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Objective

pagoPA is the electronic payment system created to make any payment to the Public Administration simpler, safer and more transparent. The platform allows citizens and businesses to choose how (which tool) and with whom (which Payment Service Provider, PSP) to pay taxes, duties and public services in a standardized way, both online and offline, with benefits for all those involved according to a win-win model.

Adoption Scale

  • 19,269 active public entities in 2023
  • 37,2 million active citizens
  • 895,6 million transactions worth €176,5 billion by value

Maturity

The platform prototype was released in 2012 and made available for entities to start using it in 2014.

Information on Design and Implementation :

We have publicly accessible pages tailored for Public Entities, PSPs and technical intermediaries, making clear or onboarding processes, APIs and our architecture:
https://www.pagopa.gov.it/
https://www.pagopa.gov.it/it/prestatori-servizi-di-pagamento/come-aderire/

Technology Architecture

The architecture of the IO project is relatively simple:

  • Third Party entities require a payment from a citizen and they create a “citizen debt position” on their system
  • Through IO app, post or other channels, the citizen receives a payment notification
  • A pagoPA hub-spoke component, called “Nodo” (Hub in English), intermediates between the citizen and the Third Party, closing the transaction when the payment is finalized
  • the payment is performed with the help of third party vendors that are leaders in PCI infrastructures and payment gateway systems

All PagoPA components are hosted in Azure, with compute services mostly being Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS) and App Services.

Source Code

With the exception of some very specific repositories that is best to have them private for security reasons, the whole project is hosted on GitHub.

The main repositories of the projects are the following:

However, all project repositories can be found in our pagopa organization with a “pagopa-“ prefix.

We believe that being completely open not only encourages developer or ethical security researchers in contributing to our mission, but it is a citizen right to have full inspection access to the platforms he uses daily. In other words, we believe in “public money, public code”.

Technical Standards

PagoPA has an internal team (Technology), that publishes the Technology Standards, the rules to follow for any project in the company. Those documents are in the public domain, but this is to mention that quality and technical excellence has always been a priority for the company.

In addition to that, the Technology teams continuously pushes new Azure Policy rules, mandatory rules that are automatically enforced by Azure on the underlying pagoPA project infrastructure. As such, the pagoPA infrastructure team is always aligned at the best configuration possible for our organization, culture and relevant context (laws, procedures, etc...).

Operational Guidelines

https://www.pagopa.gov.it/it/prestatori-servizi-di-pagamento/documentazione/

Monitoring and Evaluation Metrics

Some metrics are publicly available: https://www.pagopa.gov.it/it/numeri/

However, additional data might be available on request, as project metrics are stored in an internal data lake.

Capacity Building Measures

PagoPA (the state-owned enterprise in charge of the pagoPA digital platform) has embraced a cloud-native approach since its birth in 2019 and made architectural choices for computer services that naturally allow to scale up and down the underlying infrastructure, giving the business flexibility and cost savings. For the platform development and maintainance, we make use of health probes, monitoring analytics and autoscaling mechanisms.

Governance Mechanism

Laws and policies:

  • Born: Art.5 c2, D. Lgs 82/2005
  • Mandatory for PA: Art. 2, c 2 D. Lgs 82/2005 and art. 15, c 5bis D.L. 179/2012
  • Entrusted to PagoPA S.p.A.: DL 135/2018 art. 8 c.2 and DPCM june 23, 2019
  • Subject to Guidelines AGID per l’Effettuazione dei Pagamenti Elettronici a favore delle Pubbliche Amministrazioni e dei Gestori di Pubblici Servizi (G.U. n. 152 del 03/07/2018) and to SANP , SACI
  • Born: Art.5 c2, D. Lgs 82/2005

Institutions:

  • PCM
  • PagoPa S.p.A.

Engagement Model

Write to affari.istituzionali@pagopa.it

Use Cases

pagoPA is one of the national e-Gov platforms enabling the digital transition of the Italian Public Sector and is integrated with the national ID systems (SPID and CIE, Electronic Identity Card) and all other digital infrastructures developed and managed by the PagoPA company. Among the latters, is the IO app (mobile application for digital public services) acting as a mobile front-end for digital payments through pagoPA platform.

Annual budget

About 11 million euros between internal and external costs. The company operates the capitalization of costs related to technological evolutions.

Additional Information

“World Bank. 2023. Mobile Government: How-to Note. Equitable Growth, Finance and Institutions Insight - Governance;. © Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/39479 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”

“The Digital Public Administration Factsheets 2023” prepared for the European Commission by Wavestone

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/inline- files/DPA_Factsheets_2023_Italy_vFinal_rev.pdf

Contact Details

  • d.battisti@innovazione.gov.it
  • affari.istituzionali@pagopa.it
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