The Electronics Certified Mail

Today in Italy there are 22 carriers (entered in a public list) for services of Electronics Certified Mail (PEC), a service certified by CNIPA (National Centre for Information Technology in the Public Administration).

WHAT'S THIS AND HOW IT WORKS
Compared with traditional recommended paper, are certified both the sending and the receiving, the two main roles in the transmission of electronic documents, and also the content.

The sender receives from its mail carrier a confirn which is legal proof for the send of the message and attached documentation.
Similarly, when the message arrives to the destination, the operator sends a receipt to the sender about the status of delivery (also in case of failure) with precise time indication.

The tracking of this information is kept by the operators for 30 months, during which you can ask duplicates of receipts (with the same legal force) in case of loss.

ADVANTAGES
In addition to the transmission in real-time, the certified email allows low costs of expeditions, estimated in 150 million euros/year.

USABILITY
The interface to access this service is the same as a traditional mailbox, so for users don't change anything.

SECURITY
This service enhances communication via Internet with various degrees of reliability and high security.

HOW AND WHO TO REQUEST
This service can be requested only by the operators accredited at the CNIPA (National Centre for Information in the Public Administration), which is the public responsible for the control of certified mail.

You must have a registered domain name. Each PEC domain correspond to a third-level domain dedicated (eg pec.mysite.com)
For the PEC should be used dedicated domains (a PEC domain don't contains email boxes non-PEC).

COSTS
Around 5 euros/year, depending on the single operator, the cost of 2 traditional mail.

LEGISLATION
It's possible to any access point (fixed or mobile) to send or receive certified email.
PEC break down the barriers of time and space for the relationship between government, citizens and businesses.

DIFFUSION
To date, in Italy almost 13 thousand (12,954 to be exact) domains are managed by the operators of the service certified electronic mail.
During the period July-August 2007 PEC active boxes were over 115 thousand, while in the same summer this kind of messages sent were 23 million.

link: http://www.cnipa.gov.it