The survey on ICT equipment and use in local public administrations was carried out on the basis of an agreement signed in 2011 between Istat and the Department for the digitization of public administration and technological innovation. In addition, in the design and implementation of the survey in 2012 and 2013, was crucial the help of the statistical offices or institutes of the 19 Italian Regions and Autonomous Provinces that have joined the initiative.
The largest local administrations have set up internally a dedicated ICT office: 21 Regions and Autonomous Provinces out of 22 and 80 out of 100 Municipalities with more than 60,000 inhabitants have this office compared to 6 per cent of Municipalities with no more than 5.000 inhabitants having it.
The ICT functions are handled by internal staff in 7 administrations of 10 and about 9 out of 10 of them ask to private providers to manage these functions; Regions, more than the other institutions, make use of controlled or partially owned suppliers (72.7 percent).
In the field of supply of ICT services, 25 companies, including approximately 3,400 persons employed are directly and exclusively controlled by Regions and Autonomous Provinces.
The “basic” technological equipment are used by almost all local administrations but the dimensional and organizational gaps affect the adoption of more sophisticated technologies such as mobile ones: 70 out of 100 largest Municipalities and only 8 out of 100 smallest ones use mobile devices (tablets, smartphones, netbooks, etc..). However, in terms of penetration of these technologies, the differences are reduced respectively to 4 and 2 employees using mobile devices out of 100 employees respectively.
The 98 per cent of local institutions connected to the Internet use at least xDSL technologies, but these technologies, particularly in the Municipalities and Mountain Communities, allow them to reach speeds greater than or equal to 2 Mbit/s (minimum limit for broadband speed) only, respectively, in 75 and in 80 per cent of online administrations.
It is growing, albeit slowly, the use of some technologies to reduce the costs of public administration as the use of VoIP and e-procurement with +7 percentage points (pp), open source (+6 pp), e-learning (+5 pp); remarkable differences still alive between institutions of different demographic size.
For some activities such as the management of accounts, payments, tributes and, only for Municipalities, Registry of marital status and Population Registry, it is reached a good level of network computerization and integration between different software applications. Other activities, such as the management of contracts and tenders still poorly network computerized.
The website, already since 2009, is widespread in almost all local authorities but in 2012 it is improved the possibility for users to submit forms on-line and to conclude electronically the entire process relating to the requested service on-line.
The assessment of the impact of technology in local public administration is substantially positive.
For information:
Alessandra Nurra
0646736104
nurra@istat.it
Angelo Montani
0646736293
montani@istat.it
Sergio Salamone
0646736261
sesalamo@istat.it