Digitalization

Continuing the commitment launched in November 2023 as part of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan #NextGenerationItalia (Mission 1, Component 2 'Digitisation, Innovation and Competitiveness in the Productive System'), in 2024 the UIBM focused on its project to implement the new information system.

2024 was a fundamental year for the development of the new digital platform, laying the foundation for a more robust, high-performance and user-oriented system.

During the year, activities focused on the following key aspects:

• analysis of requirements (functional and non-functional) and definition of the logical and physical architecture; internal and external stakeholders are involved, in order to accurately define the characteristics of the new platform, which must be able to fully exploit the new enabling technologies and guarantee better performance and scalability;
• system and service design, with a focus on improving existing provision and on introducing new specialised and customised services;
• improvement of the User Experience (UX) for external and internal users, through in-depth studies on the interface and user journey, in order to ensure compliance with the AGID design guidelines for public administration for websites and digital services;
• definition of services for businesses, professionals and professionals in general, by identifying and designing new features that provide added value to these advanced users, supporting them in their daily activities.

At the same time, the UIBM continued to manage and maintain the information system and the AS-IS databases, ensuring a high level of reliability and continuity in the provision of services, first and foremost those relating to the online filing of applications and the updating and consultation of databases. In addition, during 2024, the UIBM permanently discontinued the old technology of transferring design data to the European DesignView database, in favour of the new EUIPO shared network based on blockchain technology, as as had already been done for trademarks in 2023. Thanks to the features of this technology, now also applied to designs, data exchange with the EUIPO database has been further improved, bringing greater reliability, availability, security and efficiency in operations.

Finally, access to the 'Blockchain History' service on EUIPO's DesignView portal has been enabled, allowing users to query and compare any changes in the historic data of a design, further improving security and transparency.