The principle of loyal information cooperation can be defined as the principle according to which different public administrations must cooperate in the exchange of data, information and documents that are functional to the performance of their institutional functions. This principle is of crucial importance in the progressive digitisation and automation of decision-making processes in public administration. However, even though this instrument provides a series of tools aimed at making the “exchange of information” between administrations increasingly effective and agile, in practice this “information cooperation” does not always take place in full. There is therefore a need to investigate the enforceability of this principle, i.e., to verify what procedural and legal remedies are available to a public administration that wishes to react to the failure to transmit data, information and documents necessary for the performance of its institutional functions.

In recent years, the regulation on the access to procurement documents has led to numerous interpretative issues with regard to the types of access granted within public procurement procedures as well as the balance between the right to access procurement documents and the protection of technical and commercial secrets. The legislation on the subject of access contained in the recently enacted Public Contracting Code (Legislative Decree no. 36/2023) -- which is part of the overall digitization process of a contract’s lifecycle -- has significantly innovated the methods through which economic operators can view procurement documents and the bids that were submitted. The new Code provides for automatic mechanisms for the immediate disclosure of such documents and a new “super-accelerated” procedure regarding the public administration’s decisions on bidders’ requests to hide those parts of the bids that are considered to represent technical and commercial secrets. This paper aims to establish whether the new regulation on access to procurement documents is suitable to ensure the enforcement of the principle of transparency in public contracting, preventing digitization and automation of procurement procedures from resulting in a decrease in the transparency of the decision-making mechanisms adopted by contracting authorities.