The National Strategic Pole to secure PA data is born

​The quality of IT infrastructures determines the competitiveness of an advanced country, strategic assets that enable the safe processing and storage of data and the ability to transfer data safely. A fundamental issue, especially in Italy: first in Europe for the number of malware attacks and unfortunately fourth in the world, according to the Trend Micro report. Those threats make it essential to raise the national cyber security perimeter and protect critical national infrastructures.

It is in this context that the National Strategic Pole (PSN) is being set up: the new IT infrastructure at the service of the Public Administration for the provision of cloud services, the management and control of which must be autonomous from non-EU subjects. This project is part of the rationalisation and consolidation of the PA's data centre park, complementary to the adoption process of the cloud paradigm in the management of public data and services.

The objective is to pursue the independence of the Italian cloud, and digital sovereignty over data considered critical for the life of our country, and to remedy the strong fragmentation of the PA's ICT assets: in fact, at the current state, of the approximately 11,000 data centres used by Italian public bodies, 95% do not meet the minimum requirements of security, reliability, processing capacity, and efficiency. This is why the creation of a highly reliable infrastructure, designed in line with the Cloud Italy Strategy and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), has become urgent: to equip the Public Administration with cloud technologies and infrastructures that can benefit from the highest guarantees of reliability, resilience and independence.

In August 2022, the contract was signed for the start of work on the implementation and management of the National Strategic Hub, according to the schedule set out in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), and according to the security and data sovereignty features defined in the Cloud Italy Strategy. The signing took place between the head of the Department for Digital Transformation and the representative of the newly established company - owned by TIM, Leonardo, CDP Equity and Sogei - in accordance with the acts of the European tender procedure, managed by the central purchasing body Difesa Servizi S.p.A. and the Department for Digital Transformation as the contracting station. The path represents one of the priority actions identified by the Digital Growth Strategy 2014-2020, the document that substantiates the Italian Digital Agenda. The creation of the National Strategic Pole is led by the Department for Digital Transformation.​

​The decisive turning point for the implementation of the PSN came after the Covid pandemics and the consequent allocation of funds provided by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), which dedicates a specific investment of 900 million euro to the project.

On 7 September 2021, former minister Colao presented the Strategic Policy Document for the Implementation and Control of the PA Cloud. It follows that the PSN represents one of the three pillars of the strategy, together with the classification of data and services managed by administrations and with the qualification of cloud services that can be used by the PA.

The National Strategic Pole will host data and services considered critical and strategic, based on the classification envisaged by the new Cloud Italy Strategy. PA data and services are in fact categorised according to the damage that their compromise would cause to Italy.

The classes identified are of three types:

• Strategic: data and services whose compromise could have an impact on national security
  
  
• Critical: data and services the compromise of which could cause harm to the maintenance of functions relevant to society, health, security, and the economic and social well-being of the country
  
  
• Ordinary: data and services whose compromise would not cause the interruption of state services or, in any case, prejudice the economic and social well-being of the country.

The PSN will host the first two categories of data, according to the qualification of cloud services contained in the new strategy. The migration of data and services to the PSN involves about 280 administrations: all central administrations, Local Health Authorities (Aziende Sanitarie Locali - ASL), and major local administrations. The implementation roadmap foresees the completion of data migration by 2026.​