 Okay, thank you. I sincerely hope that you can hear me in the last rows because I'm coming from the warm weather of Rome and here in Brussels already Made some a little bit of damage this cold, but anyways, if you cannot hear me, please raise your hands. I hope so Yeah, yeah, this is the thing that has a green light. So I really hope It's a good indication that it's probably is working so city of Bologna 2015 There are a lot of road construction works and of course just like you with the any road construction site It attracts a lot of people a lot of all people who just go there and try to see and see if the if the road is being done Correctly just like they used to do in their times and it's such a popular phenomenon I guess not just in Bologna and not just in Italy but all around the world But we have created this word which is called umarel and umarel means exactly this is the person It's a little man and it's the person Usually of old age who goes and checks the work And to give you a couple of facts about umarels 11,000 euros This is the budget that the city of Riccione just close to Bologna Allocated yearly to pay a stipend to these umarels because they do provide a useful service to the administration they do provide and the service a double check to To ensure that the public works are carried out in a good way and This guy here was the first one to be awarded the price of umarel of the year 2015 Franco and there was a nice celebration where the vice major gave this award and nominated him head of the road construction site for one day But to introduce you now somebody who is definitely not an umarel Don't don't say I ever made this metaphor is my boss, uh, Diego Piacentini. So who is Diego Piacentini? He was uh the Senior vice president of amazon and he took a two-year sleeve To be tasked with the the job of digitizing and modernizing italy. He was named commissioner for digital agenda So what did he do? He formed a team a team of 30 super experts as the as the press would define them Uh and try to tackle this immense job and when 30 seems like Medium to large agency. Well, if you put all of us in the same room or in the same slide, it's not that many people So in order to tackle this enormous task, uh We set out some plans and they go thought well to be effective. We need to be we need to to work, uh On the on the infrastructure. We need to be plumbers What do I mean by this? I mean just like a plumber Has made makes his own job in your own house or in in in a building You will only know about the job that he did well or she did When it was done not properly. Otherwise it's hidden. It's in the foundation. It's in the infrastructure And just like any good plumber at the beginning, uh He started to write with the team at the three-year plan He started to lay down the plans for what they would do in this In in this program and well, it's a rather big document which is also translated into English But it's about 150 pages. So I'm not going to explain the whole plan to you right now I'm just going to give you a very quick glimpse. Well The first thing that was defined was the technology of course the technological platforms and infrastructure The second part was about the processes defining processes and the third one Were to decide tools that would embody those processes that were decided And this is exactly where openness and hackability comes in because of course technology is an enabling factor You need to have enabling platforms which allow you to To build something so it needs to be generic. It needs to be api days, etc But the real the real key the one the the message that I want to explain to you today goes into these two levels The processes and the tools To give you an idea about the technologies. Well, this is a very very quick summary But basically we created uh, we created or we have to to to build Projects that were already ongoing about the identity. So giving a digital identity online offline on your id card Used with standard chipset so you can build an open ecosystem around it Or the anographical information centralized so you have api's you can integrate better applications Then a second big chapter was made on platforms Such as the payment platforms or an api ecosystem where you have this pretty radical shift of No longer having service being given to the users but starting from a set of api's so that it can be integrated And and the machines also in the public in the 12 000 public administration that we have in Italy can talk to each other And then of course a data and analytics framework so that We can properly make use of all the big data that we are producing And of course all these technologies are great But if we keep developing them the usual way then we keep being in a world garden So How do we create the open processes? Luckily for us, uh, we have already had start. We had this digital administration code Which is a pretty pretty advanced code in As far as law goes and and this was the effort that was Put in place before we arrived in order to open up the processes and To sum up the articles. There are two very nice articles which article 68 which says that all public administration have to choose open source solutions first and that All new code that is created for public administration should be openly licensed But of course, this is not enough. I mean sure Having a good law having a good framework is absolutely essential. Otherwise, you don't have the freedom to implement new policies and new processes, but Good tools are as well Because if you don't if you just provide the law and other tools Then it's very hard for anybody to complain especially think about the definition all software should be openly licensed What it means in in a jurisdictionary system So we started to realize that we had to Create tools and processes and we did it with those key technologies that you saw in the three years plan so By choosing those technologies and really eating our own dog food Instead of to see how we could implement proper processes and tools So we started to Work on how the source code was published and released and we passed from something like this to this Very normal for you. Sometimes it was not very Something very normal for the people who are working in in in in the public administration The documentation as well passed from a very long pdf written in the forms of the law where you see seen the the the decree and seen the law to Read the box And of course created a place where you can discuss all of your changes and where you can just hang out with fellow developers But up until now, well, of course, this is modernizing. This is digitizing. But what is the real the real innovation? I mean Really we have seen this before in the u.s. There is 18 f there is in France a similar approach from