SPID is ending, and a decade is gone.

Talking about digitization is always a danger, for one reason: if you dare to criticize existing digitization, however badly started and worse managed, you find yourself "against digitization". Strange, because I live there. This is the method by which voices that are against the adoption of something are silenced because I think the project was born badly, or under false premises.

When you are a system architect you have to talk to the customer. And with the "solution designers", often. The main difference is that the systems architect must "just" make the thing work, follow its construction, do the "technical" work and take care of unblocking the technical problems that usually crop up "end to end". The point is that everything has to work while staying on time and on budget, etcetera.

In these meetings, projects are often discussed that are attractive but do not start. They don't start because whoever proposes them (usually a vendor, or a PowerPoint expert strategic consultancy company) is unable to answer all the questions.

There are two main questions, which sink the projects:

1. Who pays, or how do we not lose?
2. How is the demand for these services structured?

The rest are technical details that are of no interest to the CEO, nor to the financial controller, i.e. those who then give the order to cut the check.

At this stage, if you work in the private sector, there are TWO things you must NOT do. Two answers you must NOT give.

1. The ecosystem pays, or unspecified "private individuals", who then make money with the "added value"
2. The question we see is generic because there are no solutions, but it will be stimulated by the very existence of our new service.

These two are the premises of catastrophic failure.

These were the premises of SPID.

So unfortunately SPID starts with both legs already broken.

But first let's ask ourselves: why is this answered in startup meetings? This is the answer because both the factors that should the ecosystem and the famous "private" are out of the room and therefore can not insult the solution designer who tries to sell the thing. If in the room there was a representative of the so-called "private" who will have to create ecosystems, for example, this would happen:

• CEO: Excuse me Mr. "private", would you be willing to invest to create the ecosystem based on value-added services?
• Private: Not for the fuck. We are troglodytes and we only move when something has already started and all the newspapers talk about it as a successful novelty. We are allergic to risk, we. We sit down at the table when we see the amount of food that arrives. We are not cooks.

The second point is even more bankruptcy, because it assumes that the mere existence of the service changes the customer's habits, causing the success of the service. Which is not: first the service is successful, then habits change.

Another trick to sell bankruptcy services is to confuse a generic sector question with the question of a specific service, a logical error also known as: "she's not engaged, so I'm certainly fine with her".

For example, the average charlatan comes in and says “there is a huge demand for e-government services, so my videoconferencing service with desk bureaucrats, done in the shower, will work”

The answer is: no, it won't work because you can't deduce the demand for a niche service (request family status while singing in the shower) starting from such a generic e-gov question.

On top of that, customers change habits and they often do, but you can't change customers' habits.

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SPID was born under both of these false assumptions, and it worked only and exclusively with "private" managers who have vast "political" and non-political connections, with professionals and companies as paying users. Why'?

The truth is that a service had been devised that had to be legally recognized by the state, but "it shouldn't have cost the citizen anything" and "it shouldn't have cost the PA anything".

That is, a registry service was proposed (Identity Provider means "registry") without charges for the state, without charges for the citizen, believing that private individuals would use it en masse.

Normally, the response is deleted. There are many individuals who can act as a registry office: your telco could also certify through an API that that IP belongs to you, so to speak. A bank certifies that the credit card will get the right person to finish the bill. Etc. But if they didn't come forward, some suspicions must have arisen.

So why does it fail, i.e. close?

Because the 30 million citizens (who don't pay) use SPID mainly to interact with the PA (who don't pay). So? So how do private individuals () earn?

You just have to have the patience to investigate for a moment to notice that all these providers are at stake with the state, either as suppliers, or as beneficiaries of banking policies, or former state monopolists, in short, people you can then ask, while having dinner on a terrace in Rome, "to do you the favor of looking after this little project".

Why am I almost certain that this is the case? Because normal companies, when they enter a digital sector (let's even say digital identity) do it with a business plan, a market analysis, and a strategy.

And if the strategy is "then we make money with value-added services", together with the SPID service they would ALSO have created these VAS services: you don't go on the market without a product. If you go to make money with VAS services, then you also have these VAS services. Have you seen them?

The answer is no: do you think companies that are hostile to electronic invoicing and POS payments are going to digitize customer or supplier recognition?

We are well aware that ANY attempt to digitize the economy is greeted by the world of Italian SMEs with hostility, because they fear it could be useful for fighting tax evasion.

The response to this objection, from companies that have not sold SPID-based value-added services because they never set them up, is that "the state should have incentivized them among companies". I mean, the state had to throw money at it.

