National Archives of Civil Status: mandatory membership for all municipalities

From 31 December 2026 membership of the National Civil Status Archive (ANSC) will be mandatory for all the 7,900 Italian municipalities. At the moment, only 13 municipalities are in the process of controlled adoption of the project, financed with 49 million euros from the NRP, which centralises the birth, marriage, citizenship and death records in a single platform managed by the Ministry of the Interior. The risk is that of being late: with seven months to go, the quality of the operational model counts as much as the quality of the code. And it is precisely in this respect that there are some critical points, as AssoSoftware and its associated software houses point out in a note.

First, there is the governance of releases: the speed of evolution of the platform is understandable for a young system, but frequent evolutions require shared planning. When an application control goes into production without technical specifications, error messages arrive at the municipalities, which are forced to stop. These are operational blocks with a significant impact on citizens' lives: delays in issuing certificates, birth certificates, marriage, death and citizenship.

A second issue concernsdocumentation continuity, since in recent months some functions were temporarily deactivated and then redesigned. This, however, without explanatory documentation being published in a timely manner. From 4 June, for example, functions such as the cancellation of deeds for ineffectiveness and the correction of annotations will be disabled, replaced by new procedures. Also relevant is the pace of the intake: some notifications concern sensitive cases, even of constitutional importance, which cannot remain in the queue. Suffice it to think of the Constitutional Court's ruling on the recognition of double maternity, on which the request for application adjustment has been open for more than eight months.

Finally, AssoSoftware reiterates the importance of the general principle established by article 46 of the national simplification law (Law 182/2025): "Functional diagrams, technical specifications, software components and test environments must be made available to operators in the sector well in advance". According to AssoSoftware, a quantum leap is needed to cross the finishing line by the end of the year: in addition to resolving the critical issues that have emerged, a permanent technical roundtable will be needed, bringing together the Department for Digital Transformation, the technology partner, the software house associations and the demographic operators of the National Association of Civil Status and Registry Offices (Anusca).