the government Where they try to publish all of their code on github. They try to open source them The real The real change and I think the real innovation that we're trying to bring forward also communicating with our european partners Is this is the same difference that has it is between? Android and debian to put it to an extreme which both are open source But you know there is a clear difference between them and it's of course the open governance model Where with the open governance model The people from the community whether they are individual developers whether they are companies Whether there are other actors can actually Not only contribute and some poor request and just watch from the outside But also contribute and if they wish they can take responsibility for a few of the software that are used from everybody And from all the citizens think of it for example If I we have released a toolkit for doing websites in an accessible way, which follow respects all the guidelines What if I do a WordPress theme well, then this can be easily maintained from the community If there is like some core WordPress developer italian who wants to maintain it then This is something that can do and of course it doesn't need to be italian Many of the technologies that we are creating are actually Quite generic the whole framework about data processing and data analytics Is completely generic uses meta-based it uses superset it uses jupyter notebook So those are all things that can be of value and that can be shared between the systems and with the open governance model We are giving power to the community main challenge of course is then with the public administration itself because Well, there is some kind of fear that you need to overcome when you ask People who are used to work in a very closed and locked environment and just release once every one or two years To do development in the open sometimes from day one sometimes after the day of the release Then you need to change a new mindset where if you open a pull request that doesn't really mean like Okay, I'm intruding in your work and stepping in your work directly It's just like a pull request and you have to answer that because it's somebody that can provide a useful contribution Maybe they sent a patch and it's all wrong You have to explain why so it's a new mindset that needs to be put and then of course you need to find your flows that work because If I'm just going to say okay, you open everything up And you don't provide them a framework in which they can work effectively Then this just impacts productivity and they're going to hate you for that So we started this community in with a large event on 6 7 of october where we have 800 developers 27 cities in italy it was the largest public hackathon ever organized in europe second largest in the world because nasa they beat it And where we kickstarted this community we asked for help to develop many of those components and the developers who sent in successful pull requests were Well and accepted and were nominated as maintainers if they wished to to be so of course And for the future We are trying to now are in the process where we already saw a model that is working And we're in the process of scanning things up. How do we do that? We are writing national guidelines and I want to explicit that once those guidelines are going to be published They're going to be binding for all public administrations. So this is a document. We're working on right now And which will be open for comments by more or less the end of this month And of course all comments are welcome in this sense and in this guidance we want to write things such as you need to Publish and put all your code on a collaborative platform or your choice could be github It could be yourself hosted githlab or githia or bit bucket or basically whatever you want And we're going to propose a model a community working model. This is the github flow It it should be it will be something similar to the github flow where You have several maintainers and you have all public administrations working on the same code. The end goal is to turn All Servicemen all the people all the coders who are already working for the public administration Into real open source developers who know how to contribute upstream when they use upstream projects Who know how to publish their work how to work together and cooperate this is of course a pretty pretty challenging task, but I think it's a It's a highly successful one another key part of our strategy is the open innovation hubs What is an open innovation hub is a way to stabilize? this The culture of the opening even more it's a series of places Which are created to promote the open culture in cooperation with the universities in cooperation with the municipalities in cooperation With the local institutions so that they can form a group about open source and open practices and to be a part To be a reference point for the public administration so that they can cooperate So taking the existing community and leveraging on the and the work of the existing of the existing communities who are That do and develop open source and give them a way to talk to public administrations And on the other hand For the public administration to have like some kind of feedback when they want to create new technologies Or they have new ideas for the public with the public All of this of course in constant communication with other european partners We are speaking a lot with the french team. We're speaking a lot with the european union with the uk team So to sum it up just like franco was given on that day the possibility of Driving the the machine for for making sure that the road was even And his dream was fulfilled for one day. Well, we hope That you appreciate and you can be our digital umara for the next days Thank you very much So in the national guidelines, we are not mandating any specific platforms of course Because it would be I think it would be even illegal to do that directly in indonesian again And we are just giving the requirements for a platform And then we are quoting a few of the platforms Which satisfy those standards In the case of lack we have one for those key technologies that we created So if you just go on developers.italy.it you have the button which is lack and then you can get your invitation For now this has this was set up for the hackathon So we wanted to keep it as free as possible and then now we are having all the developers just be there and use that as a reference point The thing is it's very very hard to choose a good communication method and Also to momenta like you could go for a hosted solution such as lack and there you have Several competing solutions with pro and cons etc And you can go for your hosted yourself Which was for a