Piacentini: Exporting the Model of Open Innovation into Public Administration

THE SPECIAL COMMISSIONER FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE DIGITAL AGENDA, AND 2010 BOCCONIAN OF THE YEAR, HAS A DREAM FOR ITALY

"I imagine for the future a country that has won the challenge of simplification through digitization. A country where technological expertise is also within the state and public companies, and where public administrations work in an integrated, open way. “Diego Piacentini, Special Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, explained his vision of the Italy to come to the newspaper La Stampa a few weeks ago. Piacentini, Bocconi alumnus of the year in 2010 (graduated in 1985 in Economics) foresees the outcome of the modernization process of public administration that is advancing with the Team for Digital Transformation. This process has made tangible progress in the last few days, for example by providing for collaboration between the Team and several municipal administrations and by creating the Developers Italia community, open to all digital public service developers.

➜ With the creation of this community, has the era of open innovation started for PA?

That is the goal. We provide this platform with source code, a modern document management system and interaction tools to coordinate and develop the projects and ideas that will arrive. The debut was encouraging: a few hours after we published the material someone had already taken the trouble to translate it all into English to make it available to the international community. I am confident that it will be a key accelerator for innovation, and we will have to be good at governing it to administer the various tickets from the community, quickly understand the changes and put them into the system. In this mechanism, user indications will also play an important part. Of course, users will have to get familiar with the iterative approach typical of the digital industry, according to which the first versions of the services may be partial or imperfect and will improve with each update.

➜ Open innovation in works in the private sector because there is an economic advantage for all actors. Do you believe that this motivation may be missing in the public arena?

No, it is still a win-win situation, because the developer will be given credit for its improvement, the administration will shine and the citizens get tangible benefits. We have also encouraged the major tech companies to put their developers on the projects underway.  In time, we will try to add other players, such as universities, to get their students and researchers involved.

➜ How can you reconcile this with the complex procurement, consulting and supply system which governs many aspects of public administration?

Changing the system to use external vendors is one thing I would love to do, because the system of public tenders for technology in Italy is insanely complex. Public calls and contracts exist in all countries, but ours are not designed to reward the best people and favor development, but only to exclude and punish the bad apples. In Italy, there really is still so much to be done from the legal and cultural point of view.

âžœ What can be expected to happen in the next two years of the Team’s work?

In the remaining year and a half, we have to try to create the guidelines, start three or four projects, such as the one about the digital Registry or the one on digital identity of the citizen, and bring them to fruition, thus creating the conditions for a series of scalable and repeatable processes. When we are no longer around, I hope we will have left the path for a replicable model so those who come afterwards will not have to start from scratch.

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by Lorenzo Martini