Antonio
Candiello

1. Background: measures, platforms, statuses

The measures

PA Digitale 2026 brings together the calls of the Department for Digital Transformation under NRRP investment M1C1 1.1–1.7. For local authorities, nine sub-measures matter most:

Two considerations

• Static view: the measures fund the digital enablement of public bodies towards citizens and users, who can now use digital services. Thanks to the measures, several types of service (back-office systems, online services, payments, messages, notifications) have been standardised across many administrations, especially municipalities and schools.
• Dynamic view: it now becomes possible to measure how citizens and users actually use digital services. That is the next step.

An example: the school canteen service

A single municipal service can use almost all the measures. Signing up for the school canteen, paying for it and, if needed, recovering unpaid fees involve seven different platforms:

Application and project statuses

On the PA digitale 2026 platform each request goes through a sequence of statuses: first as an application, then, if funded, as a project. The grant is paid only at the end, once the project has been checked.

The platforms and the Territorial Team

Those who follow the projects work every day with a few platforms (all in Italian): Indice PA for the public bodies' registry, PA digitale 2026 to manage the measures, the CUP system for the unique project code (guides on OpenCUP), ANAC for the CIG tender code, and the AgID platforms.

Over these four years, the Territorial Team, which reports to the Department for Digital Transformation (DTD) of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers (and which I had the honour of being part of), has supported public bodies through every stage (application, contracting, completion, formal checks) and, for municipalities, has managed the assessments, often service by service. Note: the work followed a «portfolio» logic, in which what counts is the number of public bodies, not of citizens or users. The Territorial Team also carried out the certifications (technical acceptance tests) on bodies it did not directly support, for greater impartiality and independence.

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2. Implementation

Have the resources been committed and the work carried out?

The overall picture

Resources have been assigned and largely already paid out: 90% of the amount. The grant is a lump sum paid after the result has been checked, so the amount paid out measures completed work, not just spending.

• 74,639projects funded, net of 18,855 withdrawals
• €2.59 bngranted to public bodies, of which €2.32 bn paid out
• 16,847beneficiary bodies, of which 7,891 municipalities
• 99.9%of Italian municipalities have at least one active project

The calls from 2022 to 2025

50 calls for the nine sub-measures, concentrated in 2022 and reopened until the last useful year.

Including measure 1.1 (central administrations and health authorities), the Department published 57 calls:

Allocation, calls and payments

The calls cover 97–98% of the allocation for Cloud and Citizen experience, but only 43% for 1.3.1. These data do not explain the gap: the allocation may include other interventions (for 1.4.4, ANPR too).

Project status

92% of withdrawals concern the 2022 calls, and in 79% of cases the body has another active project on the same measure: it often withdrew to apply again.

The pace of payments

The curves differ: ANSC and ANNCSU only start between late 2025 and 2026, while Cloud is at 78% of the amount.

Coverage of municipalities

The median municipality takes part in 8 out of 9 measures; only 5 municipalities have no project.

Municipalities funded, by region

Take-up is high everywhere, with a few exceptions worth investigating. In Friuli Venezia Giulia the low values for Cloud, pagoPA, the IO app and SPID/CIE might reflect services provided at regional level: this is an unverified hypothesis.

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3. Results

Which services, opportunities and benefits have actually been delivered?

What has been delivered

Standardised digital services in 70,230 completed projects, that is, projects whose grant was paid after the result was checked.

From funding to use

National data on use, which also include bodies that were not funded; for 1.2, 1.4.1 and 1.4.4 they count instead the bodies with a completed project. Sources other than open data are given in the note.

