Telematic Plan of Emilia-Romagna 2007/2009

The projects pertaining to this guide line are across-the-board, and are needed for the implementation and co-ordination of the Telematic Plan and its operative Programmes, in their entirety, together with other initiatives for the development and growth of information society in Emilia-Romagna.

Initiatives within this section are closely related to the completion of digital communication infrastructures enabling local authorities to interact together and to provide citizens and businesses with advanced services. The two main web infrastructures are the broadband PA's Lepida network, and mobile radio communication network for communication and coordination for R3 civil emergency forces. After the implementation of the main backbones, at present the networks are being enlarged and integrated in specific territories. In particular, as regards LEPIDA, the implementation of the Metropolitan Area Networks is now taking place, which are linked to the regional backbone, already brought to all the Municipalities in Emilia-Romagna.

All the initiatives pertaining to his guide line aim at implementing this operative platform enabling Emilia-Romagna's Public Administrations to have access to a series of services and applications needed for the digitalisation of their activities. The services provided to the local authorities may be grouped in the following five categories: ID, authentication and application co-operation; technological services; infrastructural services; territorial control and security; document management and handling.

The initiatives within this guide line intend designing on line services of Emilia-Romagna's local authorities by paying further attention to quality features, as well as taking into account that only if services are easy to use and essentially equal and even throughout all the areas, a truly widespread and thorough use by citizens and businesses in Emilia-Romagna will be possible. With the latest planning concerning this guide line, special attention has been paid - mostly as a response to the emerging and long-lasting economic crisis - to services for companies. This has led to the creation of a regional portal collecting and organising all on line information and services for local companies.

The quality of healthcare services may also improve thanks to a more effective, coordinated and efficient circulation of information and data referring to patients and beneficiaries. For these reasons, Emilia-Romagna Region has been promoting and supporting for several years innovative and e-government projects, like SOLE - Sanità On Line, one of the best at national level, linking in a network 3,800 general practitioners and children's doctors and all the structures and specialist physicians of the Region's healthcare trusts, thus improving the quality of the healthcare system covering more than 4 million people in the Region, together with many other Italian citizens deciding to seek treatment in Emilia-Romagna. This takes place through the sharing of healthcare information between doctors and structures, to establish the so-called healthcare continuity. In order to pursue these goals, the possibility of exploiting the advantages and opportunities created by what has already been implemented through other projects and spin-off of the Telematic Plan is also very important, starting from the broadband network Lepida, but also the implementation and streamlining of FedERa, the federated authentication system of Emilia-Romagna, and the application cooperation tool ICAR Emilia-Romagna, making information systems of local authorities communicate and interact together.

The use and application of technologies in schools play an essential role for the elimination of the digital divide. For this reason, and for this guide line, the aim consists in increasing students' and teachers' knowledge, as well as producing a similar positive effect on the students' families, starting from their learning experiences in school. But not only that: these activities tend to foster and promote the knowledge and use of digital tools and the Internet, as well as to promote technologies as learning tool well suited to modern information and network-based society. For this reason, one of the priority goals of this guideline consists in disseminating broadband in all the schools of the Region.

With the term knowledge divide a reference is made to the limited availability of new technologies, in companies, for citizens and in Public Administrations. There is in fact a divide in terms of knowledge between people who know how to use personal computers or to surf the Internet and use other technological innovations, and people who lack the necessary skills to do so. Therefore, within this guide line, actions and IT literacy and awareness courses are planned for citizens, with special attention being paid to weaker groups, such as home makers, retired people and immigrants, and for companies, with visits and in-depths, information and awareness meetings fostering the adoption of new technologies in production and management processes.

Emilia-Romagna Region promotes industrial research and development activities, by focussing on the ICT/public administration area, in order to improve the performance of Public Administration and to foster the socio-economic development of the territory. This guide line thus refers to the carrying out of surveys, studies and analyses to identify the main needs and demands of Emilia-Romagna's Public Administrations with respect to technological innovation and development of new tools and solutions, in view of the qualitative and quantitative growth of their activities and services for citizens and businesses.

The initiatives defined in this guideline enable to measure every year not only the progress of individual projects within the Telematic Plan, but also dynamics and development trends in the use of new digital and network technologies throughout the regional territory. The availability of these data and the knowledge deriving from their analysis is essential to plan and support individual actions, as well as to define action priorities in the Telematic Plan.