hosted solution because it was easier to set it up and it was easier to maintain it in the long run Because we need to stabilize this kind of effort. Sorry On github on the other hand the italy organization just go github.com slash italyah It's a completely free organization because all of the the repositories that are completely public and open source So there is no need to close it up We I can tell you what we did for developers italyah Which is the part of the development of those key technologies But then all the administration will be able to choose Based on their needs already. We have some regions which are house their own software on some kind of source forge so It really depends on the skills of the administration and and what they want to do and what do they want to invest Okay, wait first you See many hands this is This project So, uh, yeah, sorry, uh, so he says that most Most contractors will not probably be happy about the openness of those projects And releasing them as open source What I can tell you is that when Like they are already obliged by law to release them as open source Uh, because there is article 69 which says oil code made custom for the public administration should be released openly Now the definition of openly until now Has been somehow problematic Because it was not never specified like okay, what does it mean? Like does it need just need to be free does need to be under certain licenses Didn't need to give you any freedom. It was summed up in um, it was called a reuse catalog where you would You would be able to give it to other public administrations for free Which is a little bit open source, but not exactly. So what we are doing is Buy those guidelines, which will be binding for the public administrations You will need to release it as open source Otherwise you will not be able to participate into In in the call So it's it will be It will be for new software, of course, because we cannot do it on the previous software, but all new contracts Will be made in this way now this for the specific details Of course you need to wait for the guidelines to be out and published and of course there is a commenting work So this is for the exact details, but in general I hope this answers your question. Okay Okay, I see hands in the back Okay, you because this is a very very good question So he was asking about whether the documentation on the forum is just for technical development or also for this general civilian documentation So he started out for The forum was created for discussing the three years plan. So very very much a civilian But quite technical but still pretty much. It was not the documentation for the software Um, then uh, the on the other hand the read docs part So the the technical documentation was created for the software But now we are more or less in the process of merging the two things Uh, we are using the infrastructure that we created for the technical documentation also for example to host Versions of the low One very good example is though that digital administration code, which was the first low which was put on github Completely version and you see you can see all diffs between the version from 2006 till the one which was passed just last december And you can see how it evolves with regular gift diff tool And then you can read it and read the docs, etc And the idea is to try to bring this forward more and more Probably the interface will need to be adjusted because of course you are serving two different technical use cases But we are going in in this direction and You have also to consider that most of the documentation for the technical part of course for the loads is in italian But for the technical part, we are trying to be as international as possible Most of the documentation is actually in english for example about all the data processing is is done like that And it's also interesting to see that other governments are doing a little some some stuff Similar to this an example was the french government which released the uh software is called open fisca Uh, which is a python package where they they you can run simulations for your country You you basically write a python classes and You you define the fiscal system of your country and then it's completely generic and you can run simulations You can see how to optimize taxes. You can propose the reforms And then see the impact of that and you're working on this We're also applying for a google summer of code and this is for example If we get accepted as a google summer of code organization one of the challenges that we try to propose to adapt it for our fiscal system Okay, more questions So you're asking about like, okay So you're asking about how what is the scope of the program? It's just for new software for old software open source software. So the answer is is different. So article 68 I I go back to the law article 68 You have to choose open source solutions first what it means is I am a public administration And I need a new piece of software The first thing to do I have to do is I have to evaluate what is already present before asking for it to be made for myself And if I find an open source package that is good for me or that can be modified it for to suit my needs I have to choose that I am mandated by law to do that Instead of I choose to have something new made for me, then I need to create it and release it for everybody as open source What we are doing is we are adding a collaborative model and an open way because until now it was open source like android Okay, which is open source, but you just get a tileball every now and then And said with this model you're able actually to maintain it and create a community around that A community which could be of other public administrations it is in everything For the governance question if I if I got it correctly so asking like Who are you reporting to we report directly to the prime minister? So this is the head of all the public administrations So once we do all this work and we release this code The presidency the government the the municipalities the hospitals the universities the schools Everybody will be covered by this Is it a Please okay, so the question was If I Create a model where you have to release as open source the software that you create doesn't this doesn't this create an incentive For small public administrations to wait for somebody else to do it and then get it for free well Yes and no meaning that if you if you have something that you need Usually usually actually what happens is the other way around So you recreate the same software over and over because you believe that what is there until now? It's not really good or not exactly satisfying your needs I don't think that this model changes very much this because This was kind of the way it