Basically, they're telling us that the state started the shack thinking that private individuals would finance it by selling VAS services on the market. The private individuals who entered it, on the other hand, thought that the state would sponsor them with a tax credit, i.e. with public money.

The real question is: have they ever spoken? Were they present when the service was being designed? Were they consulted, at least?

And if not, why the hell did they get into the business?

The answer is, of course, only one: politics.

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When it is said that instead of the SPID there should be a CIE, i.e. an electronic identity card, the SPID sycophants arrive with special effects and ultra-vivid colours.

1. Apparently, there are no chips. Terrible. The newspapers talk about this shortage, but since the average journalist doesn't know who to ask, no journalist has ever gone to a Thales/Gemalto headquarters to name one I know, to ask if they have 60 million smartcards . The answer will probably be “what time do you want them for?” : consider that there are about 50 BILLION in the world, which for safety reasons are changed on average every 3 years. So 13 billion of them are changed every year. ( https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/markets/digital-identity-and-security/technology/smart-cards-basics ) this smartcard shortage is not noticed in the telco world, where you can buy a sim with a certain it's easy, and you don't even notice it in the world of credit cards: you pay 6 euros and Revolut sends you a credit card to your home. But for the CIE, apparently, they are not found. What can I say? Sometimes talking to suppliers helps. If you want to buy things, I mean.
2. If you really are focused on multiple authentication or contactless of any kind, Mifare or Cardlogix do nice stuff. And I'm sorry, but you buy Mifare products in rivers. And the times you complain about for the CIE are not there either. Isn't it that the supply chain of the Italian registry office is a little dodgy? I'll throw it there, huh?

But even if it were that obtaining a CIE is very difficult because ALL the "chip" producers disappeared in a volcanic eruption, I wonder why people think that SPID was a good thing, just because some Burosaurs are proposing something even worse? If I proposed the two wooden tablets that the Romans used as identity cards, would I make paper credit cards modern?

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The second problem with SPID is that it hasn't evolved over time. You can't keep such a product as a digital identity system for years and years, and not notice that practically every cell phone has a wallet to save credit cards and smartcards of a certain type in general.

So you already have something that can digitize your identity card or your smartcard (whether CIE or SPID, because SPID also works with smartcards) inside any Apple or Android mobile phone, it is PCI DSS certified, (let's say a level of common practice sufficient for financial applications) E/SIM is installed on mobile phones, and you still go around waiting for the municipality of Ballando sul Cerume to receive the hand-carved CIE from Francone, the town's blacksmith/printer?

No, seriously: the nationwide contract was awarded to the Mint of Rome. I said everything.

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We can summarize the story like this:

1. On 4 July 2016 the replacement of the paper identity card with the CIE began, The pilot project dates back to 2001.
2. The Mint of the State of Rome spectacularly fails to deliver the physical supports, or so the municipalities say.
3. Since everything is going well, and there are no queues to dispose of (just kidding) in 2015 the CIE card is being redefined, adding the contactless mode.
4. The good ones arrive, and in the same year, 28 July 2015, with Resolution no. 44/2015, the technical and legal details for the SPID were issued by AgID. The project was discussed in Parliament.
5. Not relying on the State Mint and its dwarf scribes, the SPID reaches 30 million citizens because the PA adopts it en masse.
6. Since the chocolate marmots don't pay the costs of the operation, there is now a tug of war between the managers and the state, for around 50 million in support costs that no one wants to pay.
7. The supermodern digital supersborones of SPID cheer in the stadium against the Dwarfs of Moria who carve the CIEs by hand with a pickaxe, inside the caves.
8. Both Apple and Android mobile phone manufacturers have a contactless digital wallet, and e-sim is now normal.

In some stadiums there are curves of fans praising the CIE, or the SPID. Cringe intensifies.

What to say?

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How will it end? The European Central Bank will eventually make its own wallet, which already has among the specifications that it can also contain GIDS 2.0 IDs. Or maybe google will make its own provider ID. Or maybe Facebook.

And since the CIE is still in the hands of the Mint's Dwarves of Moria (Balrog permitting) and the SPID managers are still looking for 50 million euros in the business plan they wrote when they entered the business, everyone will end up using the wallet of the ECB also as an access document, and the usual will tell us that it is part of the Kalergi Plan to make us all black.

Amen.

PS: since it is digitization, the PNNR would also pay the 50 million if by chance someone proposed an update to the technology, whether I know the compatibility with some mobile wallet.