Because it costs less, of course. But…

At the end of June 2020 all the institutional email mailboxes and addresses of all the public schools of Italy have been migrated to Microsoft Office365 accounts.

On one hand, this migration makes sense

Whatever the cost is, it is surely less than what it would cost to set up from scratch a full email service for all the italian public schools, with the same levels of service, and keeping sensitive data in Europe, under european laws.

On the other hand…

As an italian teacher put it on Facebook:

1. OK, the cost may well be much less, but how much is it? Why isn’t this data public?
2. Regardless of cost, is it wise to rely for institutional task on a foreign, extra-EU private company?

Because, he continued, a State is not a business that must only look at the raw, financial bottom line. And that is a platform in which “it is easy to enter, much less to leave, even less than with GSuite. My school is already locked into a closed platform for grade management… and now this?”

Update 2020/08/14

This just came in an online forum for italian teachers:

“I just activated my new official email account, and this is part of what I found in my mailbox today: almost 100% spam. How can this be possible???"

Sources: Wired Italy and Contropiano

(This post was drafted in July 2020, but only put online in August, because… my coronavirus reports, of course)