IT-Wallet expands: 200 documents coming into the digital purse

The largest distributed digital database dedicated to the information of Italian citizens is being built around IT-Wallet. And it is precisely the institute that has been producing our documents for almost a century, that must now build the system that will take them from the wallet to the smartphone.

To lighten your pockets, you have to make the infrastructure heavier. Today, Ipzs has three data centres, two in Rome and one in Foggia. An infrastructure consisting of over 10 thousand systems - including servers, databases, virtualisation, storage, backup, network and security - with three petabytes of storage, 81 terabytes of Ram and 6 thousand CPUs. A fourth data centre is under construction in Rome. The Green Data Centre in Foggia, which was initially set up as a disaster recovery site, has also become an active node for the provision of services, including those related to the IT-Wallet digital purse.

Il green data center Ipzs di Foggia

Cybersecurity is the other side of dematerialisation. As far as the digital purse is concerned, it is managed by Ipzs. The development of the IO app, on the other hand, is the responsibility of PagoPA (now controlled by Poligrafico and Poste, with 51 and 49 per cent respectively). Operationally, the security of the data is guaranteed by the Cyber phisical security centre, armoured inside the headquarters in Via Salaria, Rome. From there, through screens that cover entire walls, the integrity of the digital ecosystem on which the data of millions of citizens pass is monitored 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. A sensitive target. "In 2025," says Alessandro Tarantino, director of Ipzs security & cyber defence, "we recorded 187 million attacks and attempted attacks. In the structure, which thanks to a sensor and video surveillance system also oversees the physical security of all Ipzs facilities, 41 people work, with skills ranging from computer engineering to artificial intelligence.

La prossima generazione di carta di identità elettronica sotto la lente

"In the midst of this digital transformation, supported with lucidity and determination by undersecretary Alessio Butti and the Department for Digital Transformation, we continue to be guarantors and custodians of public faith," explains Michele Sciscioli, Ipzs CEO, "and to do this we are changing. We are hiring young people with new digital skills. This process is only at the beginning and will have to be supported, also by introducing forms of remuneration linked to the new services'. Today, the Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato has a turnover of around EUR 600 million a year, generated mostly through the production of traditional documents and security papers.