanged between the European Commission and the four big companies that concluded the agreement on 31 May 2016: Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft. These documents complement an interesting response sent by Commissioner Jourová to a letter from the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) on 21 June 2016.

The Italian Council of State published its consensus about the New Code of Public Digital Administration - CAD. After this, the Code will be discussed and then approved by the Parliament. Meanwhile, an important debate is currently ongoing on the measures and interventions needed to change the Italian public administration into a digital one and on the interventions needed to develop the digital capacities of users.

The new CAD is focused on the issue of digital citizenship and in this framework. It introduces several changes in the existing rules in order to align the old Code to the new purposes and the European law (for instance for what concerns the validity and efficacy of electronic documents as forensic evidence). In this regard it provides for changes or new norms related to electronic documents and their storage and electronic signature and emphasizes the importance of the digital identity (SPID) and of the digital domicile.

It also introduces the role of Chief Digital Officer and of Digital Ombudsman in each public administration body and establishes a Permanent Conference for technological innovation; the norms of the new CAD have to be applied not only by public bodies but also in legal trials.

Part of the criticism to the New Code concerns the elimination of important norms related to the obligation for enterprises and other organizations to set up digital disaster recovery and business continuity plan; or the elimination of most of the norms and provisions for implementing and deploying smart cities and communities, or the removal of the obligation for the Public Administration to use free software. Other critics expressed their concern about the excessive anonymisation of data for privacy protection affecting the open data approach and lamented the low level of participation and involvement of stakeholders in the formulation of the new CAD.

In June 2016 the Broadband Stakeholder Group (a multi-stakeholder industry advisory group to Government) published its new Open Internet Code. This is signed up to by all major UK ISPs and MNOs, and is a self-regulatory set of commitments on open internet that complement the EU Regulation. It forms an update and merger of the previous existing two self-regulatory codes on open internet and traffic management.