Today sees the launch of the Posta Certificat@ service, a secure e-mail address for legally-valid e-mail communication between citizens and government entities. Commissioned by the Ministry for the Public Administration and Innovation, this groundbreaking service has been implemented by Poste Italiane, Telecom Italia and Postecom. The service will make it faster and more convenient to communicate with government bodies by simplifying procedures for citizens to send and receive written messages and attachments which have the same legal validity as a registered delivery letter with return receipt; people will no longer have to personally attend central or local government offices. This historic new development will gradually reduce the use of paper-based communication, bring down costs and speed up processing time.
From today, people can activate the PostaCertificat@ service simply by going to the www.postacertificata.gov.it portal and following the simple and rapid application procedure. Between twenty-four hours and three months after completing the online registration process, users must go to an authorized Post Office where they are required to show a form of ID and sign the application form. A list of authorized post offices is available at the www.postacertificata.gov.it site. Applicants must bring along the original piece of ID that they used for the online registration, and a document proving their tax code number (either the tax code card or a National Health Service card), and leave a copy of this document with the Post Office. The PostaCertificat@ service is ready for use once the citizen's data has been verified and they have signed the service activation form.
As well as the certified e-mail service, citizens can, from today, enjoy free access to a series of associated services including notification of new messages in their PostaCertificat@ inbox via traditional e-mail, a personal electronic file for document storage, and a list of government PostaCertificat@ e-mail addresses.
Additional for-payment services will be rolled out in coming months. These services include smartcard-enabled digital signature, SMS, phone or mail notification of new inbox messages, a calendar of government deadlines, and a customizable-sized personal electronic file service.
A temporary consortium of Poste Italiane (lead company), Telecom Italia and Postecom took part in the call for tenders held by the Ministry for Public Administration and Innovation and won the four-year government/citizen certified electronic communication service contract. The service has been designed to comply with applicable law and currently-utilized technology standards for this type of service.
26 April 2010