After the government crisis triggered by Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s popular far-right party The League, Italy has now a new government in office. For the second time in the Italian institutional history, the Belpaese has a Minister for Innovation and Digitalization (the first time it happened it was in 2001). According to data provided by the European Commission Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) 2019, it seems to be an important achievement because Italy ranks 24th out of the 28 EU Member States in the DESI 2019 ahead only of Poland, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria among State Members.
In line with this situation, Mr Giuseppe Conte has appointed Paola Pisano as Minister of Technological Innovation and Digitalization in the Italian Government because of her experience on the field gained serving as deputy mayor for innovation at the City of Turin from 2016.
During her experience in Turin, Mrs Pisano has contributing to the creation and the development of Torino City Lab, an initiative-platform aimed at creating simplified conditions for companies interested in conducting testing in real conditions of innovative solutions for urban living. The project is promoted by the City of Turin and it involves a vast local partnership of subjects from public and private sectors interested in supporting and growing the local innovation ecosystem.
During these years, Torino City Lab have developed different policies such as AperTo, the city’s open data portal which shares internal data of different city offices and EDU.LAB, a space open to confrontation in the educational field experimenting the didactic experiences brought in an innovative environment, animated by experts and with the central role of professors and students.
At the present time, Torino City Lab develops co-development solutions and testing in the following areas:
- innovative urban services enabled by 5G technologies: city applications of artificial intelligence and collaborative robotics, Internet of Things, augmented and virtual reality.
- autonomous mobility services with a focus on autonomous vehicles and drones for the transportation of people and things.
Turin has been the first Italian city and among the first in Europe to be connected to a 5G mobile network: in fact, in 2017 an agreement reached between the City of Turin and TIM marked the start of the experiment, expected to gradually extend the new mobile ultrabroadband infrastructure to the entire city by 2020.
Then, re-launching the vocation of the automotive sector, the City of Turin signed an agreement with the Ministry of Infrastructures and Transport and others 14 partner to promote a new mobility service in a shared, assisted, safe and ecological view integrating public mobility and decrease the time each individual citizen dedicates to driving.
With regards to drones, Ms Pisano stated the importance of developing drones technologies with the aim of traffic control, infrastructure monitoring and things mobility. Moreover, Dora Park was designated to be the testing area for drones operations due to its optimal position, security conditions and technology infrastructure.
In the next few days, we will see if the issues developed by Torino City Lab will be in the agenda of the new Italian Minister of Technological Innovation and Digitalization.