The MiSE pilot project “The Blockchain for the traceability of Made in Italy”, promoted by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development with the support of IBM, seems to be lacking in funds.
This is what Pambianco News reveals by quoting the Department of the Ministry of Economic Development responsible for the Blockchain project.
According to the website, the Directorate General for Industrial Policy, Innovation and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises of the MiSE, has indicated that, since it does not have adequate funds, the future development of the project will need to rely on the ordinary tools available to companies, and on those that the national Blockchain strategy may wish to devote.
Nevertheless, the department undertakes to explore other ways of funding to follow up on the project, but as yet there is no clear timetable for the launch of the project.
The next step following the announcement would have been to engineer the pilot project, but it appears that this will not be the case in the foreseeable future.
Actually, since postponing projects such as this one risks making them obsolete, given that they make use of technologies that are already in use, at this point its entire development could be at risk.
Until now, only the feasibility study, which was presented some time ago, has been done, but without the transition to actual field testing.
The reference to possible other funding methods probably refers to the intention to involve the Italian textile-fashion sector, made up of many companies including several international brands, in this experimentation, or to be able to access EU funds related to the Framework Initiative on Traceability for Sustainable Textile Value Chains project.
In 2018 the previous government of the country had allocated 100 million euros to promote the spread of Wi-Fi throughout Italy and to encourage research and development in emerging technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things (IoT).
The problem is that, at the time these funds were allocated, it was not specified in detail how much would actually be available for blockchain projects, so it is plausible that the funds available to the Directorate General for Industrial Policy, Innovation and Small and Medium Enterprises are not sufficient to cover the expenses necessary to carry out the specific project “The Blockchain for the traceability of Made in Italy”.
