The digital delirium in Italy

by Davide Gionco
Over the years, many Italians born non-digital have experienced the simplifications brought about by the diffusion of IT tools in work and in everyday life.
At the same time all Italians, in the pre-digital era, had experienced the inconvenience deriving from the proverbial bureaucratic complications of public bodies.
One of the dreams of Italians who have seen IT tools spread in the private sector is that, finally, even public bodies could simplify life for citizens.
Certainly this was thought by the honorable Stefano Quintarelli, when back in March 2013 he proposed the establishment in Italy of the SPID service (Public Digital Identity System), to promptly implement the European Union regulation eIDAS for the electronic identification of citizens, which would then be approved in July 2014.

Unfortunately it didn't end like this.

The implementation of these good principles without common sense has led to the creation of delusional digital practices which, far from simplifying life for citizens, have further complicated it, leading to useless waste of time and additional costs to be incurred.

Starting from the principle that "now it is easy to identify yourself digitally", the various public bodies have seen fit to request digital identity verification for every type of operation, even the most trivial, including many fulfillments for which no one would have the convenience to steal another person's digital identity.

The path of torture for a parent of a child who attends a public school can begin when the school notices that it is necessary to pay the modest sum of €2.50 for the class photo.

Indeed, precisely, the notice does not come from the school, but directly from the Ministry of Education, which, to guarantee the efficiency of the system, must also deal with the payment of the class photo.
The payment advice is coded with 29 digits. It is assumed that the coding identifies who is the reason for the payment (the photo), the holder of the notice, the beneficiary of the payment, the payment deadline.
Once upon a time it would have been enough to have the students write in the class diary that there was €2.50 to bring to school to pay for the class photo. But today we have evolved, it can't be that simple.
So we have to activate a software that issues the payment notice and send an automatic email to the recipient of the notice.
Apart from the energy consumed for this useless email, since the communication contains all the details to finalize the payment (ie the request to give €2.50 to the school to pay for the photo), the question could be resolved here.

But no. Some genius in the government directed by Paolo Gentiloni (who is now causing damage in the European Commission) has decided in Legislative Decree n. 217/2017, subsequently amended by Law Decree 162/2019, that all payments to public administrations, including schools, must be made in a traceable manner, therefore by electronic payment.
Even if it is the amount of € 2.50 for a school photo.

It is of little use to recall the art. 693 of the Penal Code, which provides " Anyone who refuses to receive, for their value, coins having legal tender in the State, is punished with an administrative fine of up to 30 euros ". The State itself refuses payment in cash, imposing that it be made with electronic money, which, formally speaking, is a fiduciary scriptural currency, not legal tender.

Personally I can't see the public utility reason to track a €2.50 payment. Perhaps the fear that the photographer may not issue an invoice and pay VAT? All right. But how much does this traceability cost us citizens?

Assuming that the State has the absolute priority of tracing this type of payment, having sent me a personal payment notice, with a 19-digit identification code, there would already be all the information to issue a payment slip, generated by a software , which could simply be attached to the email.
But that would be too simple.
It is the intention of the state to inflict a certain level of psychological torture on its citizens.
Therefore the payment slip is not issued automatically, but it must be the citizen himself, guilty of having a child who attends a public school, to invest a part of his (useless) time to produce the payment slip himself.

And here the digital adventure begins.
First of all it is necessary to access the reserved area of ​​the school's "electronic register".

In fact, after having received the payment notice with a 29-digit identification code, it is still necessary to confirm one's identity as the parent of the child who has to take the class photo.
Never be that it is another person…
If one does not want to use the electronic register, one can always identify oneself via the SPID or by means of an electronic identity card (CIE), provided that one is not in the months of waiting to obtain an appointment from one's registry office. In 2022 we went up to 112 days waiting to obtain an identity document. Obviously for a fee.

After identifying yourself, you can finally access the payment area.

In a completely logical way, in the sense of torture to be inflicted on the citizen, after having already been identified once by receiving a payment notice with a 29-digit code and after having identified oneself in order to be able to click the green payment button, one accesses the page of the Ministry of Education (and of Merit, let's not forget it, because merits must be recognised), in which a new identification is required.

Never be that the payment is made by a different person.
The state wants to make sure that no one is wrong in paying for another. Is critical.

Not yet having an electronic identity card (the paper one expires in 2024), we decide to identify ourselves via SPID. Service purchased by paying it to private entities, authorized by the State.
The lucky private institution, to which I paid my donation, is Poste Italiane.
Unfortunately, before making the purchase, I had trusted the state quality controls on these entities, without going to read the not very good reviews on the Poste ID service.
You then enter the identification page via SPID.

