The fifth edition of Digital Sustainability Day, the Foundation for Digital Sustainability’s annual event, has also come to a close. The 2026 edition, which took place again this year in the setting of the Sapienza University of Rome, focused on an important theme: ‘Consumers, businesses and institutions: the challenge of cognitive sovereignty‘. Highlighting, through the authoritative speeches that took place over the course of a morning, how the challenge of digital sustainability depends on the ability to build shared awareness and responsibility among citizens, businesses and institutions, addressing increasingly strategic issues such as artificial intelligence, sustainability and digital sovereignty.
Led by Sky TG 24 journalist Chiara Martinoli, the event was opened by a video message with institutional greetings from Sen. Adolfo Urso, Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, as well as a welcome from the day’s ‘hosts’, Luca Dezi, Director of the CORIS Department at Sapienza University, and Alberto Marinelli, Pro-rector of Sapienza University. “These occasions allow us to reflect on what has been done and to relaunch on the new challenges we have to face,” commented Alberto Marinelli. “Making a path that seamlessly transitions from digital sovereignty to cognitive sovereignty is an absolutely strategic challenge for the university. And it is a path that, as the very nature of the Foundation shows, cannot be taken alone: we must necessarily work together‘.
Institutional action
The first Round Table of the day, introduced by Mauro Minenna, General Manager of ACI Informatica and VP with responsibility for Business and PA at the Foundation, was dedicated to a discussion on sustainability and cognitive sovereignty – the central themes of the day. Not only to understand what is meant by these terms, but also, and above all, to understand why it is so important to interface with institutions on these issues. “In this field, as AgID, we have drawn up guidelines, thanks to an interaction also with the Foundation,” explained Mario Nobile, Director General of AgID and member of the Foundation’s Steering Committee. ‘This is because sovereignty requires awareness, and awareness in turn requires expertise. This is why we, not alone, but with the Foundation, businesses, many institutional actors and other stakeholders, try to give signals. Italy has many strengths, such as our universities: this is why we must be optimistic about our ability to disseminate skills to businesses and civil society, also exploiting the enormous strength of the Italian university system‘.
Thanks to the speeches byGiovanni Battista Gallus (VP for Regulatory Policies and Regulatory Affairs of the Foundation), Arianna Fanuli (VP for Institutional Relations of the Foundation) and theHon. Enzo Amich, the round table was also an opportunity to present to the audience the new Parliamentary Intergroup on Digital Sustainability and Technological Sovereignty, which involves the Foundation as a Technical Scientific Committee. Its task, as recounted, will be to promote an ongoing debate on issues related to digital transformation in the institutional sphere. “We live in an era in which digital is no longer just a tool, but the very infrastructure of the economy, society and institutions,” commentedHon. Enzo Amich, President of the Intergroup. ‘This is why talking about innovation, without addressing the issues of sustainability and sovereignty, is no longer sufficient. It is for this reason that the Intergroup is based on these two fundamental criteria: digital sustainability and technological sovereignty. The Intergroup does not want to be just a space for discussion, but a stable, transversal and concrete tool. A place to study and discuss with academia, business, civil society and institutions. The challenge is enormous, but so is the opportunity to transform digital technology into an autonomous and sustainable development lever for the future of our nation‘.
The 2026 Observatory
During the day, the results of the research conducted through theDigital Sustainability Observatory, carried out by the Foundation in collaboration with theSan Pio V Institute of Political Studies and, for the first time, together with Adiconsum Nazionale and Confcommercio, were presented. The survey involving consumers was carried out as part of the DICO Sì project, of which Adiconsum is a promoter, a project financed by MIMIT – D.D. 12 May 2025.The 2026 report, based as always on theDiSI index devised by the Foundation itself, is entitled ‘Digital and Sustainability in the Italy that produces and consumes‘, and introduces a new perspective for the Italian panorama: the direct comparison between demand (citizens) and supply (micro-businesses), overcoming the historical separation between the analysis of consumer behaviour and that of business dynamics.
