Poste Italiane takes the field in support of the Ministry of the Interior. With the advancement of Polis project of Poste Italiane is introduced new service di request and renewal of passports at post offices in municipalities with fewer than 15.000 inhabitants. Thanks to the post office network, it will thus be possible to reduce waiting times and decongest the process of issuing passports, the delay of which has reached record levels with waits of up to a year at the police headquarters.
The service was presented today in Rome at the historic Post Office in Piazza San Silvestro, in the presence of the Minister of the Interior Matteo Piantedosi, of the President of Poste Italiane Silvia Maria Rovere, of the Chief Executive Officer Matthew Del Fante and new General Director Giuseppe Lasco.
The new service, initially on an experimental basis, will leave on March 4th in the province of Bologna, precisely in San Pietro in Casale and Toscanella (fraction of Dozza). The aim is to gradually extend it nationwide.
Passport at the Post Office, how does it work?
Thanks to the Agreement signed between Poste Italiane, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy, citizens resident or domiciled in the municipalities included in the Polis Project will be able to start the process of requesting or renewing a passport directly at the counters of post offices, thus avoiding going to the police station.
For apply for a passport, it will be sufficient to give the post office operator of your municipality a valid identity document, the tax code, two photographs and pay the Postal of 42,50 euros and one stamp from 73,50 euros. In the case of renewal, it will also be necessary to present the old passport or a copy of the loss or theft report. Thanks to the technology of the Polis Post Offices, the operator will collect the information and biometric data of the applicant, such as fingerprints and photos, and send them to the competent police office. The new passport, upon request of the applicant, can also be delivered directly to home by the Post Office.
However, it should be noted that the waiting times between the submission of the application and the release will still depend on the ability of the Police Headquarters to process the requests and send the final document to the post offices.
What is the Poste Polis project
The Polis Project is one initiative launched by Poste Italiane for transform post offices located in more remote and isolated areas a single center that offers a wide range of services. It represents a revolution for 6.933 post offices located in 7.665 Italian municipalities, concentrated above all in territories with fewer than 15.000 inhabitants. These municipalities, often enchanting but depopulated villages, lack the most advanced services.
The project aims to digitalize and make services more efficient, offering high-speed connections, networking and smartworking possibilities, access to certificates and public services, all without the need to travel. It was approved by the European Union in the context of the Next Generation EU program and will receive funding for a total of 1,2 billion euros, of which 800 from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) and 400 from Poste Italiane.
Polis project: 5 thousand documents already requested, soon also the Cie
The passport issuing service joins the others available in Polis post offices, including the collection of birth certificates and civil status certificates, social security certificates and documents for voluntary jurisdiction practices. To date, they have been Over 5.000 documents required at these offices.
In the next few months it will be possible request the electronic identity card and use the services ofInland Revenue at post offices. All these new services will be provided at the counter, in dedicated rooms or via digital totems, offering citizens the possibility of carrying out requests in self-service mode.
Today, testing begins on a project which, when fully operational, will make it possible, in small municipalities, to request or renew a passport directly in post offices: an important innovation on the road to simplifying the channels of access to public administration services. A sign of attention towards the communities of those small inhabited centers that represent the backbone of our country".
Piantedosi: "Important polis project in a moment of suffering for the Ministry of the Interior in managing passports"
“Thanks to the collaboration with Poste Italiane, and its widespread network of offices in the area, we are progressively shifting the center of gravity of the Interior Ministry's activities, in this case of administrative function, to make it increasingly closer to the needs of citizens” explained the Minister of 'Internal Matteo Piantedosi, during the presentation of the project – “For us the Polis project is very important because it comes at a time of great suffering for the Interior Ministry in managing the mission of issuing passports. There have been delays but this is also partly as a result of the fact that there has been an explosion of inquiries following the lockdown during the pandemic and because of Brexit. The criticisms are understandable and reasonable but in 2023 they have been over 2.700.000 passports issued, a growing trend compared to other years. It's not enough but with Polis a virtuous process begins which will progressively affect a quarter of the Italian population."
“The Polis project was born during the Covid period, to respond to the needs of small municipalities, guaranteeing them access to essential services” declared the CEO of Poste, Matthew Del Fante, “We are proud to be at the forefront of this area and to have included numerous municipalities in our project. It is an inclusive project that will offer citizens who live in small municipalities the same services as those who live in large cities. Currently, we have 1200 offices already activated out of a total of 7000 planned, demonstrating our concrete commitment. We are working hard to ensure the success of this project and provide residents of remote areas with the necessary resources. Polis proceeds punctually respecting the timetable, in fact we are even further ahead than expected.
