The 2012 road map of the association starts from Genoa States General of Innovation, to continue to plan the country's innovation together. And it begins right in Genoa, which a year ago, together with Grenoble, was the city chosen by the European Commission to launch the "Smart Cities and Communities" initiative in Brussels and bear witness to the work necessary to develop a smart city project with the involvement of companies, institutions and citizens. Friday 23 March, just one week after the first meeting of the Permanent Consultation of Innovation, Stati Generali dell'Innovazione organized, together with the Municipality of Genoa and Selex Elsag, the event "Genoa for Digital Innovation, an open smart city”, in the Representative Hall of Palazzo Tursi of the Municipality. Broadband and social inclusion, Open Data and Territorial Emergency Management, Cloud Computing and Digital Justice, Smart Communities for Smart Cities these are the four topics covered during the day and on which 4 "position papers" were prepared in a collaborative manner, the subject of debate in the four parallel open talks held in the afternoon.
The meeting was opened by Flavia Marzano, President of the States General of Innovation Association, underlining the importance of “create spaces for participation to support the country, work in a collaborative, crowdsourcing perspective, to innovate from below and create a system by including every innovation actor”, while in the initial greetings the Deputy Mayor of the Municipality of Genoa, Paul Pissarello, invited to read the territory thinking of a technology that has a real impact on services and that changes the lives of citizens.
To create "tools that make people work together, that are concrete and know how to bring ideas into actions that improve the lives of citizens. Visible solutions in the area and projects that give investment responses in the area”. An opportunity to promote the qualitative development of the territorial reality, in a system in which PA, companies, the world of research and citizens collaborate in a synergistic way. Paul Aielli, CEO of SELEX Elsag, gave the company's point of view, presenting the multidisciplinary collaboration experience of his company and emphasizing that “to innovate, it must come out of its self-referentiality, combining skills, competences and vision and investing in young people as change agents” of the solution production process. The intervention follows Paola Girdinio, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Genoa, is an appeal to use the research “pTo develop the process we have experienced, to create a system”. Recounting her experience with the Municipality of Genoa, the principal Girdinio supports the importance of building horizontal projects that respond to the needs of the community and that trigger a cultural change, because "There is no smart city without smart people”.
Irene Tinagli, Advisor to Minister Profumo on Smart Cities, brought the point of view of the new government strategy. "Lhe effort that the government is making is to use the instrument of participation to address real social problems linked to the territory of our country. Ours is a country that has suffered a lot and many consequences of this hardship are pouring into the territory. Problems that are very often overlooked, and for this we want to seize the opportunity and sensitivity that Europe is having towards cities, helping citizens to live better and increase the quality of life. When we talk about Smart Cities and technologies we are not talking about science fiction. The aim of the initiatives is to resolve earlier, better, in a more efficient and less costly way, to make that leap that we have not been able to make but which Italy can absolutely make with technology". A possible “leap frog”, because “Even developing countries are using technologies to solve their problems. The State of Rio, for example, is using technologies to solve the problem of the high school dropout rate by applying technology to education and training”. The task of the institutions is therefore to “Accompany projects with intelligent policies”. During the "Open Panel: Digital Innovation for the City and the Territory", the speech by Flavia Sartore, Director General of the Decentralized Services Area towards the Metropolitan City - Municipality of Genoa, focused on what it means to give innovation within a smart city”Reading the city as a closely interconnected whole that aims with the services to make the use by citizens more accessible. In this context, innovation represents an essential tool for the birth of the smart city rectified in the daily life of work in the complex machine of a metropolitan municipality”, and to do this a profound rethinking of an organizational type is necessary. According to Paolo Piccini, SELEX Elsag General Manager, enabling factors such as e-commerce are the drivers that make services designed for cities and businesses a means of improving citizens' lives. Glory Piaggio Genoa Smart City Coordinator and European Project Manager, described the "Smart City" project as a "humble and artisanal process” that engaged people from the beginning. The city is a living organism that needs a brain that organizes it, and the intelligent city finances itself with the savings derived from its own methods of management of the same, intercepting the proposals and needs of the community and managing to integrate even within the municipal machine the processes of change. The intervention by instead focused on the importance of culture Andrea Ranieri, Councilor for Culture and Innovation of the Municipality of Genoa, according to which the "technologies, as well as intelligent services, are important for solving people's problems, but they risk becoming barriers if there is no adequate culture on the part of the recipients of the same”. Another important issue touched upon by the Councilor is the interoperability that “in this country it is scarce and one must begin to wonder why. The introduction of technologies implies a process of change. Often the technologies remain destined for the ICT sector and become an on-demand service”, in practice, however, they should be a real tool for participation, breaking down barriers and acting as a driving force for change. A change that must be based on social innovation because "Innovation walks on three axes: talent, creativity and innovation. Where there is social innovation there is the best context for technological innovation”. Manuela Arata, President of the Science Festival, spoke of the importance of preparing smart people. Examples of this process are the projects of the Science Festival, such as, for example, the "Smart inclusion" in hospitals and the "digital angels" initiative for the digital inclusion of the elderly. He also underlined how essential it is that the scientific community can