Introduction and legislative referencesThe institution of “Whistleblowing”, introduced by art. 1, paragraph 51, of law no. 190 of 6th November 2012 and reformulated by art. 1 of the law of 30th November 2017, n. 179, has recently been amended by legislative decree n. 24 of 10th March 2023, which implemented Directive (EU) 2019/1937 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23rd October 2019 in Italy.The introduction of legislative decree no. 23 of 2024 led to the abrogation of the following regulations:a) Article 54-bis of Legislative Decree No. 165 of 30 March 2001;b) Article 6, paragraphs 2-ter and 2-quater, of Legislative Decree No. 231 of 8 June 2001;c) Article 3 of Law No. 179 of 30 November 2017.The institute was created with the intention of protecting those who report violations, such as behaviour, acts or omissions that harm the public interest or the integrity of the public administration or private organisations as defined by art. 2 paragraph 1 of Legislative Decree no. 24 of 2023.The University of Parma is working to update the content of the University Regulations for the protection of employees who report offences, to whose text reference is made, to the extent that it is still compatible with current legislation.For the complete regulations of this institute, please refer to the national legislation, which can be found in the latest version at the following link www.normattiva.it or on the Anac website: https://www.anticorruzione.it/-/whistleblowing.IT platformTo protect the confidentiality of the whistleblower, the University of Parma has joined the WhistleblowingPA project of Transparency International Italia and the Hermes Centre for Transparency and Human and Digital Rights and has adopted the IT platform developed by them in accordance with the requirements of the law, in order to receive any reports from the employee concerned in complete security.Reports can be made through the platform by university employees, teachers and administrative staff, by employees of companies that supply goods or services and carry out work for the University, by employees of private organisations under the control of the University in accordance with article 2359 of the Civil Code.The report sent through the platform creates a record that remains registered for 18 months, after which the system deletes it. This is to prevent excessive use of the application, which could in any way harm the whistleblower. The cancellation of the record does not interrupt any initiatives that may have been started following the report.The report is received by the University RPCT, who is informed by e-mail that a new report has been made on the platform.The report can also be anonymous: the reporter can choose to use the computer application anonymously by not filling in the section relating to personal identification data. In case of an anonymous report, please be careful when deleting the so-called ‘metadata’ of any attached documents that could lead to the identity of the reporter. Note that anonymous reports will only be considered if the information provided is considered sufficiently detailed to warrant further investigation. To this end, through the depersonalised dialogue, by means of an application, between the reporter and RPCT, the latter may ask the reporter for further information and/or additions and, if absolutely necessary for the investigation, to disclose his or her identity. If the informant refuses, there are no other consequences other than the impossibility of proceeding with the investigation.In the case of an anonymous report, the informant will not be able to benefit from the protection measures provided for whistleblowing.Management of the report: after sending the report, the platform returns a 16-digit code that will allow the reporter to recall the reporting environment and communicate with the University RPCT. The code needs to be memorised and kept safe as it is the only tool that can be used to follow up the report. In case the code is lost, the reporter can: - in the case of a non-anonymous report, contact the RPCT by email at the institutional address responsabile.anticorruzione@unipr.it – in the case of an anonymous report, send a new one, taking care to explain the connection with the first one by referring to the subject and the circumstances already reported.Following the report, an internal investigation is carried out, after which:if the report is found to contain elements that are not clearly unfounded, the RPCT forwards the report to the competent subjects for investigation and any relevant measures;if, the report is clearly unfounded, the report is filed.The RPCT informs the whistleblower of the outcome of the report through the Platform.IMPORTANT: before accessing the platform, read the information at the following link: Information on the Whistleblower PlatformLOG IN to the platform to make the report:https://unipr.whistleblowing.itWhistleblowing privacy policy
