Spider is safe for now

The spider is safe, but its end has only been postponed. The existence of the public digital identity system has been questioned for months since the Meloni government took office: Alessio Butti, the council presidency’s undersecretary for technological innovation, had “expressed his intention to gradually shut down Spid and have an electronic identity card as the only digital identity”. The latest development from a meeting between Butti and representatives of digital identity managers: Spid’s use will be expanded. But what will change in the future for the more than 34 million digital identities activated by Italians?

spider is everywhere

In Italy, more than 34 million citizens with an Italian document have a Spid digital ID. Approximately 33.3 million digital IDs were issued from 2016 to the end of 2022, increasing to 34.2 in February 2023.

With Spid, more than 34 million digital identities can access the online services of over 12,674 public administrations at various levels to perform a range of transactions, such as payments, registrations or access to government bonuses. The provision of the service was contracted to 10 external operators, including Poste Italiane, Tim, Aruba and Infocert. It will be the renewal of management contracts between providers and the government that will determine the future of Spider.

spider extension

Undersecretary for Technological Innovation Alessio Butti met with representatives of digital identity managers and the main accredited certifiers association Assocertificatori. During the meeting, Butti reiterated the Meloni government’s line on the Spid: “It is necessary to rationalize the digital identity system in Italy to ensure a progressive evolution in line with the European frame of reference,” reads a note from the Department of Digital Transformation. The full willingness of the government to initiate a discussion on the evolutionary strategies of digital identity in Italy and Europe was also reaffirmed.

Renewal of contract identity providers, Expires April 2023: In this, Butti underlined his intention to define a multi-year renewal of the service, and to identify a support that “after years of unheeded demands from previous governments, could guarantee the economic sustainability of Spid against the commitment required.”

The government and administrators will work together to trace the evolutionary path of the new Spider, which should happen by next June. According to the statement conveyed by the Department of Digital Transformation, there will be fixed points for citizens, public administrations to improve operational continuity as well as the “significant results achieved by the Spid system and the actors participating in it”. and businesses. In particular, the government wants to combine the electronic ID card Spid and Cie.

Electronic ID card: Differences with Spid

That’s why the government wants to “merge” the Electronic Identity Card (Cie) with Spider. Cie is also very common: activated by 32.7 million Italians in 2022. We can consider it as the evolution of paper identity document. It looks like a two-chip payment card that contains the owner’s personal data and online authentication information.

Spid or Electronic Identity Card (Cie) is mandatory to access all services of the public administration. However, there are differences between the two tools. If authentication from a smartphone is very fast in both cases – but Cie needs a phone with NFC – from a desktop PC, Cie needs a smart card reader with special software so that it can access government sites or portals. If the purpose of the two tools is the same, their use is not the same.

What’s changing for the future: managers want more money

The unknowns about Spid’s future emerged at the end of 2022, when agreements between the key administrators of the public digital identity system were about to expire. The government had officially extended these until April 2023 to guarantee the service, but the administrators asked for new contracts and raised them: Around 50 million euros from the state are needed to manage spider management costs. These funds can be withdrawn from the digital identity portion of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Pnrr), worth €255 million.

Among other things, there is a European digital identity on the horizon, allowing EU citizens, residents and businesses to identify themselves or verify certain personal information to access public and private services across the European Union, both online and offline.

The idea of ​​combining the two authentication systems (Spid and Cie) has already been discussed by the Conte II government and Innovation Minister Paola Pisano, but it is still unclear how the Meloni government plans to organize it. Migration to a single system. And in light of the European digital identity project, it will be increasingly necessary to integrate and not disassemble, or worse, complicate.