Software re-use aims at rationalizing the expenditure, capitalizing the existing and optimizing the time and resources of the Public Administration. Software re-use is hence, the free "recycle" and "adaptation" of the computer programs of the PA: an operational guideline that AgId, the Agency for Digital Italy, has planned and promoted in the 2017-2019 3-year Plan, the central document of the innovation strategy of the Italian Public Administration. In accordance with the Digital Administration Code, Software re-use, encouraged by the activity of the Competence Center (“supporting the administrations by providing advice and tools to help the application of the current legislation in this area"), comes from a specific regulatory framework: the 2016 Stability Law, which has among its strategic objectives the halving of the Italian IT public spending.

The practice of starting from already existing and functioning programs, adapting them to the emerging needs and rewriting only the code necessary for the new operational contexts, is therefore gaining ground even in the extremely specialized field of state informatics. This approach is beneficial in many ways. It is not only about savings: at the base of this practice, there is, for example, the idea of ​​continuity and enhancement of the intangible assets of the PA: thanks to this strategy it is possible to rewrite only the code necessary for the new functionality, instead of the whole program. An already existing technology is therefore readjusted and transformed only in small parts and becomes common within the PA network. Thus, an organization that needs a largely existing software does not need to rewrite it from scratch. After all, a software requires essentially two features to be re-used. The first is the modularity of the program, which is its decomposability in several parts. The second is security: if the software to be reused belongs to third parties, the version to be adopted must be the latest and its reliability needs to be widely recognized (not by chance, AgId itself provides a specific national catalog of reusable software).

Cloudify NoiPA stems from this strategic context. AgId’s three-year plan, considers the adoption of the program as mandatory for public administrations, and therefore the reuse itself is part of the mission of Cloudify as well as of its own DNA. The strategic horizon of the program is to set up reusable IT services for the administrations. As said, it is not only the rationalization of the expenditure that pushes in this direction but also the triggering of interoperability among the various administrations that will use Cloudify, as well as the genesis of an overall homogeneity of the IT procedures adopted. Furthermore, it is possible to talk about real investment sharing: if the software is used by different administrations, the management costs can be shared among several public entities. Cloudify therefore aims to be a driver for the growth of software re-use in the public administration, offering an example of what can be achieved when an IT software is born to be reusable, shared by a network, and open to any extensions or updates.

A strategic and operational approach that concretely answers to one of the great open questions of digital innovation in the Italian Public Administration. In a research published about five months ago, the eGovernment Observatory of the Polytechnic of Milan School of Management was indeed pointing the finger at the poor diffusion of software reuse in the public offices of our country. The survey found out that "Of the 31% of organizations that developed IT solutions […] only the 17% says they have made them available to other institutions; the 64%, on the other hand, does not consider re-use as a possibility, above all because of the burdens linked to the transfer of good practices, to the specificity of the solutions and to the difficulties in collaborating ". However, where there is a "Community oriented to the development of good practices", there are many benefits: Laura Vergani, Co-director of the Observatory eGovernment indeed underlines that "this guarantees a direction for the innovative action, avoids the duplication of efforts and investments, makes the provision of public services uniform, and increases know-how. Aware of the critical issues” she continues, “the local authorities are asking for greater support from higher-level institutions: first of all in terms of funding (62% of responses), but also of training (56%) and assistance in planning (49%)". The platform of Cloudify NoiPA aims to be the answer to these demands for greater networking, sharing of technical skills and strategic synergy.