Sunrise National Workshop Series: Italy

The second edition in the first round of SUNRISE national workshops was hosted by project partners and leaders of the project’s Italian cluster of Critical Infrastructure (CI) operators, Insiel. The workshop took place in their headquarters in Trieste, Italy on the 22nd November, 2022. Insiel is an ICT company owned by Friuli Venezia Giulia Region. Gilda De Marco who works in the Innovation and ICT Governance Department at Insiel and manages the organisation’s participation in the project spoke to us about some of the key objectives and findings of the Italian workshop.

To provide some additional background on Insiel’s different roles within the project, they will also participate in the pilot applications of the SUNRISE technical tools including the tools for Risk-based Access Control, Demand Prediction and Management and Cyber-Physical Resilience. As a national CI operator, these tools will be tested in real-life conditions with Insiel as one of the end-users. Additionally, their role ranges from ICT provider for the public regional and local authorities in Friuli Venezia Giulia, and technical coordinator for the testing and validation tasks, as well as being a cluster leader and pilot partner.

The purpose of the workshop was to create opportunities for CIs from different sectors and operating levels in Italy (national, regional and local) to exchange their experiences, good practices and issues that they met during the Covid-19 pandemic period. Led by Insiel (INS) with the support of fellow project partners Hermes Bay (HB) as vice-leader, all seven Italian SUNRISE partners participated in the workshop, representing CI Authorities and CI operators at a national, regional, and local level. The total number of participants was 25, composed of 5 facilitators (employees from INS and HB) and 20 participants from Friuli Venezia Giulia Region (healthcare IT), Consorzio Acquedotto Friuli Centrale (water sector), Trieste Trasporti (transport sector), Hydro Dolimiti Energia (energy sector), Istituto Superiore della Sanità (national healthcare authority) and Insiel (ICT sector). This attendance represented six key pillars of critical infrastructure enabling a fruitful discussion and valuable input for the project.

In regards to what the workshop hosts intended to find out, the questions asked of the participants covered two key areas:

Preparedness and Response

• Whether or not they were prepared to face the pandemic
• The challenges or issues they faced as CIs during the pandemic and if and how they solved them

Knowledge Sharing

• To trigger cross-sector cooperation and facilitate the exchange of their experiences
• Highlighting weaknesses and strengths of their current strategies to identify gaps to be addressed by the SUNRISE solutions

Successfully, many interesting findings were discovered. In particular, during the workshop, it was found that some problems faced during the pandemic are cross-sector based, such as the adoption of remote working and the implementation of national directives, particularly in the context of the pandemic which caused time constraints and a lack of proper planning. Moreover, the creation of an interdisciplinary committee to define strategy and protocols during a pandemic was one of the most important needs raised at a strategic level by all of the CI participants.

As CI operators, it was the first time after the pandemic that they had the opportunity to reflect on their experiences and learn what other CIs did during the same period creating a strong level of engagement in the discussion and interest in sharing their experiences. For Insiel who was also an organisation acting as a CI operator against the pandemic, its unknown territory brought a new wave of challenges and tasks:

As an ICT provider, Insiel didn’t experience the problem of enabling remote working for all employees that other organisations may have faced. The main challenge of the company was to provide the same service level to our main customers which are Public Authorities (including healthcare operators). Some departments of INSIEL had a natural overload due to remotization of a lot of activities of our customers.

– Gilda De Marco, Innovation and ICT Governance Department, Insiel & Project Manager, SUNRISE

The results of this workshop will be the first inputs for the other areas of the project to include in their work meaning their value is crucial, in particular for the SUNRISE Strategy, tools design and development and pilot applications. With that said, the workshop results are the starting point for all project activities and for future discussion in the next workshops and this first round kicked off on a positive and successful beginning.

Image: Matthew Henry (Unsplash)