As planning Authorities within their sectors, the Ministry and the Local Authorities follow the aim to open the market to as many economic operators as possible, but at the same time guaranteeing coherence in the global project, avoiding the fragmentation in many local situations without any connection and coherence among them. It was therefore considered of prime importance to create all the basics to form a rational Car Sharing circuit that, even with collecting different operators in accordance with different local circumstances, would guarantee:
- interoperability: every user must be able to access the service in the same way, with the same procedures and the same means, on a national level;
- a homogeneous interface towards the consumer for all the normal service access operations;
- a unitary service identity;
- the respect of minimal service standards for all the operators within the Car Sharing circuit.
To guarantee the respect of these standards and the system coherence, ICS does not give out the funds as monies, but rather in the form of goods and services. At present, ICS gives support to the set up of the service by giving:
- technical design, legal and administrative assistance to the Municipalities and their Car Sharing operators;
- the technology for running the service (on board computers, centre equipment, communication links, assistance, etc.);
- call centre/contact centre for customer services;
- communications, promotion, marketing services.
The steps to access the funds are the following:
- a design stage, where ICS works with the Local Authority to define the characteristics the service should have and the pertinent business plan;
- the local Authority determines who should be the contractors of the service (so called Local Operator);
- the Local Authority and the Operator submit the final project and finance request to ICS
- evaluation of the project on a qualitative and quantitative basis and, in the event of approval, the contract stipulation between ICS and the Operator;
- start up of the project.
