2026 will be decisive for the completion of the national sovereign cloud project

The project, which takes shape within the framework of the Italian Cloud Strategy and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRP), has an ambitious goal: to bring at least 75 per cent of Italian administrations - central, local and health - on modern and interoperable cloud services by 2026.

If the pioneering phase of the PSN had been about setting up the company and testing the technical infrastructure in national data centres (Lazio and Lombardy), the bet now is on mass adoption. According to data updated this year, the administrations that have joined the National Strategic Pole cloud have risen from about 120 to over 576, an increase of +380%.

Beyond mere numbers, the value is clear: these contracts - extended until 2035 - are worth a total of around EUR 3.6 billion and involve the cloud-based management of documents, applications and services that used to be scattered across hundreds of local servers.

The variety of migrating administrations is evident of the concrete value of the project: not only ministries and central bodies, but also local authorities, local health authorities and hospitals have transferred data and services to the national cloud. There are career guidance centres, employment services, health information systems and even military commands, which are using the Psn infrastructure for highly critical services.

Security is at the centre of the public and technical narrative of the Pole. Not only because it presents itself as a reliable and resilient infrastructure, but also because the growing context of cyber threats requires a collective effort to protect digital resources. According to Iannetti, the PSN is increasingly fighting against cyber attacks aimed at Italian public administrations, managing these situations thanks to dedicated security centres and advanced defence technologies, including those based on artificial intelligence.

In an ecosystem where trust in digital services is now a condition for access to public rights and services, integrated cybersecurity management within a sovereign infrastructure becomes a decisive weapon to avoid service disruptions, data theft or manipulation of critical information.

Behind the numbers and announcements, there are concrete cases of migration: the Ministry of Labour has transferred the systems linked to Anpal, the agency for employment guidance, training and incentives), while the Ministry of Defence and the Armed Forces commands are bringing critical services under the umbrella of the national cloud.

At the regional level, the push is also strong: the Lazio Region has completed the migration of health data, including medical records, referrals and booking systems, to the national cloud infrastructure, showing a quantum leap in security, business continuity and the ability to offer digital services to citizens.

Iannetti outlines a pole not as an end in itself, but in the logic of a 'federated ecosystem': the idea is to connect the infrastructure not only with central administrations, but also with regional entities that manage their own infrastructures and with other qualified players.

Initiatives such as the PSN Innovation Hub, designed to accelerate the digital transformation of the PA through innovative services, advanced analytical tools, AI platforms and next-generation cloud technologies, are also moving on this front.

In parallel, the Cluster completed its multi-cloud offering by signing agreements with providers such as Amazon Web Services to integrate public services on multiple cloud layers, thus ensuring interoperability and scalability with international reference standards, while maintaining a national perspective.

Despite progress, the national cloud journey is far from over. Some of the NRP's intermediate targets have already been exceeded, but the real test of maturity will be the ability to complete the migration of a critical mass of services by 2026 and subsequently ensure the sustainable governance and continuous evolution of the infrastructure.

The National Strategic Pole is not only a great technical infrastructure, it is also the operational manifestation of a strategic choice of the country, that of not leaving control of the most sensitive public data and services to non-EU competitors. It is a bet on sovereignty, digital security and administrative modernisation that has already changed many practices and that, if consolidated, could also represent a model at European level.