QUALIFICATION TO BE CLOUD PROVIDER OF ITALIAN PUBLIC AUTHORITIES

Starting from the 19th of April 2019, Cloud and SAAS providers who are loking to offer their services to Italian Public Bodies need to meet certain criteria, register online and get cerified by AGID - Agenzia per l'Italia Digitale – the Agency for Digital Italy.

Indeed the introduction of the cloud infrastructure makes it possible to improve the operational efficiency of ICT systems to reach important cost reductions, to make software updates easier and cheaper, to improve security and data protection and to speed up service delivery to citizens and businesses.

Accordingly the italian public authorities need to know their suppliers, and to make this process easy economic operators need to register to get certified by the Agency for Digital Italy (AGID).

The CSP qualification of Cloud Service Provider requires some organizational requirements of security, reliability, performance and interoperability, described in the AGID circular number 2, dated 9th April 2018.

On the other hand, the SAAS qualification for the "Software as a service" suppliers of the Public Administration ensures that the SaaS services for the PA cloud are developed and supplied according to minimum criteria of reliability and security for public digital services.

Among the requirements asked from the suppliers described in detail by the AGID circular number 3, dated 9th April 2018, there are application security, the availability of adequate technical support for the customer, transparency, the availability of incident reports, statistics and monitoring tools, a minimum set of mandatory guaranteed service levels, data protection and portability in all stages of the service, interoperability through appropriate APIs, and the exportability of the data in a format on other platforms, to reduce the risk of exclusive dependence of the public authorities on the supplier (lock in).

Companies can apply for qualifications through the appropriate AGID platform. Once the documentation has been received, AGID verifies the real possession of the declared requirements and, with a positive outcome of the verification, it will proceed to insert the provider in the PA Cloud Marketplace.

European Tender Services (trademark of Cavendish Media Ltd) provides its expertise to support all economic operators with an intermediation service, for a quick and easy qualification process that will open the doors to the Italian public authorities marketplace.