ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores the causes of the stalemate and why the “exit strategy” for Italy is bound to be rather painful. He presents a “shades of grey” picture of Italy’s “elusive” information society, with two promising exceptions. Two promising exceptions are: the external “peer pressure” which has obliged Italy, as a member of the advanced democracies group, to pursue more openness and transparency despite its bureaucracies’ “natural inclination” to opacity, and Italy’s “civic spirit” and its firm standing among the “free” countries on the internet. It will take more time for Italy’s information society to grow, if conditions remain as they are, unless its slow-moving bureaucracy is completely overhauled. In the end, it is difficult not to imagine that the good intentions of government officials and user-citizens to truly implement an Italian information society may well remain wishful thinking, a “thought,” much like the “Va Pensiero” intoned by the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves” in Verdi’s Nabucco.
