“Smart Working”​ and “Digital Transformation”​ in Italy, 2020, examples and lessons from the Covid-19 crisis for the future

The following are real life examples that I, my family, my friends and my colleagues have been facing in the last 10 weeks (since the closure of schools and the lock down that began a few days after)…

1. Computer and electronics equipment are essential for digital and remote work, but stores are closed (at least until a few days ago and even now not all are open), stocks are low to none, and no new stocks coming in. Equipment ordered weeks ago is not arriving and the stores report to customers that they “are facing difficulties with stocks and deliveries because of the restrictions”. 🤦‍♀️

2. Food and hygiene products for animals (domestic and agriculture) is essential, so these stores remained open. Yet, not all hold the same brands and types of food and equipment. This means that if your pets are restricted by health needs to a specific type of food or specific brands, you’re limited to one or two (at most) specific shops. If these shops happen to be outside your town and/or region, you’re basically F***** because you can’t reach them (not allowed to go out of your region). If these stores have websites it doesn’t mean they necessarily do deliveries. If they do deliveries, it doesn’t mean their payment processing will necessarily work well, or their e-commerce platform is set up correctly… And finally, if you’re lucky enough that it does and is…. They’re out of stock. Niche/speciality foods is not something they carry a lot of to begin with and now they’re literally out of stock even for basic products. So your pets are doomed.🐈

3. If you need prescription/chronic medication, you usually call your GP, go to their office, grab the prescription and head out to the pharmacy. But, now due to the “pandemic” you are not allowed to go to the doctor. So, after the first 8 weeks of lockdown, Italy finally implemented a digital prescription by SMS platform (that was 2 weeks ago). Hurray!!! Except…. You can’t use it because you can’t sign up, because your tax code isn’t recognized by the system if you’re not born in Italy…. 🤷

4. Food is necessary. Essential. Supermarkets are open and stocked. Yay! 👏👏 But people are encouraged to stay home and shop online. However, not all supermarket chains do deliveries. The ones that do, don’t do it in all areas. And even then delivery slots are not available for between 3 weeks to 2 months ahead. Oh yes, “Order now, Eat in 2 months!” Is Italy’s Genius “digital life” idea. You fight the virus AND lose weight! Genius! 🧠🧠

5. Also at the supermarket you, naturally, have to wait in line to enter to prevent grouping of people. But, lines can sometime take 2 hours, various “apps” that look like they’ve been designed by a 3 year old to alert on waiting times, don’t work well, if at all, (and are limited to the areas of the developer’s address, of course…but displaying nice messages that “we’ll soon deploy in more areas”) and now some supermarket chains implemented apps of their own to “book your turn”. Never mind that many older people and digitally illiterate people won’t be using them and still show up to the line at the store…. Amazing! 📱

6. The Auto-declaration document you need to carry with you when you go out — has no digital format. There was one attempt (again private citizen initiative) to make into an “app” but that too did not succeed because it did not allow people who were not born in Italy to fill in a foreign country (an oversight by the developer) and because the form changes almost daily, making it impossible for the developer to keep up. So, if you’re like me and have no printer, try to live “paperless” you don’t go out and when you do, you pray very hard that you won’t be stopped for check by police (and if you do pray very hard that there is at least one policeman who speaks some English).

7. School — Let’s not even go there. There is no remote education or virtual learning. There maybe some Skype lessons, some zoom classes, some apps to send homework but no. No real education. The kids in Italy have lost an academic school year because the country was not ready. Period.

I know that my examples are also not localized to Italy. I have been receiving reports from colleagues, family and friends from all around the world. Even from the “Startup Nation” Israel.

It’s the 21st century and despite the buzz and hype of technology, the entire world has been caught off-guard, with insufficient infrastructure and tools. Companies that could offered their platforms and tools (Good job Cisco, Microsoft, Google and others). But it is not the solution.

The lesson here is that when you have a crisis on a national level, that you deal with through restrictions on a national level, the responsibility for providing tools and help facilitate daily life should also be on a national level.

Not as initiatives of private app developers, not on the specific supermarket branch or chain level.

There must be approved, tested, working *standardized* tools.

This must serve as a lesson for nations, not on how to deal with the next virus/epidemic, but on how to transform the national mindset to be better equipped for anything that might come our way.

And no, switching your meetings to Zoom does NOT constitute #digitaltransformation