Artificial Intelligence represents a field of strong technological innovation with multiple opportunities and risks.

This new phenomenon will bring significative changes to the local Pubblic Administration regarding its manners of territorial managing. However, exploring the potential of these technologies brings up numerous doubts.

ER2Digit, the European Digital Innovation Hub (EDIH) of Emilia-Romagna will meet agents from Public Administrations and Enterprises to present its services dedicated to the territory. 

The meeting is going to take place in Bologna at the Oratorio San Filippo Neri (Via Manzoni 5) on October 19, 2023 from 09:00 AM to 01:00 PM. 

Starting from the challenges presented by the Digital Agenda 2020-2025, the event is going to offer food for thoughts and concrete solutions to address the digital transition and to respond to innovation needs. 

On the 14th of June, 2023, the final event of the Erasmus+ TRANSIT project was held in Parma; it was focused on the promotion of sustainable mobility and behavioural change through the implementation of training courses aimed at workers, citizens and students.

The meeting aimed at Data Protection Officers (DPOs) of public and private data, promoted by the Guarantor for the protection of personal data in cooperation with Lepida and the Emilia-Romagna Region, took place on 23rd of June 2023 in Bologna at the Arena del Sole Theatre, with more than 800 participants registered from all over Italy. 

The conference of PRECINCT, the European project aimed at improving the resilience of Critical Infrastructure (CI), was held in the second week of May 2023. 

Lepida participates in the project as part of the Bologna Living Lab (LL4), together with Bologna Airport, ITL Foundation and FS-Technologies, but also as a nodal actor with its own network infrastructure within Bologna's experimental site. 

Tough times are ahead for hacking: twenty-five new bloodhounds will soon be on the trail of perpetrators of crimes that increasingly put at risk data and infrastructures essential to the activities of Public Administrations and important private production companies. 

In fact, the two-year course in Cybersecurity in PA promoted and implemented by Fitstic, an ITS Foundation that operates in the ICT sector in Emilia-Romagna, kicked off last March 30. 

Since the beginning of April, at Bologna’s airport it is possibile, besides landing and taking off, to surf the internet, thanks to the EmiliaRomagnaWifi network. 

All the travellers, which were about 8.5 millions in 2022, will be able to freely connect to the network without authentication, taking advantage of this service without even being aware of it. 

A supercomputer designed to allow all public Entities and regional Healthcare Services to take advantage of the new technologies’ potentialities.

It was named MarghERita, it has 150 microprocessors and it is part of the Big Data Platform project in which Emilia Romagna Region invested 3.5 millions of euros, coming from the FSC (Development and Cohesion Fund). 

Traveling through Europe without worrying about Internet connection, reaching the most famous touristic locations or the most remote lands and realizing that our smartphone has automatically connected to a safe network.

And then moving across our Region, in public offices, museums, libraries and public squares. 

All of this is already possible thanks to the WiFi4EU project, which allows European Community’s citizens and visitors free use of wifi hotspots, installed in strategic locations and public spaces.

2023 has started off on the right foot: in fact, the collaboration between ACER Bologna, Lepida and the Emilia-Romagna Region has led to the support of the safe living of 16 families located in public housing condominiums in the Navile district.

The signing of the agreement, which took place on 9 January, also triggered the experimentation of the new home monitoring system in Bologna on two ERP condominiums inhabited by people with special protection needs. 

As anticipated in November’s newsletter, Lepida’s radio network will significantly evolve in the next two years.  

The extension allowed by the Enterprises and Made in Italy’s Ministry for the right of use of 26GHz band’s block A, until the end of 2024, and the start of the Technical Table, promoted a complete restyling of the network, moving towards a new band.

In Brussels, on the 22nd November, took place the joint 2nd Stakeholders Engagement Workshop between the two European projects - PRAETORIAN and PRECINCT - concerning the security enhanchement of critical infrastructures.