It should be noted that it is not the photographer or the school that requests payment for the €2.50 photo, but even the Ministry of Education.
In theory, the login procedure should be simple. But the identification for the payment of 2.50 € requires a higher identification level, Level 2.
Then the adventure continues.
The internet page asks for further identity verification, via the Poste ID App (which forces me to buy a smartphone and install their private application on my phone).

Despite the doubts about my rights to not have a private application on my phone that someone could use to spy on me, the desire for digital simplification prevails, so I gave in to temptation, bought the smartphone and installed the notorious application.

But that doesn't work today.

At this point, since the App doesn't work, I try to identify myself using the only alternative method allowed, by sending a code via SMS.

At this point I note that the use of the SMS-based credential has a maximum limit of logins per quarter. So if the number of school payments is excessive and the Poste ID application malfunctions too many times, it will no longer be possible for me to identify myself. And I risk not being able to pay the €2.50, leaving my son sad and without a class photo.
But it is a risk that we must take in the name of digital simplification.
And luckily I don't have to make many other payments to public bodies.

As luck would have it, I still have 2 residual SMS available to identify myself.
Finally I can prove to the Ministry of Education (with its merits) that it's really me who intends to pay €2.50 for my son's class photo.

In order to do this, in respect of my privacy, I am asked for authorization to send the service provider all the data that the service provider already had when it sent me the payment notice via email.
Sure, privacy is important. Even though everyone had to know publicly last year whether or not I was vaccinated against covid-19, now the state wants to protect me in the transmission of my personal data to my child's school. Indeed there is a risk that they will be used improperly. For example to send me the next payment notice.
All right. We authorize the transmission of data. Also because I have no alternatives.
But the transmission fails.

Unfortunately, the time spent battling with the malfunctioning Poste ID application made the Ministry of Education website lose its patience (without the merit of patience). And luckily I know a little English, to understand the meaning of "Timeout".

So we have to start over!

After completing the procedure and consuming the penultimate remaining Poste ID SMS, I can finally access the Pago In Rete page.

It occurs to me that he could have paid starting directly from here, directly entering the 29-digit identification code I had received by email.
But now I remember that torture methods must always be sophisticated and this explains the arduous IT path to get to the payment page.

Another passing page, because the Ministry of Education (and of Merit) wants to know if, by chance, I haven't come this far to make a "voluntary payment" or to "manage consensus".
Then I click on "View payments" and access the page where I see the same payment notice, with exactly the same data that I had received in the initial email.

After that the adventure continues.
Now I can decide how to make the payment.
I can decide whether to download the PDF file of the bulletin, as they could have already sent it to me via email and then go to the post office or to the nearest tobacconist to make the payment.

The other time the tobacconist next door asked me for €2.50 in commissions for this type of payment. To avoid paying 100% commission on the payment amount (amount due to the sacred principles of traceability and digital simplification), I try my luck and try the "immediate payment".
And…surprise! If I had gone to the tobacconist's to pay, I could have done it anonymously. Instead the PagoPa platform, which is a different public body of the Ministry of Education (and of Merit) asks me again to identify myself via SPID. Or alternatively by email, by creating an additional user profile in PagoPa.

To avoid SPID's "caudin forks" I choose to enter with my email.
Once again the State takes care to remind me of my rights on the processing of personal data, after having imposed me the traceable digital payment for the 2.50 euro photo.

We then finally arrive at the payment page.
At this point it should be simple.

I choose to pay by bank transfer.

But, unfortunately for me, my bank is not among those who have made agreements with PagoPa.
The transfer is not for everyone, I note. So I go back, to choose another payment method.

But the internet page, instead of letting me try again, informs me that the payment has not been successful. My fault, that I didn't have a checking account at the right bank.

At this point, logically, I go back to "view payments", to redo the payment in another way.
"Pago in rete" informs me that at the moment there are no payments to be made.

After 30 minutes spent identifying myself 3 times, battling with the non-functioning Poste ID applications to get the payment slip, which the school could have sent me by email, I now discover that the "online" slip has disappeared. Without further instructions on what to do.
I just have to leave the website and call the school tomorrow morning to ask for explanations. As long as they can give it to me.

After about 30 minutes I receive an email message clarifying the situation.
The payment has not been successful.

I actually noticed that too. It would have been enough to let me use another means of payment. And instead, I have to start all over again: identification to enter the school portal, SPID identification with Poste ID (I'm left with an available SMS, let's hope everything goes well), identification to enter PagoPa

I repeat all the operations patiently. Luckily Poste ID recognizes my username and password (because it hadn't done so in previous cases, forcing me to change my password, strictly at least 8 characters long, with numbers, upper and lower case letters and a special character different from those previously used) .
I manage to get, after another 10 minutes, to the payment area.
This time I choose the "credit card" method

Obviously I have to identify myself, for a fourth time, for the credit card.
The system informs me that the operation has been taken over. We are hopeful…

We succeeded! Again this year I was able, with great effort, to secure my son the right to have a copy of the class photo. It wasn't obvious.