• 1.2 Cloud11,700bodies with services migrated to the cloud: 6,862 municipalities (87%) and 4,662 schools (57%); over 105,000 services migrated
• 1.3.1 PDND15,270e-services published by 6,516 bodies, 11,648 by municipalities, out of 9,723 members; 52,565 active connections and 813 M requests in 2026
• 1.3.1 ANNCSU76%house numbers with coordinates (data at 15/09/2026); 5,061 municipalities update them through the archive's APIs on PDND: over 23 M calls
• 1.4.1 Citizen experience13,333websites using the Designers Italia template: 6,536 municipalities (83%) and 6,797 schools (82%); 25,515 municipal digital services
• 1.4.3 pagoPA448.7 Mtransactions in 2025
• 1.4.3 IO app98%municipalities present on IO, with 244,074 services; 396 M messages sent in 2025 (all bodies)
• 1.4.4 SPID/CIE6,907bodies with SPID and CIE integrated: 5,722 municipalities (72%) and 1,185 other bodies; 1.22 billion SPID logins in 2025
• 1.4.4 ANSC98.3%municipalities with digital civil registry; over 700,000 digital records created (April 2026)
• 1.4.5 SEND19.5 Mnotifications in 2025, 7,140 sending bodies

For 1.2, 1.4.1 and 1.4.4 the figure does not measure use: it counts the bodies whose project was completed, that is, checked at certification. For 1.4.1 the website was checked against the Designers Italia template criteria; the digital services («active citizen» package) are derived from the amounts paid out using the price list in the calls' Annex 2: 6,303 municipalities activated at least one, most of them four. For 1.2 the migrated services are estimated the same way: 32,985 for schools and 72,236 for 6,669 municipalities; for the other 194 municipalities (2024–2025 calls) and for health authorities and other bodies the amount does not allow an estimate. For ANNCSU the calls are the PDND tokens issued for the Revenue Agency's «Aggiornamento coordinate» and «Aggiornamento accessi» e-services. For IO the messages are those of all bodies, not only municipalities. For ANSC there are no open data on records: the figure is reported by Agenda Digitale (9/4/2026). For PDND the data (Numeri PDND, 30/10/2026) cover all members: 6,516 bodies provide e-services and 8,545 use them; access requests are the tokens issued, January to October 2026. For 1.4.4 the call funds SPID and CIE together (€14,000 per municipality), so the projects do not distinguish the two credentials; use can be measured only for SPID, through the annual logins published by AgID (public and private services), while there is no overall public figure on CIE logins. Percentages of 7,896 municipalities (ISTAT) and 8,171 state schools (Indice PA, October 2026). The latest ISTAT figure on cloud use by local authorities is 54%, for 2022.

Cloud: the starting point

ISTAT 2022: 54% of local authorities. With the NRRP, 87% of municipalities have completed their cloud migration. The latest official figure on use is still the ISTAT 2022 one, before the effects of the NRRP projects; the 2026 ICT census will give the first post-NRRP picture.

• Politecnico di Milano, AssoSoftware, 202368%municipal bodies with all back-office software in the cloud (a different measure from ISTAT)
• PA digitale 2026, measure 1.2, October 202687%of municipalities and 57% of schools with cloud migration completed

The three figures measure different things and cannot be compared. ISTAT counts local authorities using cloud services. The Politecnico counts municipalities with all back-office software in the cloud, but the press release does not state the base. The PA digitale 2026 figure counts municipalities and schools with a completed 1.2 project, that is, with at least one service migrated and checked at certification: it measures take-up of the NRRP, not use.

PDND: members and data exchanges

9,723 bodies have joined, with about 84 million data exchange sessions per month.

ANNCSU: geo-referenced house numbers

76% of house numbers have coordinates: almost all are in funded municipalities, and the coordinates mostly come from existing databases rather than field surveys.

pagoPA: transactions

448.7 million transactions in 2025; municipalities are the third-largest category of creditor bodies.

The IO app: messages

396.4 million messages in 2025, with 98% of municipalities present on the app.

SEND: notifications

Notifications are growing, but in 2026 72% are still sent on paper.

Digital identity: SPID and CIE

SPID is used more than a billion times a year to log in to online services, public and private: 1.22 billion times in 2025 (AgID). There is no overall public figure for CIE: the only open data cover logins to ANPR services, where the electronic identity card (CIE) is growing fast but SPID remains dominant. There are no open data by body on SPID and CIE logins.

ANSC: the digital civil registry

98.3% of municipalities have joined, mostly between 2025 and early 2026.

