Born in Catania on 10 October 1958. He graduated summa cum laude in Electrical Engineering from the University of Catania in 1981. The following year he obtained his licence to practise the profession.
In 1980 he was awarded a scholarship by the Cassa del Mezzogiorno to specialize in information technology. He then went on to work for the Cassa until 1988, where he dealt with occupational safety, tools to support and protect databases, and computer-assisted cartography standards. He coordinated the management and control procedures for the Cagliari industrial port special project.
In 1988 he started working for the Bank of Italy as a Technical Services Officer in the IT Operations and Systems Department, holding the position of Head of the IT Quality Support, Control and Assurance Area until 1997 and that of Head of the IT Planning and Systems Division from 1997 to 2007.
During that period he was in charge of a project to introduce new methods, techniques, standards and tools for software quality control and assurance and of another project focusing on the evolution of the methods to develop software. Additionally, he led the Customer Relationship working group, and was responsible for drafting standard contracts for IT matters. He represented the Bank of Italy on the Italian Banking Association’s (ABI) working group on standard contracts for the procurement of software and related services.
He held a number of appointments at national and international level: member of the Eurosystem’s task force on IT governance, coordinator of the ECB’s task force on the costs of IT projects, and representative of the Bank of Italy in the Finance sub-committee of the Euro committee and in the working group on the quality of the IT goods and services supplied to general government, set up at the initiative of the Centro Nazionale per l’informatica nella P.A.
From April 2007 to February 2009 he served as an advisor to the Head of the IT Operations and Systems Department and was part of the group of consultants (some in-house, some external) working on reorganizing the Bank’s IT sector.
From February 2009 to August 2010 he was Head of the Support Unit to the IT Resources and Statistics Area.
In that capacity he was a member of the Bank of International Settlements’ Group of IT Experts and a coordinator of its IT Management Analysis Group as well as a member of the ECB’s IT committee, a representative for the Research Center on Technology, Innovation, and Finance (CeTIF) established by Università Cattolica of Milan, a member of the Bank of Italy’s IT Committee and the coordinator of the Bank’s IT technical assistance activities to non-EU central banks.
In August 2010 he was appointed Head of the Support Unit to the Markets and Payment Systems Area.
During that period he was a member of CeTIF’s steering committee, a member of the Eurosystem Procurement Coordination Office’s (EPCO) Expert Group for Market Data Providers and Rating Agencies, a member of the ABILAB market watcher on banks’ back office activities, a member of the competence centre on the flexibility and efficiency of banks’ automated teller machines set up by Università Cattolica, an advisor to the President of Istat for the reorganization of its IT department and then for its modernization.
Within the Bank he coordinated the task force on reorganizing back office activities, the working group on the revision of the Report to Parliament and to the Government (2012), the team tasked with preparing the new Report on Operations and Activities of the Bank of Italy (2013), and served as advisor to the Bank of Italy’s Representative on the Eurosystem IT Steering Committee (EISC).
He has authored numerous publications and articles in the fields of information technology, organization and skill management, and is a lecturer in the Master’s programme on ICT management and control established by the Information and Communication Department of Università La Sapienza of Rome. He has also lectured at the ‘Ezio Vanoni’ Graduate School of Economics and Finance.
He is a member of the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics and of the American Economics Association.
On 11 February 2017 he became Head of the Operations and Payments Settlement Directorate.