After a while, for a total of about 45 minutes invested in total, I receive the coveted message that the payment has been successful. Cost: only €2 commission, for a total of €4.50 paid for the class photo. Multiplied by 25 students in the class, they make €50 in commissions to the banking system, spent in the name of digital simplification and the fundamental need to trace every single payment of €2.50.
And luckily I have an engineering degree. I dare not imagine the problems that a citizen with a low level of education and little habit of using IT tools could have.
I'm beginning to suspect who enforced this kind of traceable payments. As the late judge Giovanni Falcone said "follow the money".

Let's do some math…
In Italy there are about 8.5 million students. For each student, an average of 6 payments per year per student (registration, voluntary contribution, 2 field trips, memorial day show, end-of-year photo), make €12 for 8.5 million, for a total of approximately 100 million euros per year in commissions.
If we add to this the market price of 45 minutes lost by the parent, to the modest gross cost of €15 per hour, we add another 574 million euros in costs to be borne by the citizen.
A total of 674 million euros (0.04% of GDP) for which we have to thank the Ministry of Education, unable to send payment slips directly to families and to demand from the banking system that there are no commissions payable below a certain amount.

And we only dealt with the payments to the Ministry of Education. Obviously the State puts pressure on all other public bodies to adapt to "digital modernization".

Since the purchase of the class photo is not a compulsory payment, I could have, on principle, refused to do so. But it would have been difficult to explain to my son that he should have given up the photo with his schoolmates because the father intends to send a dissent signal to the state. Also because the State, obviously, will not notice it. Unless all citizens refuse to use these absurd and inhumane payment methods.

Someone will tell me that once payments were made at the post office, standing in long queues and paying the commission for the postal order there too.
This is true, but nobody went to the post office to pay €2.50 for a class photo. Nor for the school trip.
The money was given to the son, who took it to school, where a teacher collected it and marked who had paid and who had not.
It was a system that had worked well for decades. But today we are digital, we have to progress and waste 45 minutes, plus €2 in commissions, to track payments of €2.50. It is a matter of principle, for those who govern us.

Or crazy ideology, combined with the well-known incompetence of those who are in charge of organizing these services.

Someone else proposed that one parent, the class representative, should offer to collect cash payments and record payments, then make a single, traceable payment for photos of all 25 students in the class.
Unfortunately, parents elected as class representatives work, they don't have the time to take charge of this service. Teachers are no longer required to do this. Nobody does. Therefore, the only possible way remains to go through the SPID + PagoPa + Pago In Rete procedures, etc.

Digital technologies can certainly make our lives easier, but only if used with common sense. Otherwise they become torture. In some cases a nightmare, when that payment is essential to participate in a competition or to take advantage of a fundamental right of a citizen.
It is sufficient that there is a problem in one of the too many "digital passages" for the payment to fail and the fundamental right to be guaranteed.
If the procedures currently imposed by the State were subjected to a "risk analysis" study, as is done in industrial processes, they would be totally rejected. There are many risks of problems: the error of a software or of an application of the various subjects involved, the lack, even if only temporary, of an internet signal, the malfunctioning of the mobile phone which must receive the SMS, the failure to update an application, a error on the part of the public body…

I tried to tell friends who live abroad how payments to public bodies work here. They laughed and are amazed that people don't protest.
In normal countries it is the State that sends the citizen the payment slip with the necessary data and the citizen pays it in the same way as all other payments in the private sector. What is the point of having different platforms and different methods?
The State is interested in that payment, sent to the recipient, is made by someone. It is not necessary for the citizen to identify himself electronically before paying.

This is an example of a Swiss payment slip.

All the essential data is there. An identification code. The coordinates for the transfer.
For those who want a QR code, which avoids copying all the data by hand.
Simple and functional.

For digital procedures to work properly, they need to be really simple, rational, with a minimum number of steps, taking into account the errors that could occur in the flow diagram, with verifications of effective functionality carried out by third-party certification bodies. But above all, common sense is needed not to digitize what does not make sense to be digitised.
It makes no sense to impose cumbersome digital payment procedures for a trivial amount of €2.50.
And we need the honesty to focus attention on citizens' rights and not on the interests of too many individuals who profit from the various steps imposed by the digital process.

If anyone knows MPs or ministers, please forward this article to them.

Faced with a State that not only makes us pay, but which inflicts continuous digital torture in a delirious way, one really wants to rally friends and relatives to build a new civil society, with institutions that work and respect citizens.

Please stop this torture.

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The article Digital delirium in Italy comes from Scenari Economici .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-delirio-digitale-in-italia/ on Sun, 21 May 2023 10:10:33 +0000.