Telecom Italia (TIM) has teamed up with state lender CDP, defence group Leonardo and state-owned IT firm Sogei to submit a proposal to build a national hub for cloud-based management of Public Administration (PA) data and applications. The official presentation of the bid comes after Innovation Minister Vittorio Colao confirmed at the start of the month that bids are expected from companies interested in the EUR 900 million project to upgrade existing data storage facilities to create a nationwide infrastructure.
TIM said its proposal would involve setting up a public-private NewCo with a 20 percent stake to be held by CDP, 25 percent by Leonardo, 10 percent by Sogei and 45 percent by TIM. The aim is to provide innovative services to citizens and businesses, in line with the provisions of the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan and recent regulatory interventions on digital infrastructure.
TIM added that, if selected, the industrial partners will provide end-to-end migration services and support PAs with professional evolution services to ensure maximum efficiency and effectiveness when operating in cloud environments. The resulting hub will be based on four new generation (Tier IV) data centre in two regions, with high levels of security and energy efficiency and in line with global best practices and the consortium will provide comprehensive and advanced cloud services as well as staff training for the PAs.
Italy’s Ministry for Technological Innovation and the Digital Transition (MITD) is due to examine the proposals received and launch the corresponding tender within three months. Earlier this year prime minister Mario Draghi said a quarter of the country's EU-funded EUR 235 billion economic recovery plan will be allocated to boosting digitalisation in the coming years.
The cloud hub is part of Italy’s plans to migrate data and IT applications of individual public administrations to the cloud and the EU’s efforts to make the bloc less reliant on overseas tech companies for cloud services.
