Summary of our campaign of Spring 2014, that lead to Lazio Region legislation to promote the creation of a regional cluster on free software, transparent telematics, (i.e. Trustless Computing), open Web and e-participation
From January to April 2014, the Trustless Computing Association catalyzed several actors around Lazio Region legislative proposal, ultimately presented only by the M5S party. Such proposal indicated strategic allocation of part of the 2014-2020 EU/Region POR-FESR R&D funds, the adoption of radically more advanced and open IT security standards, and innovative pre-commercial procurement, as a way to transform the creation policies and technologies for the fullest actualisation of digital civil rights, civic participation and Internet media disinter-mediation into a primary industrial development strategy for the Lazio Region.
It aimed to leverage and expand the IT security R&D cluster of Rome and Lazio – the most active in all Europe for R&D projects according to recent reports – to a global leader in open systems for ICT with levels of security and privacy beyond-state-of the-art.
On April 25th 2014, after several months of multi-partisan negotiations among PD, SEL, and M5S Party (Italy 2nd largest), the M5S ended up presenting alone a regional legislative proposal, that integrates literally our proposed terms for “transparent telematics services” (Art 3.1.o, 3.1.p, 3.1.q), albeit removing a deadline for adoption:
Proposta di Legge Regionale “NORME SU SOFTWARE LIBERO, ACCESSIBILITA’ DI DATI E DOCUMENTI, HARDWARE DOCUMENTATO, SERVIZI TELEMATICI TRASPARENTI E PARTECIPATIVI”. (Here is a PDF version with searchable terms)
Campaign History and Follow Ups
The campaign started in January 2016, when the Trustless Computing Association learned that proposed legislative initiatives in preparation by individual directors and PD Lazio List For Lazio, the team leader and office SEL Lazio, and the team leader and 7 councillors M5S Lazio, on such matters, were all based extensively on such Puglia Region of Italy in 2012 entitled “Rules on the free software, accessibility of data and documents, and documented hardware” (pdf), to which Richard Stallman had contributed.
On March 18th and 27th 2014, the Trustless Computing Association, successfully convened meetings with the 4 primary parties at the Lazio Region Council, (Rome, Italy) – and the non-profit Stati Generali dell’Innovazione – aimed at exploring the feasibility of campaign of civil society for a multi-partisan Lazio Region legislation in support of “free software, accessibility of data and documents, documented hardware, transparent telematic services, open Web and civic participation“. The draft was developed on the basis of the mentioned Puglia legislation, but included very extensive and unprecedented requirements for the extreme ICT security and privacy of e-government services, based on the ideas of the concept of Transparent Telematics developed by the Open Media Cluster, and placed the creation of such techs at the center of an ICT vision of the Region of Lazio.
On April 3rd 2014, Richard Stallman came to Rome on purpose to an event we organized called “Full realization of citizen digital rights as huge economic opportunity for the Lazio Region”, dedicated to the campaign to contribute to the details of the propose legislation. Meetings followed with the main promoters of the legislation.
On April 20th 2014, Stallman/FSF agreed in principle for the need of a campaign to establish an international standard body for “transparent telematics”, whose aims are to add to the verifiability of code of free/open-source software, also sufficiently extreme levels of actual verification of all critical code, and oversight of all critical organisational processes and hardware manufacturing oversight, and procedure to ensure the match of “stated” versus “actual” HW and SW running at any given time.
On April 25th 2014, the legislative proposal was submitted by 5 councilors the M5S, lead by the Davide Barillari.
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UPDATE of March 2015: As of today, the legislative proposal has not yet been evaluated by the regional council.
UPDATE of Aprile 2016: The standards and aims of the legislative proposal, inspired by the Trasparent Telematics and User Verified Social Telematics projects by the Open Media Cluster, have evolved inspired today into a the Trustless Computing Initiative with world-class EU industry and governmental partners, and the related Free and Safe in Cyberspace global event series, to promote related certifications, with events in Brussels, Iguazu (Brazil), Rome and New York, with amazing speakers.
UPDATE of June 20th 2016: The M5S party has won the elections for the Metropolitan City of Rome, with a program for e-government calling for a great expansion of e-participation digital tools and statutes, as well as the use free and open source software and expansion of e-government services. This is a great opportunity to make Rome the first city in Europe to deploy in large-scale e-participation and direct democracy practices. As opposed to current EU best practices such as in Spain and elsewhere such tools would be deploy in large scale and for e-participation rather that e-consultation, by taking advantage of EU R&D fund, pre-procurement tools and the latest IT security paradigms, to tackle head on the huge perceived and actual risks of large-scale abuse of the integrity and or confidentiality of citizens voting and participatory activities.