For councils, the digital revolution is beginning in Brebbia

The idea has come at the right time, and it is one of those that may potentially help councils, and therefore the people, to save a lot of money.

Domenico Gioia, the Mayor of Brebbia, made his suggestion to about twenty councils: to create a single centre for everything in relation to the IT services provided by the local administrations, from electronic invoicing, which will be compulsory from 15 March 2015, to a digital civil registry, to the digitalising and backing up all data recorded at the council.

This proposal is one that the Mayor, who previously worked in the IT sector, has been developing for months, that he is trying to make concrete as soon as possible. 

“We will soon be presenting a protocol for an agreement among about twenty councils, between Sesto Calende and Laveno, that includes common governance for outsourcing services of a technological nature,” Gioia said. “The first step is to bring council servers, which are gathering dust in cubbyholes, to a single data centre. “We’ve identified two in the province that may satisfy our needs. By doing this, we’d achieve an actual saving, and we’d be guaranteed the skills to carry out complex tasks, which public administrations often lack.”

For example?
“For example, disaster recovery, a general backup of all of the data stored at the town hall.”

What will the next steps be, if the first is accomplished?
“Today, the municipal administrations turn to several software application suppliers. This lack of uniformity has a direct impact on council coffers and creates too many differences among the administrations. Instead, by all getting together, we’d have greater bargaining power and the chance to evaluate the best deal from those offered by suppliers, again with an immediate advantage for the council coffers. And there would also be another great benefit.”

Which would it be?
“We’d have only one maintenance service for all councils, which would always charge the same prices.”

So there are many benefits. And what about the protection of data privacy?
These data centres guarantee the highest level of security.”

One last question: have you quantified the costs if every council were to pay for the services of the Digital Agenda alone?

“Yes, each one would have to pay around € 200,000. With this proposal, each would spend approximately € 10,000.”