Innovation is advancing rapidly, from AI and the metaverse to blockchain, offering significant opportunities for the growth, security, and simplification of daily life for public administrations, businesses, and citizens.
Every time a significant innovation arrives, curiosity and a willingness to take risks are required. It requires a daily start-up mentality, with the ability to understand and leverage opportunities, as well as to manage the challenges that a major revolution like the digital one brings. With the Association PA Social and Fondazione Italia Digitale, we have always sought to analyze, disseminate, delve into, and explore the correct and quality use of digital opportunities.
The main objective is digital literacy because without a widely spread strong cultural foundation, we will never fully exploit the potential and make it a positive integral part of our daily lives. It’s no coincidence that among the proposals put forward by Fondazione Italia Digitale is the inclusion of digital education in the Constitution, which has become essential for everyone. Just as with the environment or sports over the years, today should be the digital era. Our approach of experimentation, training, dissemination, awareness-raising, and exchange of best practices has been our stance from the beginning: we did it over the years with social platforms and chats, we are doing it today with generative AI and the metaverse, and we also did it with blockchain.
With PA Social, we started from a very simple, almost banal principle, but still very relevant, “Being where the citizens are,” and we have always moved with the idea of “running on the path of innovation.” That’s why in 2020, we were the first in the Communication sector to choose, thanks to the partnership and technological support of Affidaty, a blockchain App associated with voting procedures for the Smartphone d’Oro, the first Italian award dedicated to the best experiences of digital public communication and information. Secure voting is one of the elements that certainly make blockchain a very important technology for many applications, in our case for training, dissemination, and research activities.
With Fondazione Italia Digitale, we work to make digital technology popular with the aim of bringing knowledge, awareness, and culture to all levels: citizens, businesses, professionals, and public administrations. That’s why we conceived and promoted (this year we will be at the third edition) the Festival of Popular Digital (Turin, October 4-5-6, 2024), and a few weeks ago, we presented the document “Mind the Gap – 11 Points for Digital Italy” to ensure that innovation is the tool to reduce inequalities and to grow the country.
The document also emphasizes the importance of privacy with the disclosure of only essential information thanks to advanced technologies like blockchain, which guarantee security and immutability. Mind the Gap emphasizes the importance of simplicity, security, concreteness, popularity, knowledge, with great attention to the centrality of the individual and ensuring access to digital and technology for all. Popular digital, digital culture and education, skills, infrastructure, modernization of the labor market, a dedicated ministry, yes to rules but with a real industrial policy and the ability to compete, digital public administration, govtech, European wallet, accessibility, inclusion, rights, sustainability, recognition of professionalism, new law for public communication, artificial intelligence, metaverse, automation, blockchain, cybersecurity, privacy, and much more.
There are many opportunities; it’s up to us to seize them in the right way and at the right time, aware of the continuous need for updating, training, and new knowledge.










