'Passports at the Post Office: kick-off in Bologna, Verona and Cagliari'

Poste Italiane will start issuing passports from today in post offices in Bologna, Verona and Cagliari and throughout their provinces. But from mid-September it will start with the big cities, such as Milan, Rome and Naples. "We are the only country in the world where the State uses a private company to issue passports. Many are looking at our example, even Japan'. Poste's Director General, Giuseppe Lasco, tells us.

From the Polis service in small municipalities to issuing passports throughout Italy. Increasingly ambitious projects?

The Polis project was financed for EUR 800 million by the complementary plan to the NRP and EUR 400 million by the Poste Group. In parallel with the start-up of the passport issuing service, which will be extended to all post offices throughout the country, the Polis project will also be progressively extended to all offices, no longer only to municipalities with less than 15,000 inhabitants. The passport service has required a major commitment, starting with the training of staff and then with the implementation of the IT platform (in seven years we have changed 70 thousand people, a real generational change) from which the police headquarters can retrieve applicants' data in real time. This platform will also make it possible, I think from November, to issue electronic identity cards in the offices. All this required an additional financial commitment for Poste of another 80-100 million. The extension of the Polis project will also entail an additional financial investment for us. A great deal of work has been done in agreement with the Presidency of the Council, the Ministry of the Interior, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Three years in which there have been major difficulties, I will not hide the fact that at times we have thought about giving up.

The decree implementing the agreement with the Ministry of the Interior to extend the issuing of passports is published. Will it start with some important cities?

We start with some medium-sized cities such as Bologna, Verona and Cagliari. It was necessary to enable the Questure to operate this service in cooperation with Poste. However, I can anticipate that the next cities, from mid-September, will be Milan, Naples and Rome. And this is very important news. In Milan we will gradually start the service in 100 post offices, in Naples in 72, and in Rome 200. Those who live in these areas can go to any office in the city, but also in the municipalities of the province. The average time to obtain the document will be 15 days. The innovation introduced with the service at the post office - after formalising the application, handing over the photos, signature and fingerprint - is that from the moment the receipt is delivered, the 15 days within which the passport must be ready begin to run. 87% of applicants wanted home delivery, a service that costs EUR 9.53, in addition to the EUR 14.2 fee for the passport. We are the only country in the world where the State uses a private company, even if it is its own subsidiary, to issue passports.