For EU Member States, data-sharing and data standards are essential to provide well-running multimodal travel information services. In DATA4PT, UITP and ITxPT work together with nine different Member States. What is their exact role in the project, and what do they expect from DATA4PT? We have asked them.
For the interview we spoke to Francesco De Vito, Communication Officer at Ministero delle infrastrutture e della mobilità sostenibili (Italian Ministry of Sustainable Infrastructures and Mobility). The Ministry is responsible for a wide range of policy areas related to transport, viability and logistics in Italy.
Can you tell us a bit more about your participation in DATA4PT – what is your exact role in the project?
Italy is a Member State and implementing body in the DATA4PT project. I am Communication Officer at the Italian Ministry of Sustainable Mobility and Infrastructures (MIMS). My Division is in charge of the establishment and management of National Access Point, according to the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/1926. At the moment, we are building up contacts with national stakeholders and planning the implementation of our National Access Point (NAP).
Italy serves as a test site for the DATA4PT project. What exactly will be tested?
At the moment, pilot activities go in two directions. On one hand, our first goal is to test the validity of NeTEx Italian profile. On the other hand, we intend to collect public transport data using the NeTEx Italian profile, in strict connection with Piedmont Region that set up a Regional Access Point, in order to gather public transport data from almost 100 PTOs. This data will be stored into the NAP Transmodel based database.
What are some of the main questions concerning data & multimodal travel in Italy you hope to tackle by your participation in DATA4PT?
Technical aspects – NeTEx and SIRI implementation, NAP architecture – are certainly interesting. However, organizational aspects can be more intriguing. We will have the opportunity to assess how to enable multimodal services, i.e. how to involve all stakeholders? How will NAP make data available? Who will be the first beneficiaries? In order to enable which services?
The challenge lies in interpreting the Commission’s instructions and tailor them to the Italian context. In addition, we have to keep a close watch on other projects, such as Napcore and Uvar – in which we are personally involved – which have many points of contact with Data4PT, in order to proceed alignments and achieve useful results.