From Seattle To Rome. Digital innovation for citizens and for the development of the country

From Seattle to Rome

Digital Innovation for citizens and for the development of the country

by Diego Piacentini, Government Commissioner for the Digital Agenda

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This is the beginning of the first post on Medium, available both in Italian and English

I worked for 13 years at Apple and 16 at Amazon. After such a unique learning experience and many years away from my home country, I have decided to “give back”. I accepted the invitation of the Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, to assist the Government in accelerating the digital transformation of the country and to support the simplification of the relationship between the Public Administration, citizens and business. I will work pro bono for two years as “Government Commissioner for the Digital Agenda”, and will report directly to the Prime Minister. Commissioner is not a very cool title, but the team’s activities will be super-cool. The name of the team is Digital Transformation Team - Italian Government.
Paolo Barberis, Innovation Adviser to the Italian Prime Minister since September 2014, will work with me; he is also helping pro bono.

Now I need to create this team. Without an enthusiastic and competent pool of talents, I will not go too far. I, therefore, decided to write my first post addressing those potential candidates directly.

Dear talents, who either live in Italy or abroad and have the desire to come back - even if only for a limited period of time and at a compensation level which is most likely much lower than what you are currently making: how do I convince you to join us?
Allow me to explain what we have in mind and describe the type of people we need in order to help build the fundamental blocks of the country’s operating system.

The Digital Transformation Team is seeking bilingual (Italian and English) talents with proven experience in computer science (software architecture, mobile application development, open source software, information security, APIs), mathematics and statistics (predictive models, machine learning), product design, user experience and other roles connected to the digital agenda.