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4. Sustainability

Will local authorities be able to sustain the results over time?

The NRRP pays for the start, not for running costs

The grant is one-off and results-based. Who will pay the recurring costs after the NRRP?

The left column reports what the calls' Annex 2 documents state; the right column is a working hypothesis, to be checked against the 2026 ICT census.

How much the NRRP weighs on small municipalities

€99 per inhabitant below 5,000 inhabitants, €9 in large cities. These figures do not measure municipal budgets: it remains to be seen whether this translates into recurring costs that are harder to bear.

The 2026 ICT census will measure it

The census of public-sector ICT assets, run by AgID with the Department for Digital Transformation, will collect exactly the data that are needed. Deadlines as of 30/10/2026: 10 November 2026 for central and local administrations and health authorities, 1 December 2026 for schools, universities, research bodies and AFAM. No date has been set yet for the results.

The ICT census: from 2017 to today

The first edition (2017–2019) covered data centres only; the new three-yearly edition looks at organisation, infrastructure, services and spending.

The 2026 questionnaire has three sections: organisation (ICT office, transformation plan, RTD, use of AI), infrastructure and services (data centres, digitisation and cloud migration of each service, suppliers) and ICT spending (operating and investment costs, licences, cloud purchases). It is filled in on the PA digitale 2026 reserved area and confirmed with a statement signed by the legal representative or the RTD.

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5. Impact

What lasting changes will there be in territories and in citizens' lives?

Use of the platforms is growing

A positive sign, but not attributable to the funded projects alone: the data are national. SPID still exceeds a billion logins a year, but in the first nine months of 2026 it fell by 10% on the same period of 2025, while CIE logins are growing: 265.8 million «Entra con CIE» logins by the end of September 2026.

Territories: widespread take-up

The South often takes part more than the North: a good sign, but taking part does not mean use. In 2022 ISTAT reported cloud use by 49.4% of local authorities in the South and Islands and 74.0% in the North-East.

From adoption to impact

The next step is to measure actual use, which today is only available in aggregate form. The indicators below are a working proposal.

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6. References and notes

All data come from open, publicly available sources (mostly in Italian). Data extraction, processing and presentation were supported by artificial intelligence tools. Usage indicators are national or aggregate and also include bodies that were not funded.

Open data (downloaded on 30–31 October 2026)

• PA digitale 2026, calls and funded applications (at 29/10/2026): implementation, results, small municipalities, territories.
• Numeri PDND (PagoPA S.p.A.): members and exchange sessions.
• PagoPA S.p.A. open data: pagoPA, IO app, SEND.
• ANPR open data (Ministry of the Interior): ANSC membership, logins by credential.
• AgID, SPID and SPID open data: annual SPID logins to online services.
• Digital Identity & Wallet Observatory, Politecnico di Milano (press release, 5/11/2026): SPID and CIE identities and logins as of September 2026.
• Agenda Digitale, 9/4/2026: municipalities joined to ANSC and digital records created.
• ItaliaOggi, 6/11/2026, data from the Digital Identity & Wallet Observatory of Politecnico di Milano: SPID and CIE logins in the first nine months of 2026.
• ANNCSU, national address file (15/09/2026): geo-referenced house numbers.
• ISTAT, list of Italian municipalities and resident population at 1/1/2022.

Documents and reports (consulted up to 2 November 2026)

• Annex 2 of the PA digitale 2026 calls: services, amounts, rules, costs covered.
• NRRP financial plan, ReGiS data at 26/02/2026, CGIL elaboration: allocations by investment.
• ISTAT, Local public administration and ICT – Year 2022 (23/02/2024).
• Politecnico di Milano Observatories and AssoSoftware, press release of February 2024.
• PA digitale 2026, ICT asset census (page updated on 30/10/2026); ReTeDigitale (23/07/2026); Agenda Digitale (2026).
• Docs Italia, ICT census (criteria of the third phase and AgID Circular 1/2019) and Sinet (21/02/2020): results of the 2017–2019 census, taken from secondary sources because the AgID website was under maintenance on 2 November 2026.

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