FUTURITALIA | National Recovery and Development Program

Project Profile

Problem

Italy currently lacks a unified, modern national framework for classifying businesses, public institutions, and social and economic actors in a way that supports strategic planning, economic development, and cross-sector coordination.

Existing classification systems are fragmented across ministries, agencies, regions, and statistical bodies, and are primarily designed for taxation and statistical reporting rather than integrated economic governance.

This fragmentation limits Italy’s ability to accurately map the structure of its economy, understand how resources, production, services, and public functions interact, design targeted industrial, labour, investment, and funding strategies, coordinate economic action across levels of government, and integrate business intelligence with employment, skills, and workforce planning systems.

As a result, economic planning is often reactive rather than strategic, emerging sectors are difficult to identify, policy interventions lack precision, and labour market systems operate in isolation from business and industrial intelligence.

Project Profile

Solution

FUTURITALIA proposes the National Business Classification System, a unified and standardized national framework that categorizes every business, public sector entity, and economic actor in Italy based on what they do.

The NBC is structured as a multi-sector and multi-tier classification model that reflects the real functioning of a modern economy.

Primary — By Resource

Secondary — By Activity

Tertiary — By Services

Quaternary — By Knowledge & Technology

Quinary — By Public Sector Function

Senary — By Non-Profit Community Function

Through this structure, the NBC provides a common economic language that can support business registration, workforce planning, funding analysis, sector intelligence, and national recovery and development coordination.

Project Profile

Purpose

The purpose of the FUTURITALIA National Business Classification System is to provide Italy with a foundational tool for national economic intelligence, workforce alignment, funding coordination, and strategic development. By unifying how economic actors are classified, the NBC gives Italy the structural visibility needed to guide growth, strengthen resilience, improve labour-business alignment, and support a diversified and competitive national economy.

Project Profile

Scope

The FUTURITALIA National Business Classification System is a non-statutory, voluntary national reference framework.

It does not replace existing legal, fiscal, or statistical classification systems, including ATECO or EU-level and international standards such as NACE, NAICS, and ISIC.

Adoption of the NBC supports consistency, transparency, and coordination across public and private economic actors while respecting existing institutional mandates.

The NBC is designed to remain flexible, extensible, and interoperable with existing standards while enabling consistent identification of economic actors across sectors, programs, jurisdictions, and FUTURITALIA systems.

Project Profile

Objectives

Economy Diversification

Enable the identification of sectoral strengths, gaps, dependencies, emerging industries, and declining activities, supporting targeted strategies and long-term economic diversification based on clear evidence of economic strengths and weaknesses.

Economy Mapping

Establish a comprehensive, standardized classification of all economic actors, providing a clear national view of how, where, and by whom economic value is created, delivered, and governed.

Economic Intelligence

Improve the accuracy of sectoral GDP measurement, productivity analysis, fiscal modeling, and demographic and sectoral forecasting through consistent business classification data, while providing the foundational structure for automated classification, advanced analytics, and future digital economic systems.

Economic Resilience

Classify economic activities to support sustainability and resilience planning, ensuring that entities across all six sectors can be efficiently coordinated and mobilized in response to emergencies, disruptions, or long-term national challenges.

Regulatory Alignment

Standardize business identification across ministries and agencies to simplify licensing, taxation, compliance, grants, and incentive programs, while reducing administrative fragmentation and improving cross-government and cross-sector coordination.

Job Bank Integration

Require economic actors using the FUTURITALIA National Job Bank to select standardized National Business Classification codes, enabling direct alignment between business activity, occupational demand, workforce planning, job matching, skills forecasting, and labour market intelligence.

Funding Streams Integration

Use NBC classification data to identify economic pull sectors and areas of weakness requiring targeted investment and development. This insight will support Recovery and Development strategies and projects funded through the Integrated Resilience Funding Arrangement.

Support Strategy Enablement

Enable each sector to develop and promote coordinated, evidence-based strategies across consumption, investment, government spending, trade, innovation, and policy by using a standardized national business classification that supports sector-level coordination and action.

Intelligence Collection & Cross-Pillar Coordination

Establish a structured system for collecting and maintaining sector-specific information, including key contacts, stakeholders, and participating organizations, to enable effective coordination across FUTURITALIA’s pillars and sectors.

Intelligence Distribution

Support the production of sector-specific newsletters and updates covering consumption trends, investment activity, government funding, funding opportunities, trade dynamics, and relevant policy developments.

Project Profile

Information Use Notice

This document is published by the FUTURITALIA National Recovery and Development Agency to promote transparency, collaboration, and national alignment. Its content may be freely referenced, shared, and adapted for public-interest purposes, including use by businesses, employers, educators, institutions, researchers, and public-interest organizations in economic planning, business classification, workforce planning, sector analysis, funding strategy, policy development, and organizational coordination, provided appropriate attribution is given.

Reference

Definitions

This section defines the meaning and intended use of each document field appearing in this project proposal.

Project NameOpen

The official name of the initiative as registered in the FUTURITALIA Projects Register. This name should clearly and concisely reflect the scope and purpose of the project and remain consistent across all related documentation, reporting, and public communications.

Project VersionOpen

Identifies the current version of the project proposal. Version numbers are used to track revisions, updates, and formal changes to the document over time. A change in version does not necessarily indicate project approval or implementation status.

Initiating PillarOpen

Indicates the FUTURITALIA Pillar under which the project is formally initiated and governed. This field establishes strategic alignment with one of FUTURITALIA’s Six Pillars and clarifies the primary national dimension the project supports.

Coordinating AuthorityOpen

Identifies the specific FUTURITALIA program, domain, or functional area responsible for initiating and sponsoring the project.

Document TypeOpen

Specifies the nature of the document within the FUTURITALIA documentation framework.

Publish DateOpen

The official date on which the document is released for public reference or internal use.

AudienceOpen

Identifies the intended readership of the document. A Public audience indicates that the document is written in accessible language and does not contain confidential, sensitive, or restricted information.

ProblemOpen

Defines the current national, sectoral, or systemic issue that this project seeks to address.

SolutionOpen

Describes the proposed initiative or framework that directly responds to the identified problem.

PurposeOpen

Explains why the project exists and what it aims to achieve at a strategic level.

ScopeOpen

Defines the boundaries, applicability, and limits of the project.

ObjectivesOpen

Identifies the specific, high-level outcomes the project seeks to achieve.

Information Use NoticeOpen

Defines how the document and its contents may be used, shared, referenced, or adapted.