was until now you have still article 68 and article 69 are Older than our team are older than this collaborative model. It's just a framework that was already present On which we are working So in theory already now this could have been a problem because Old public administrations are obliged to give to somebody else the software if they if they are asked for it for free And this is not a problem that is arising. So yes in theory This is a problem what you're quoting but in practice Ah, it it didn't really show up And actually we need to encourage more of this participation and more of this maintenance of the same software I have Cooling that my two or three or four developers can be paid to get the work done whereas the media's quality itself would have been completely Five percent of the work. So that was their distance Or just not at all because my department has five percent of what I really need to hire a human So I just don't hire a human But when I can give the budget to somebody else and then they can create a pool of funds and have to manage that developer team It happens Yeah, absolutely, but this is more or less experience. We saw so I mean it's Okay Okay, so the question was for for the internet speakers Um He was speaking about his experience in the Dutch government The bigger problem was to convince the manager a rate layer that You had to like that if you do something as open source Then it benefits everybody and not just the people who are funding you then this is a problem and then how to educate them not to Like that open source is not that much more expensive So you should do open source in general because it's better does it sum it up. Sorry It had to be a quick summary Okay, thank you You know it's actually read five minutes left. So no time's up Okay, yeah Well, in Italy, we are in a luckier situation because they have to release it as open source So You can kind of avoid the question in this way But in general, I would say that leading by example is always the best practice In in a way We are doing that also in Italy by trying to be an example in Europe And try to put it as a as a reform point For all the other governments try to see and enjoy because I I honestly believe that Not only Italian Uh, this is a personal belief that not only Italian institutions should participate in this kind of effort as I was quoting before the french government has also released Very good open software which can be adapted and used in other countries So if we of course, there will be some software which will be just for a nation or just to comply with a particular law or Just like a design choice. So for example for the the web the the web toolkits But otherwise There should be should be created. I think a much more Wide collaboration platform where where these things can go and and evolve Of course, sometimes it's quite hard to just convince the the management Another problem that we have many times is well, but if I open open it up, then it's less secure Which is of course not exactly the case, but then you need to talk them through it and and What we have seen working is that often best practices really help and We try to apply them in our work because because it's not really nice to go to somebody and say well You have to do it anyways, you know, it's because I I'm the I'm the boss or I'm the one who is putting down the guideline So it's always better to convince them and to have them to means that Opening things up is a good way. It takes a little bit of effort Uh For example, one of the things we tried first is to have the ticketing system be part be put on the open and then having like all of this Work gone and then you create a workflow and then you they're very very scared at first and then they see that It's actually good and they start to receive Good quality contribution Another example is that with the the agency's called uh, polygraphico which creates the the identity cards They have a middleware for reading the cards and so you could build your own application You could have it as an authorization mechanism for your office or for the gym or for the buses But it was windows only You managed to have it released as open source for the hackathon Just two days before and during the hackathon somebody took it and converted it for imported to arduino So now everybody could use just an arduino and all italian citizens Not all of them because they need a new id card, but more and more Italian citizens in the next 10 years their rollout will be complete. Hopefully also sooner You can just create your authorization mechanism with that And so they saw this as a real real good value And this is when they start to understand the power of open source and of opening things up because they can Stand to receive contribution. They have immediate feedback and so on. So yeah best practices to put this shortly Okay, uh wait, I just go in order because and I've tried to keep the answers short I saw some hands there since a lot of time, but I didn't see them anymore So we'll go one. Okay. Good. Okay, so The question was about uh, this is uh, and this is more about open source and not about hacking Uh, what I can tell you the the hacking part if I understand your question correctly is about the the platforms which are open and Let's say an api first approach where all the government agencies and all the services are exposed first via apis So you can build your own applications Well, this is of course a very very broad answer because you get all kind of apis and all kind of system But to give you to give you an example the data analytics framework will collect all of the data from all public administrations And then you have a central interface to analyze it and it's the only source of truth because it's where Like you get real-time feed. It's not like an open data portal where somebody just needs to go and upload A csv file every now and then when they remember, but it just like has life feed from The data the data directly and then of course depending on the access level policies You can go and analyze it And for all the datasets that are opened by law then you can just Create your account login and then you have a jupiter notebook with all of the data Directly inside and you can do your analysis and you can publish them for others to see So in this case if you're an activist or a journalist or a citizen who wants to do some dashboarding You can do it easily in this kind of framework The the electronic ad card is another example Your you can build your tools and devices and authorization with that. Yes Can I take the last question very quickly? Okay Please Okay, so the question were very long We will do that. We will do that But in general, yes article 68 is already working. We already have examples and yeah, thank you very much