Security and resilience strengthened thanks to the NRRP funds
As part of the implementation of the ‘Cloud Italia’ Strategy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation has completed the migration of its most sensitive IT services to the cloud of the National Strategic Hub (PSN), with a view to strengthening the security and resilience of its digital services. The PSN is an infrastructure that provides high levels of reliability, resilience and security to the Public Administration.
This decade-long project was made possible by a substantial investment from the Department for Digital Transformation of the Prime Minister’s Office, in the framework of the PNRRP, supplemented by the Ministry with its own resources.
In two successive phases (“Wave 1’ in 2024 and “Wave 1 ter” in 2025), the Administration’s most sensitive applications were migrated and upgraded: the institutional website and those of all Missions abroad; applications relating to consular services; the IT system for processing applications and issuing Schengen and national visas; various staff and accounting management programmes, as well as portals for promoting the Italian system abroad and managing services for companies. An operation unprecedented in its scale and complexity, which required an extraordinary effort and involved, inter alia, around 10 million consular records and one and a half million visas issued each year.
The new structure now provides the Foreign Ministry with a disaster recovery system capable of ensuring the continuity of services even in the event of extreme circumstances, high levels of cyber security, as well as usability and accessibility standards for the portals that comply with AGID guidelines.
Between 3 June and 10 July, the Department for Digital Transformation certified the complete success of the project in accordance with European deadlines, thus confirming the Foreign Ministry’s position as a leading Public Administration in terms of technology and cybersecurity.