Real-Time Data, Real-World Protection: Cloudera Powers INAIL’s Data Transformation

The National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work (INAIL) stands as a cornerstone of the Italian welfare system, providing vital insurance and support for 19 million people in Italy, while managing nearly 4 million insurance business and production units. 

INAIL is about to evolve the traditional batch-load data model, relying on monthly copies of operational databases to power its analytics. While functional for long-term reporting, this static approach lacked the agility to respond to changes rapidly, which led to INAIL adding real-time and streaming capabilities to its data lakehouse on Cloudera. This empowers INAIL to be more agile in all facets of its business, from intervening to assist customers to providing quicker financial support for individuals when necessary.

The implementation of Cloudera technology shifts INAIL from a reactive insurer to a proactive guardian of worker health, representing a major shift in its institutional maturity.

Overcoming Batch Data Latency

The COVID-19 pandemic served as a definitive turning point for INAIL. As the institute became a primary source for tracking workplace infections and certifying safety equipment, the demand for timely, accurate data spiked. 

Lack of real-time data was a major hurdle for the organization to overcome, as citizens and policymakers could no longer wait a month for updates, and required real-time insights. Additionally, this lag in information sharing made it difficult for INAIL to detect fraud. Outdated information made it difficult to respond to emergency situations – such as floods and fires – due to INAIL being forced to wait on batched data to be parsed.

So, to be more agile – INAIL added capabilities from Cloudera to transition from a legacy batch-processing model to a high-performance, data streaming architecture.

Use Cases from Fraud Detection to Safety Analytics

Now, INAIL uses a Cloudera data lakehouse and Cloudera Flow Management to stream data directly into the lakehouse. INAIL focused on change data capture (CDC), part of Cloudera’s event streaming capabilities, a data integration technique that quickly identifies and records row-level modifications made to a source database. This capability enables INAIL to monitor updates in real-time while ensuring the lakehouse remains synchronized with very little impact on performance.

With Cloudera’s end-to-end capabilities, INAIL transformed its data lakehouse into a dynamic engine with the eventual goal being real-time data for institutional and business innovations. This helps INAIL deliver use cases such as:

• “Archimede” - Proactive fraud detection: INAIL can now identify and flag suspicious behavior instantly, significantly reducing potential insurance fraud.

• “Anagrafe degli Assistiti” - National Registry of Beneficiaries: Business Intelligence system used for analyzing beneficiaries population trends and events. Featuring interactive visualization tools and dynamic indicators, it provides a historical and current view of data to support informed business decisions and effective service planning, as well as dynamic strategic planning that responds to patient needs.

• Proactive customer care: INAIL can actively contact individuals with health issues to guide them through complex processes, ensuring users are aware of available services.

INAIL’s Modernized Data Ecosystem

Through an intensive adoption plan, INAIL is currently migrating its entire Business Intelligence ecosystem — used by a diverse group of professionals including doctors, lawyers, statisticians, and researchers — to the new real-time baseline. This ensures that every department, from legal to medical, can make decisions based on what is happening now, rather than weeks’ old information.

This change in real-time data strategy has enabled a greater level of historical accuracy for INAIL’s customer information as CDC captures each change. In turn, the organization’s real-time data transparency has built a greater level of trust from its users, now with the ability to receive immediate, reliable information.

Real-time Data Innovations

Moving forward, the real-time data lakehouse built on Cloudera will serve as the foundation for daily innovation. Now having access to real-time data, INAIL is well-positioned to navigate the future of work, whether protecting the burgeoning gig economy or responding to the next global health challenge. Moving forward, INAIL aims to fully end its legacy process of batching data, with the intent to significantly reduce technical debt and infrastructural overhead.

Story developed in May 2026

Want to see where it all began? Explore the original customer story here.