The Ministry of economic development launched a call for applications for the selection of up to 30 members of a Group of expert for the drafting of a National Strategy on distributed ledger technologies and blockchain. The Ministry considers a crucial priority for Italy, as the Minister of economic development, Luigi Di Maio, has already mentioned in his programmatic lines, to deepen the knowledge of the DLTs and the blockchain and the related juridical issues and to boost public and private investments in related technologies. “Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain are going to shape our lives, the society we live in and the economic and productive approach of our country. We have to choose our side: keep following the process of development determined at a global level or being part of the change trying to shape these processes with well-designed national strategies to exploit the excellent examples we have in our country in the technology sector”, said Minister Luigi Di Maio. After the formal adhesion of Italy to the European partnership and against the background set by the coordinated approach proposed by the European Union, as already happened for the Artifical Intelligence call, whose deadline is 15 October, the Ministry sets up a Group of experts, to provide it with its technical and scientific support in the drafting of the blockchain national strategy, addressing policies and tools in order to: monitor and analyse private initiatives already existing at a national level, their developments and socioeconomic impact; determine use cases of DLT in the public sector, to promote and support their spread; determine the needed conditions to promote research, development, use, adoption and maintenance of the decentralised structure of DLT and blockchain in order to increase and accelerate their spreading in public and private services; elaborate the necessary tools to create and grant economic, political and regulatory conditions in such a way citizens and enterprises, particularly SMEs and start-up, can seize the potential of these technologies and their functionalities; elaborate technical and legal tools to allow smart contracts to spread. In order to ensure a holistic and multi-perspective approach to the AI topic, the Group, chaired by the Minister of economic development or his delegate, will be composed by: ten representing enterprises operating in the field of DLT and blockchain; ten representing research centres, public administration, academics, think-thanks; ten representing the labour market, the professions, the third sector, the consumers and in general the civil society; Minister’s representatives. To ensure full transparency and to be able to benefit from the contribution of all the interested stakeholders, the Blockchain National strategy, once drafted, will be submitted to a public consultation. For more information on the application procedure, the call for applications and the format for the application are available on this website. Applications must be sent via mail using the format available, by the midnight of 28 October 2018.

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