Team Digitale, the Italian government’s digital transformation team, will become part of a new department in the prime minister’s office, as of 1 January. The team’s activities are expected to continue in the new organisation, the Dipartimento per la trasformazione digitale (digital transformation department).
As of yet, an unknown number of the team’s experts will move to the new organisation.
The pending reorganisation of the team, well-known for its use of open source software and promoting an open source working culture, was announced back in June, when the new department was created by government decree.
The new department is intended to coordinate and execute “the digital transformation and modernisation” of the country’s public services.
Officially, Team Digitale will stop at the end of this year. However, Luca Attias, currently Extraordinary Commissioner for the implementation of the Digital Agenda, and head of Team Digitale, will become director of the new digital transformation department. Some of the other members of the team are still waiting to hear if their tasks will continue and their contracts will be renewed.
Team Digitale was created in March 2017. The project was a key element in the country’s 3-year digital transformation plan.
Over the past three years, the team has promoted the use of open source and open IT standards by Italy’s public service, organised a country-wide hackathon, and pushed public services to share their tailor-made applications as open source. In September, it unveiled the Catalogo del riuso (Reuse Catalogue), a carefully curated collection of reusable, open source software solutions.
In addition, the team started working with the country’s Court of Audit. The court will attempt to make the reuse of public sector IT solutions part of its annual audits, reasoning that public services that do not share software solutions prevent others from reusing them, and so increase the costs to society.