Letter to Romano Prodi, the Presidency of the Council of Ministers answers: checking of the correct working of the Public Administration is no concern of its citizenry

After the letter to Prodi, Rutelli and Nicolais signed by over 1500 citizens, many of whom design, web and multimedia professionals, in which a request was advanced for transparency in the public documents related to the Protal Italia.it, here, finally, a sign of life from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.

Today, from the email address postacertificata.dit@palazzochigi.it we received the following PDF attachment with the answer:

Response to the Letter to Romano Prodi – DOWNLOAD PDF (in Italian)

It is comprised of two documents.

(read the rest in Italian)

Geography anyone?

It is sooo annoying that the Flash programmers that Italia.it employs do not have the least sense of geography or its conventions and use in the modern world.

Since when has Vicenza EVER been one step left (East) and three steps up (North) on any geographical mapping projection system?

Anyone that looked at the coordinates (much less has ever been anywhere near the Italian Northwest) would know that they are relatively close to the same Latitude (North-South position, geographically speaking) but over an hour’s travel apart in Longitude (East-West position, geographically speaking). Even the Italian State Railways, known worldwide for their inefficiency, horrible train-sign translations and generalized incompetency have gotten it better than the Italia.it programmers.

Please, get your act together!

Please note the mapping according to Saint Google deMap, the patron saint of mappers since medieval times:

Notice that the traditional North-South-East-West conventions give hardly any difference in the North-South relations between Venice and Vicenza, but create roughly a square between Vicenza and Parma, and that Parma correctly results South of both Venice and Vicenza (seeing as it is almost a degree of Latitude South of both, it is only natural and comprehensible that it be represented that way, or at least one would think…).

The (unforeseen) impact of Scandalo Italiano

Seems hard to believe, but if there had never been a Scandalo Italiano, there never would have been an Italia.it.

Convincing proof: from the time Scandalo Italiano has stopped charging ahead with observations, suggestions, corrections and comments, the site hasn’t gone ahead. Not an inch, or even a millimeter. The translations of the still-in-Italian interface pieces has remained faithfully in Italian.

The news, in nearly a month, has not been updated AT ALL!

The latest news item (at least in the English, Italian and German sections) goes back to April 5. In the Chinese section, it would appear (the dates show in arabic numerals, even if the rest of the text is mostly in Chinese which I don’t understand at all) to have stopped a few days earlier on April 2.

All I can say is: that is one heck of a long Easter vacation, even for a country which takes off an entire month of the Summer to eat gelato and sit under overpriced and ever increasingly expensive beach umbrellas in Coney-island style overcrowded beaches outside Rome whilst no work whatsoever is accomplished (except by the gelato-sellers and beach-umbrella-fee-collectors, of course).

Is it possible they have run out of money already? All the politicians kept saying that there were still tens of millions of euros left available.

At this point, if they don’t actually intend to kept correcting the omnipresent errors and difficulties for the (potential) visitors, maybe the naysayers that called for the closure of the site were the ones in the right.

ritaliaCamp 31.03.2007

Here we are at ritaliaCamp, and “guarda caso”: italia.it is DOWN again.

Just getting started, we’ll try and update later once things get started…

(later)  well a little less enthusiastic than I expected, but potentially the groundwork for future advancement, though tough to tell.
I think there were too mixed expectations and too wide a variety amongst the participants: some expected a concentration on tourism, some on webservers, some on creating a new portal and others maybe just on being part of the “anti-scandal” or having their fifteen minutes.
Oh, well, the organization was exceptional, and the fresh coldcuts and seasoned cheeses were delicious.

Elementary democracy check: why sign the open letter to Prodi to clear things up on italia.it

Originally posted (in Italian) March 22, 2007

That’s how it works.

Some Italian laws establish, besides a basic good civic sense, that citizens have the right to access their Public Administration Acts.

Why? Well, the reasons are so evident they shouldn’t even need explaining: citizens work hard all day long, their job is quantified in a salary and a good chunk of this salary goes into the community public fund.