Cloud, what stage is the National Strategic Hub at?
Balance sheet of one year of operations of the national Strategic Hub, cloud infrastructure that will host the PA data with Pnrr funds. The ministries have pioneered a migration process which will see, in succession, the arrival of local health companies, hospitals and the main territorial bodies, such as regions and metropolitan cities
The migration of the first PAs to the national cloud managed by the National Strategic Hub (Psn) has begun.
The National Strategic Center (Psn) is the infrastructure that the newco of the same name owned by Tim, Leonardo, Cdp and Sogei, which was awarded a public partnership, has undertaken to create with the aim of providing the Public Administration with an infrastructure secure, efficient and reliable cloud, with Pnrr funds.
When fully operational, 75% of Italian administration data should migrate to the cloud by 2026 (at least 280 Pa). The first milestone – the one envisaged to comply with the EU's required obligations on the PNRR funds – involves the migration of the first 100 administrations by September 2024.
“We managed both to manage the start-up of the company and to be fully operational with 4 national Data Centers and the Security Operation Center made available by Leonardo”, explained Emanuele Iannetti, CEO of the PSN, regarding the first year of activity of the startup, speaking at Cybertech Europe 2023, held in mid-October in Rome.
“After one year of operation, 200 Administrations have decided to migrate towards PSN, of which over 30 Central Public Administrations (Defence, Interior, Foreign Affairs, Justice), more than 130 Local companies and companies and a series of Municipalities which have been trailblazers; we went beyond expectations, now we have the task of bringing the result home" echoed Paolo Trevisan, Chief Technology & Information Officer of Polo Strategico Nazionale.
All the details.
WHAT IS THE NATIONAL STRATEGIC POLE
On 24 August 2022, the PSN signed, with the Department for Digital Transformation of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the Agreement for the concession, for a period of 13 years, of the design, construction and management of the infrastructure for the provision of cloud services for the Public Administration.
The infrastructure is based on four national data centers (two in Lazio and two in Lombardy), managed directly by the Psn company, which have already been certified according to the highest standards of security, environmental sustainability and energy efficiency. Specifically, Leonardo, through the SOC in Chieti and the cybersecurity center in Genoa, guarantees continuous monitoring of the infrastructure against threats and cyber attacks.
THE PATH COMPLETED IN 2023
Since the beginning of 2023, Central and Local Public Administrations (CAP) and Health Companies have been able to request funding to start the migration of their strategic and critical data and services to the National Strategic Hub.
From February until 15 May 2023 (extended compared to the initial closure of 28 April), the Central Public Administration was able to request access to the new notice promoted by the Department for Digital Transformation, as part of Measure 1.1 "Digital Infrastructures ”, to migrate their data and services to the cloud, starting from the critical and strategic ones, towards the National Strategic Hub (PSN). As Wired recalled last May, “the notice put 373 million euros on the table. More than half were not awarded. Which means many central offices, which can also move at department or general management level, did not send their projects in time."
THE REQUESTS OF ASL AND AO
From 15 March to 21 July, Local Health Authorities and Hospitals were able to apply for the funds provided by the Pnrr to migrate their data, services and information systems to the national cloud, for a total financial allocation of 300 million euros. Of these 300 million, 36.9 million are still available, as can be seen from the tender website .
As the PSN website explains, over 190 local health authorities and hospitals have been able to choose between one of these solutions: migrate all data and services to PSN, migrate data and services to an adequate infrastructure or a qualified cloud solution, opt for a mixed.
Of these, 130 have already chosen to migrate to the Polo Strategico Nazionale cloud.
THE NEW NOTICE FOR THE CAP
Subsequently, on 3 July a new notice was issued which allocated, by 15 September 2023, again extended to 30 November , 280 million euros from the Pnrr to allow another 278 Central Public Administrations to migrate data and services to the Polo cloud National Strategic. The tender for the CAP therefore closes on 30 November 2023 and at the moment, out of the 280 million allocated, 262.1 million euros are available.
Furthermore, membership of the PSN for public bodies is voluntary.
THE POSITION OF UNDERSECRETARY BUTTI
“The National Strategic Hub has a fundamental role in the digitalisation of our country and, in collaboration with the Department for Digital Transformation, guides the Public Administration towards a future cloud”, commented the Undersecretary for Technological Innovation Alessio Butti on Linkedin, all 'after the first year of operation of the PSN.
“Supported by PNRR funds,” concluded Butti, “the PSN guarantees the protection of strategic data and an ever-increasing quality of services to citizens. Thanks to all the women and men who, over the last twelve months, have contributed to building this reliable, secure and efficient cloud infrastructure. With the PSN, Italy is aiming for an interconnected and innovative future of the PA".
THE ISSUE OF THE CLOUD ACT
However, the Undersecretary for Innovation himself did not fail to express some doubts.
The national Strategic Hub proposed by the Tim-Cdp-Leonardo-Sogei consortium is in fact also based on agreements with some of the main Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), namely Google (Tim's partner), Microsoft and Oracle.
Let's take a step back. The solutions offered by the PSN are: Housing & Hosting services (they use an equipped space owned by Polo Strategico Nazionale or offer the possibility of using the infrastructures owned by the PSN (servers, storage…); Private Cloud services (they offer the Administrations a virtualized infrastructure, dedicated or shared, for the management of applications and data); Cloud Services with CSP (are provided in public and hybrid modes: advanced solutions to accompany the PA in a sustainable digital transformation and professional services (the latter constitute additional solutions, offered by Polo Strategico Nazionale, to support Administrations, offering complete strategies in the digital path).
Undersecretary Butti himselfraised fears about the implications of the US Cloud Act in relation to the data hosted in the four PSN data centers due to the agreements with the CSPs mentioned above. The latter may allow US justice or intelligence services to access data hosted outside the United States in some cases. The cloud mega-bigs (Google, Oracle and Microsoft) are not in fact cut off from the national strategic hub.
According to the undersecretary, "critical issues remain open regarding the threat to national digital sovereignty represented by the American Cloud Act, which would also exercise its jurisdiction on Italian territory". “The only defense tool is to not be in the conditions of applicability of the Cloud Act” Undersecretary Butti underlinedin a hearing in the Chamber last December . “It will be necessary to evaluate the margins for maneuver to ensure full protection of citizens' data,” explained Butti.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/cloud-a-che-punto-e-il-polo-strategico-nazionale/ on Mon, 23 Oct 2023 06:06:46 +0000.