Public administrations digitisation and smart cities between law and technology: a first short general overview

The Italian regulation on the digitisation of public administrations as a whole is recent, especially the one on the digital ombudsman; for this reason, it is still too early to assess entirely the impact to ensure the full establishment of smart cities (smart communities) model. Indeed, Italy lags behind other European countries where the public administration's digitalisation began a long time ago. The establishment of the model of the smart cities ( i.e. intelligent community) despite the lack of “ad hoc”" legally binding references, introduced by the legislator as an important part of the implementation of the Italian Digital Agenda, is based on a huge use of data given by public administration and used by the latter to better satisfy the citizens’ needs. It is therefore essential to provide a sort of guarantor of the fair use of data by the public administrations and of equal access to digital services for all citizens, to avoid social inequalities that the smart city would rather fight. Unfortunately, the regulation concerning the Digital Ombudsman, does not completely achieve this goal, in light of the poor powers given to him, in his role, of mere indicator of malfunctions in the full public administration’s digitalisation process, without sanctioning or coercive powers.