According to the European Commission's 2030 Digital Decade Report published in September 2023, 26 million people in Italy lack basic digital skills .This represents 54% of the population aged between 16 and 74, compared to the EU average of 46%.
Furthermore, only 43.1% of women possess basic digital skills, compared to the EU figure of 52.3%.
Our country, furthermore, has the highest rate of NEETs: in fact, there are more than 2.2 million.
This situation, on the one hand , limits the citizenship rights of millions of people , who effectively find themselves excluded from both increasingly digitalized services and job opportunities that progressively require greater ICT skills; on the other, it penalizes the country's development processes due to a lack of adequate professional skills.
To guide Italy through the digital transition , drawing inspiration from the innovative and successful public-private partnership experience of the Fund to Combat Child Educational Poverty, the Fund for the Digital Republic was established by Legislative Decree no. 152 of 6 November 2021, converted with amendments by Law no. 233 of 29 December 2021.
This is a partnership between the public and private social sectors (Government and the Association of Foundations and Savings Banks – Acri), which moves within the framework of the digitalization objectives set out in the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) and the PNC (National Complementary Plan).
The Fund is funded by contributions from banking foundations, which receive a contribution in the form of a tax credit.
The aim is to support projects, selected through calls for proposals, aimed at training and digital inclusion , to increase digital skills and develop the country's digital transition and improve the corresponding indicators of the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) (from September 2023 2030 Digital Decade Report).
The Fund's intervention methods were defined by a memorandum of understanding between the Government and the Association of Banking Foundations (Acri).
The Fund, through project impact assessments , aims to select the most effective ones – expanding their scope nationwide and reaching more people – to offer best practices to the central government to transform into policy, making it structural and permanent.
The Digital Republic Fund also pursues the PNRR's cross-cutting objectives: reducing the digital gender and citizenship gap.
Like all PNRR-PNC investments, the Fund envisages the achievement of specific milestones and targets and a semi-annual reporting to the Ministry of the Economy and Finance of the resources used, the implementation status of the interventions, and the objectives achieved (as required by paragraph 7 of Article 29 of Legislative Decree 152/2021).
The governance of the Fund for the Digital Republic is made up of a Strategic Steering Committee – supported by an independent Scientific Committee – and the Implementing Body ( Fondo per la Repubblica Digitale – Impresa sociale Srl ), which is responsible for publishing calls for proposals, selecting projects and monitoring their implementation.
The Fund operates within the framework of the National Digital Skills Strategy, whose development, implementation, and evolution are carried out within the framework of Repubblica Digitale, the multi-stakeholder national strategic program coordinated by the Department for Digital Transformation of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. The program aims to reduce the digital divide and promote education on future technologies, supporting the country's development process.
The initiative works through synergistic and systemic actions, networking the experiences and skills developed across all sectors and all parts of our country.
In this sense, the contribution of the National Coalition for Digital Skills, composed of all public and private entities that adhere to the manifesto for the Digital Republic , is fundamental. It proposes concrete, measurable, and effective actions aimed at increasing the population's digital skills. (Source: https://www.fondorepubblicadigitale.it/)