participate in the decision-making process by providing contributions and suggestions. For Raphael Bubble, Associate Prof., IT, Systems and Telematics Dept., University of Genoa, innovation represents an opportunity to be seized but also an important risk. In a globalized context, technologies can make the local context lose importance. For this reason “the creation of a culture of innovation in the area must be combined with the ability to provide this innovation not only for the area but globally”. Finding interoperable solutions is also one of the objectives of SELEX Elsag, according to George Moscow, Business & Marketing Development Manager, for “build interdisciplinarity and collaboration between companies” according to the open innovation paradigm, which means “work together to ensure that technologies are used as they are and for what they are used for”. Closing the first panel was Claudius Viazzi, President of the Court of Genoa, who brought the interesting experience of the Court of Genoa and brought to light the problems encountered by the administrative justice sector to innovate. “Since 2003, the court of Genoa was one of the trial courts of the telematic judicial process”. But the obstacles to the innovative process are many, from the lack of funds, because it is not true that there are no-cost reforms, to the lack of a culture of prevention, just think that the "Our ministry spends 100 million euros every year on the Pinto law”. Despite the obstacles, however, the reform of the chancelleries in Genoa is a reality. In the regions where there is a greater number of injunctions, bank interest rates are also higher. As long as there are few users who request a decree electronically, we lose a chance to speed up the functioning of the justice sector. A cultural investment, the one to be made, but also an investment in territorial synergies in order to reduce the habits of pauperistic Italian politics. The morning session concluded with reflections by "user representatives" (Mauro Ferrante, of the Bar Association, Laura Petacchi, Director General of the Public Works Area and Housing Policies of the Municipality of Genoa,Gianfranco Delponte, Director General of the Security and Special Projects Area – Municipality of Genoa, Robert Marciano, Chief Scout) who provided important ideas for the open talks.
During the afternoon the work of the parallel open talks took place, the results of which were reported in the plenary session. Common elements were found by the group Broadband and social inclusion and from group Cloud Computing and Digital Justice, according to the reporter Maria Silvia Libe, Web Strategy & Digital Media Consultant of SELEX Elsag, which are substantiated in the need for technology that is accessible and usable by all citizens, and real coordination between stakeholders, with the use of Social Networks as tools to encourage participation. Nello Iacono, vice president of the Stati Generali dell'Innovazione association, underlined a central issue in the open talk: the importance of preparing the social context to enhance the evolution that can come from digital and technologies. As in the experience reported by Studio TAF on the inclusion of "fragile elderly people", the training of all the people with whom the elderly come into contact is fundamental. It is no coincidence that from 2012 the Horizon 2020 program will focus on transversal areas abandoning the logic of sectors and one of these areas is the inclusive society.
According to the table Cloud Computing and Digital Justice, which the rapporteuse reportedSusanna Belli, Head of the CAP Area - Justice, SELEX Elsag, cooperation between the various actors of justice is fundamental. The telematic civil process platform can be a meeting point for the various actors who work around it. From the table Open data and the management of local emergencies, who had as rapporteur Sandro Gambelli, Director of the Civil Protection of the Municipality of Genoa, it emerged that expanding the community of those who hold the information can also allow for a faster and more effective response in the management of emergencies provided that these data are validated and made reliable. In some administrations, such as in the Piedmont and Emilia Romagna regions, data has been released and this practice costs less than selling it and allows citizens to be given information in real time, reducing the percentage of risks. According to the “talk opener”, Sergio Farruggia, ASITA Federation Scientific Council, the participants at the table expressed the need to collect all the information on tools, data, ideas and projects on the subject in a single "hub". The Stati Generali dell'Innovazione association accepts the request and will soon make available a first tool to start this collection activity which must involve the participants in the Genoa event but also attract and aggregate all those who are interested on the net to the topic. From the table Smart Communities for Smart Cities, which he saw as a “talk opener” Gianni Dominici, Director General of ForumPA, the importance of the issue of governance emerges. According to Dominici “StOnly a PA that governs the network can govern the processes. It is important to give centrality to editorial assets, to encourage civic participation in the creation of public value. When the PA adopts this principle, it will be a first step for the new land management and technology will be the means for enhancing the process”. The reporter Glory Piaggio, Genoa Smart City Coordinator and European Projects Manager of the Municipality of Genoa, underlined how the strong need to communicate and find a digital place of dialogue with a governance that guides the process towards smart cities and that allows participants to really interact . It is also necessary to adopt a perspective of inclusion and encourage the participation of those who are not accustomed to new technologies.
The day was concluded by the deputy mayor Pissarello, who once again underlined how concreteness was the basis of the debate and how important it is to seek a method, together, to continue the path begun on 23 March both on a local and national basis.
The path is long and tortuous, every step forward is a step towards a better country, a country that knows how to listen to and understand the needs of its citizens, anticipating their needs and proposing solutions that are by now easy and widespread to improve the quality of life and the efficiency of public action also thanks to listening and the ability to team up all the players who must be involved in innovation towards an open government, towards a truly European country.
Like all meetings promoted by the association States General of Innovation, also this Genoa will be the starting point for concrete and shared initiatives, enhancing the results built with debates and open talks. Soon, on wikiwork resumes.