Region’s digital transition plan fails, withdrawn to avoid Court of Auditors’ rejection.
Explain to me briefly the following article:
“«Withdraw the plan urgently as a precaution»: with a note of a few lines, sent from the Department of Economy, yesterday the emergency that forced President Schifani to convene a unprecedented meeting of the council on Monday was triggered. And in that meeting, an investment program worth 217 million was torn up, or almost, to avoid an inevitable rejection by the Court of Auditors. This means that interventions with European and state funds that would have revolutionized the ordinary administration of the Region and Municipalities in three years by digitizing most of the procedures have been stopped.
The emergency was triggered yesterday, but the first signs had arrived in the middle of summer. On July 23, the council had approved the three-year Digital Transition Plan. Which includes precisely 122.4 million in investments between 2024 and 2025 and another 95.2 in the following two years. In 2026, according to the plan, anything could have been done with a click. But already in August, the Court of Auditors, which is responsible for checking the economic coverage of the plan and compliance with the rules for its drafting, raised some objections. For the investigating magistrate, Giuseppe Di Prima, there are no grounds for the necessary ratification.
The objections were sent to the Region. The Department of Economy defended the project trying to demonstrate its correctness. But it did not convince the Court of Auditors, which instead set a hearing for this morning. And at that point, the rejection could have become final.
For this reason, the Minister of Economy, Alessandro Dagnino, yesterday put his fears in writing to the president: “Given the very tight deadline, I believe I must prudently propose the withdrawal of the plan in order to allow an even more careful examination and any changes.” And so it went: the council backtracked neutralizing the Court of Auditors’ hearing this morning.
The auditing magistrates had contested that the Digital Transition Plan had been drawn up without consulting the Regional Information Systems Coordination Committee that the Region itself had created in 2018 precisely to implement the first digital investment plan.
The one just withdrawn is indeed the third plan. There had been one in 2018 and another in 2021 but the auditing magistrates did not receive the necessary report on the results of the first two: and also on this they raised objections: “The state of implementation of the aforementioned interventions and the initiatives taken to avoid overlap of funding are not clear”.
Although the main criticism obviously concerns the projects planned in the new plan, that for the period 2024/2026: “It is envisaged – write the auditing magistrates – that the schedules of the individual lines of action and the objectives envisaged shall be drawn up. But this information is not provided in the plan just approved by the council, while it had been correctly included in the two previous versions.”
These are the objections that the Region has not been able to dismantle in two months. And from here comes the decision to stop and start over.
But what was planned in the buried plan? The answer is in the 69 pages that the council approved at the end of July. Firstly, the digitization of all tenders and notices, which would have cost 5 million. And then the digitization of all departmental procedures, which for 7.7 million would have made it unnecessary for users to go to the offices. A services portal would also have been created (2 million) and the Data Center would have been enhanced (8.8 million). The tourism portal would have been created (2.2 million) and platforms for water and waste management (12 million) would have been developed. The network that allows for faster communications for firefighting detection and prevention (10 million) would have been completed. The list of projects is long. And so are the times for them to start.”
Alla Regione un flop la transizione digitale: piano ritirato per evitare la bocciatura della Corte dei Conti
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