Policy Observatory

The Bulgarian parliament has voted and approved a series of amendments to the Electronic Governance Act that require all software written for the government to be open-source and to be developed as such in a public repository.

On May 17, the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers approved the Freedom of Information Act, that allows the citizens to freely access the documents of the Public Administration bodies and to request copies. This Act represents an important element of the new Reform of the Public Administration. All the requests presented by citizens cannot be rejected without valid reasons. The approved Act keep into account the suggestions and proposals presented by the Commissions of Parliament and Senate and of the Data Protection National Authority. Great parts of the input of the FOIA campaign have been included. The reasons for restricting access to public information include: national and public security; national defense; international relations; military issues; financial and economic policies of the State; judicial inquiries. Not all the comments positively welcomed the approval of the FOIA. Someone observed that with this formulation the rights to transparency of the Public administration have been bureaucratized: the FOIA limits the transparency granted by the legislative decree no. 33/2013. Duties and responsibilities of the Public Administration by the Decree of 2013 have not been confirmed. Furthermore no sanctions are foreseen for the public bodies that not respect the FOIA.

On March 2, a group of deputies belonging to the Innovation Joint Committee presented a legislative proposal about the Sharing economy. Sharing economy is growing up in Italy: there are 186 collaborative platforms, generating around 13 billions of revenue (in the sectors of peer-to-peer finance; accommodation sharing; staffing online; car sharing; sharing of video and music). The proposed legislation contains norms concerning issues such as the protection of privacy of the users data or the taxation to be applied on sharing economy exchange (10%). This proposal was the object of an open consultation on the web until May 16, 2016. Following that, a series of auditions at the Chamber of Deputies will take place, before its discussion and approval by the Chamber. At the same time sharing economy was the object of seminars and meetings involving relevant stakeholders such as the National Antitrust Authority; AGCOM, the Ministry of Finance, enterprises and public administration, lawyers. Among the most relevant one can quote the seminar organized by the European University of Rome, or the workshop on the role of communities in the sharing economy held in May 2016, in the framework of the Forum of the Public Administration.

At the beginning of the year 2016 the test phase of the implementation of the Public System of the Digital Identity (SPID) started. By this System all Italian citizens, enterprises and organizations will have a digital identity, allowing them to dialogue with a unique identity with the Public Administration. A campaign on the national TV is accompanying the test phase. The agreements with the three national identity providers - Poste Italiane (Italian Postal Service); Infocert and TIM – have been signed. The regulations have been corrected taking into account the requests of the Data Protection National Authority.

The Municipality of Venice and that of Florence are among the municipalities involved. The test phase – started on March 15 2016 - involve also: six Italian Regional Governments – Emilia Romagna, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Liguria, Marche, Piemonte, Toscana; three important Public Administration bodies – INAIL, Agenzia delle Entrate (Agency for Taxation), INPS. All in all 401 services will be available digitally.

The SPID Road Map foresees that by the end of 2017 all Italian citizens will have a digital identity. One of the important issue of the spread of SPID concern the development of the digital skills and competences of citizens. Public administration bodies will have 24 months for joining the SPID system. The start of SPID was accompanied by a debate among involved stakeholders and opinion leaders on various issues. The first one is the privacy of citizens, also taking into account the fact that identity provider also provide services for thousands of users: SPID is in line with eIDAS and with the Italian Code of Privacy, but there is the concern on the absence of explicit mention of the respect of principle of aim to which the personal data are collected and stored (risks of profiling). The second one is the fact that are allowed to act as identity provider only big enterprise; the third one is about the security of data.

In January 2016 the Italian Ministry of Interior published the guidelines tied with the legislative decree no. 78/2015 of December 23 2015, addressed to the Italian Municipalities about the issuing of the Electronic Identity Card - CIE. The information stored in the CIE for each citizen includes: finger prints, face image, tax code, consent to organ donation, address, signature.

In March 2016 the CIE system started in the first 130 municipalities, including Milan, Rome, Naples, Bologna, Florence. The adoption of CIE will facilitate spread and use of SPID – Public System of the Digital Identity. In this first period only the Municipalities already issuing electronic identity cards are involved. Various stakeholders expressed their concerns about relationship between CIE and SPID; the usefulness of CIE; the protection of privacy and security of SPID and in general about the issue of how to transfer the personal identification from paper or other physical supports to a digital/virtual one.

The U.S. Department of State released the Federal Open Licensing Playbook, a list of considerations, use cases, and recommendations for federal departments interested in developing and implementing open license requirements on federally-funded grant projects. It is designed to assist federal efforts to maximize the impact of grant funds, and create opportunities for innovation and collaborative practices using federally-funded resources.

Each of the nine “plays” contains common features, including a checklist, key questions, and examples of use.