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A legislative framework plays a key role in defining cloud-based recordkeeping and digital preservation strategies, since it can impose limitations and restrictions and establish fixed rules to follow. Continuing and broadening the discussion from the previous chapter, this chapter aims to further analyze recent Italian legislation and policies for cloud computing services in the public sector and also to assess them against the fundamental requirements identified at national and international levels for effective recordkeeping and digital preservation systems. The research questions discussed in this chapter are linked to the third objective of the ITrust project ( Duranti & Jansen, 2013) and tries to answer questions such as: what is the relation between the Italian legislation on cloud computing and relevant and consolidated principles in the field of recordkeeping and digital preservation systems, and is the Checklist for Cloud Service Contracts developed by the ITrust (Bushey, Demoulin, How, & McLelland, 2016 ) useful at a national level? In order to assess the Italian legal framework and common practice, four case studies are also discussed. This chapter is based on the work of the ITrust Team Europe whose findings are collected in the Project Report EU35 The impact of the Italian legal framework for cloud computing on electronic recordkeeping and digital preservation system ( Allegrezza et al., 2018 ).

The paper is conceptually divided into two parts. The first part examines the issues of simplification and dematerialisation of administrative procedures showing how the only dematerialization of the documentation does not produce concrete and tangible results, as confirmed by the example presented in section 2, so widespread in the public sector as it is paradoxical. Then the errors that typically occur when you start a project of simplification and dematerialization are illustrated and the regulatory framework in Italy with particular reference to the so called “farewell to paper” that was scheduled to begin on August 12, 2016 is analysed. In the second part of the paper a project for simplification and dematerialisation of proceedings for the drafting and signing of the Rector’s decrees and executive measures by the University of Udine is presented which came to a successful conclusion using a document management system integrated in the management information system of documents.