A Digital Real Estate Market Wins in PA Innovation Contest
Imagine being able to buy (or sell) your home with one click, easily signing the contract with your SPID digital identity (Sistema Pubblico di Identità Digitale) and with the security of the blockchain system. This would speed up and simplify operations for citizens, notaries and the public administration. This is the idea behind SPID Smart Contracts, the winning project of the B4DPA – Bocconi for Digital Public Administration Award. The competition was organized by Bocconi in close contact with the Team for Digital Transformation led by the Italian Government Commissioner for the Digital Agenda Diego Piacentini, with the media partnership of Corriere Innovazione and the patronage of the City of Milan.
The project, created by three Bocconi students, Beatrice Ginelli (Master of Science in Management), Federico Thiella (Master of Science in Marketing Management) and Edoardo Vaquer (EMIT), was named the winner today during the event, The Future of Digital Public Administration. A prize of €35,000 was awarded to the group to help them develop their idea.
Open to all university students in Italy and abroad, the competition set the goal of finding innovative and relevant solutions to encourage innovation in public administration. 129 students from 16 universities, 4 of which are universities outside Italy, heeded Bocconi's call, with a total of 42 projects submitted. 7 projects made it to the final stage, including the winning project, SPID Smart Contracts.
The idea of the three students works like this: A and B sign a smart contract, where A agrees to transfer the ownership of the asset to B against a sum of money. When A and B sign using their SPID, the contract executes the agreed-upon terms, transferring ownership of the asset from A to B and the sum of money from B to A at the same time. The feature of smart contracts is that they are self-executing, meaning their clauses are executed automatically without the need for intermediaries. In this way, they are digitalized, expedited and, thanks to blockchain, each individual real estate transaction can be traced.
"The immediate effect of our solution," explain the three students, "is a decrease in the costs of transferring real estate property for citizens, the state and intermediaries. It makes bureaucratic procedures related to transferring property easier, faster and cheaper for all the interested parties." In the long term, say the students, "our objective is to create an ecosystem, or rather a structure, that can be used to the advantage of citizens, the government and companies." But there is also an advantage for public administration: "By completely digitalizing contracts, a virtuous system could be created in which the services offered to citizens would become more efficient. In addition, public records, such as the Catasto, would be updated immediately after the transfer of property," says the group.
SPID Smart Contracts, is not, however, the only project that stood out in the competition.
The panel decided to assign honorable mention to the project M3 – Make Milano Move, submitted by three students, Alix Auzepy, Katharina Bella (both in the Master of Science in Economics and Management of Government and International Organizations) and Mariama Holman (Southern Methodist University di Dallas). Their idea is as simple as it is effective: bring together the main mobility systems for Milan residents (public transportation, taxis, bike sharing and car sharing) in one app and with one personal account. This gives users the opportunity to customize their route and, more importantly, pay with a smartphone using one payment system.
As winners of the honorable mention, the three members of the M3 group will be given the chance to participate in one of the four concentrations of the Master of Public Administration at the SDA Bocconi School of Management.
"Public administration's digital transformation needs unconventional approaches as well, like the competition launched by Bocconi University," said Diego Piacentini, Italian Government Commissioner for the Digital Agenda. "The synergies between students from different study areas and university campuses have produced innovative projects that mesh with our Three-Year Plan. Now we just need to use them!"
"Congratulations to the winners for their innovative idea," said City Councillor for Digital Transformation and Citizens Services, Roberta Cocco. "And I would like to thank all the students who participated in the competition. We saw many very interesting ideas and some of them may even be developed later on. For the City of Milan, it is truly important to promote initiatives such as this one, because they have a two-fold value. On the one hand, they allow young people to stimulate their creativity and their ideas for concrete projects that have repercussions for the city. On the other hand, a target of people who often see public organizations as far removed from their everyday lives can learn more about public administration."