The results of the research, presented by President Stefano Epifani and commented on stage by Gianfrancesco Romeo (Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy), Luciano Gaiotti (Confcommercio), Andrea Di Palma (Adiconsum), Stefano Denicolai (University of Pavia), Alberto Marinelli (Sapienza) and Paolo De Nardis (Istituto di Studi Politici S. Pio V), highlight the fact that while consumers are evolving rapidly in their digital habits and expectations, the production system – especially small businesses – is called upon to speed up in order not to fall behind. Pio V), highlight a fact: while consumers are evolving rapidly in their digital habits and expectations, the production system – especially that of small businesses – is called upon to accelerate in order not to fall behind. And it is a challenge that concerns everyone, requiring awareness, skills and the ability to act in a coordinated manner. “The Observatory’s data give us a picture that should make anyone with industrial policy responsibilities in our country reflect,” explained Stefano Epifani. “The digital transformation is the result of millions of daily decisions that take place on two simultaneous fronts, that of demand (consumption choices, trust choices, technology adoption choices) and that of supply (decisions to invest in innovation, choices of which services to offer, communication strategies), in a context that is increasingly strongly intermediated by digital platforms“.
The fifth edition of the States General for Digital Sustainability
It could not miss the space dedicated to the presentation of the next Stati Generali della Sostenibilità Digitale (General States of Digital Sustainability), the event organised by the Foundation for Digital Sustainability, which will reach its 5th edition in 2026.
This could only be told by Nicola Mangia (CEO of DXC Technology Italia), Fabio Meloni (CEO of Deda Next), Alessia Monteleone (CEO of R1 Lease) and Vincenzo Granato (Country Manager of Commvault Italia), representatives of the companies that support the Foundation in making this initiative possible, as main partners. And who highlighted how the value of this Community, which has expanded over time – not only in terms of numbers, but also in terms of skills – is that of not limiting itself to words, but of being focused on the generation of ideas, facts and concrete projects.
The work does not stop, and thanks to the contribution of this community of top managers, not only in innovation, it already looks to the future, with the aim of further expanding its impact.
The era of concreteness: the Foundation’s projects
Having exposed the many important themes, the last phase of Digital Sustainability Day 2026 was dedicated to concreteness: the telling of the concrete projects that have animated the daily work of the Foundation and its partners in recent months.
The importance of Standardisation as a strategic tool for measuring sustainability was then discussed. A concept that has long been dear to the Foundation, and which led, thanks also to the contribution of Domenico Squillace, UNINFO President and Head of Standardisation FSD, to the birth of two UNI Reference Practices: the UNI/PdR 147:2025 first, which defines requirements and KPIs for the sustainability of digital transformation projects, and more recently, the UNI/PdR 187:2026, dedicated to the sustainability of digital communication. After months of intense work by the working tables involved, led respectively by Salvatore Marras, Head of Training at the Foundation and Roberto Ferrari, Head of Communication Working Groups at the Foundation, the documents are published and ready to be used by interested organisations. As, moreover, important organisations such as Rai are already doing in the case of PdR 147:2025, as Massimo Rosso, Head of Rai’s Purchasing Office and member of the Foundation’s Steering Committee, explained during the round table.
But that’s not all: also at the centre of the story were projects that see artificial intelligence as a strategic tool for generating positive impacts on society. These included mySMART Diary, the web app that uses AI and mentalisation models to support patients with eating disorders, narrated by Giuliano Castigliego, the project’s Scientific Director, and created in the context of the Stati Generali della Sostenibilità Digitale (General States of Digital Sustainability), as the first result of the Digital4Aid programme. And then there is PRIMUS, shaped by expertise ranging from cognitive psychology to applied neuroscience and AI, and developed with the Enel Foundation also in the context of Digital4Aid: the project, specifically, explores how safety in the workplace can be enhanced by integrating prevention practices with a deeper understanding of the emotional and cognitive conditions that influence the perception and management of risk in high-risk work environments. And since there are no two without three, another project is about to start from the same programme, the result of the collaboration between the Foundation and Trentino Digitale, with Deda Next as technical partner, which aims to use artificial intelligence to promote thesocial inclusion of the most fragile categories in the Trentino region: this was announced by Kussai Shahin, General Manager of Trentino Digitale and member of the Foundation’s Steering Committee, and further details of the project will be announced in the coming days.
Same goals, but bigger
The Foundation is growing, as highlighted in the finale by Luciano Guglielmi, FSD’s Director of Operations, who showed the new Organisational Structure, and in his closing greetings by Beppe Carrella, FSD’s Head of Membership Network Development. And with it, the initiatives, events and projects multiplied. But the Foundation’s objective, from day one, remains the same: not to stop at slogans, going down to the level of concreteness to generate a tangible impact on the environment, economy and society. The work does not stop, to ensure that, thanks to the contribution of an ever-growing association network, digital sustainability becomes a real lever of development for the future of our country.
Another article will be published in the next few days with a more in-depth description of the topics discussed and the data presented.