Enough Talk. Time for Actual Social Innovation in Italian Welfare

IN PUBLIC DEBATE, THE EXPRESSION SOCIAL INNOVATION GETS USED A LOT, BUT CONCRETE INITIATIVES ARE FEW. YET THE DRAMATIC CHANGES TAKING PLACE IN SOCIETY, FROM AGING SENIORS TO JOBLESS NEETS, FROM REFUGEE FLOWS TO NEW FAMILY ARRANGEMENTS, REQUIRE RAPID AND NOVEL ANSWERS

by Elisabetta Notarnicola and Andrea Rotolo, Associate Professor Government, Health and Non profit Division of Practice, SDA Bocconi; SDA Lecturer Government, Health and Non profit Division, SDA Bocconi
Translated by Alex Foti

The welfare system has been shaken by changes that call for innovation in social policy: more complex and fragmented family relations, which entail a refocusing of welfare provision on individuals; the rapid aging of the population; the growth of poverty and the emerging phenomenon of the working poor; the unemployed youth and asylum seekers, all require prompt answers. Whoever deals with welfare services in the public sector is confronted daily with the urgent need to innovate, but is often left without indications on how to go about it.

In recent years public debate has revolved around the concept of social innovation understood as «the creation of solutions capable of responding to social needs with new or improved skills and relationships, as well as a different use of assets and resources» (Caulier-Grice et al., 2012). This is not a simple mission, especially considering that shrinking government budgets require welfare providers to come up with almost miraculous solutions. In order to shift towards social innovation, it is therefore necessary to clarify some ambiguities shrouding the concept.

This is what we set out to do at the SDA Bocconi School of Management with OCAP Observatory, which periodically assesses emerging changes in the Italian public administration. In our White Paper no. 2/2019 we analyzed eight experiences, from which we can draw three conclusions. Firstly: Italian welfare is still based on self-referential departments of social spending which have a hard time moving towards the supply of flexible and personalized welfare services that the social innovation paradigm requires. Secondly, the logic of incremental change with respect to the past is paramount, while social innovation should make providers experiment with new elements and combinations that can markedly increase the value produced for recipients. Thirdly, if government actors and non-profits want to make a transformative impact, they must move towards models that are sustainable in the medium term, in the sense that they must reactivate public resources in connection with private or mixed actors. Currently existing social innovations implemented by NGOs instead consider a short-term horizon, since they rely on the logic of fundraising and external financing.

To give a concrete example, within a narrative in which the word innovation is recurrent but often empty of content, a typical variation is that of digital innovation, often interpreted as a panacea for all ills. There is no doubt that the digital revolution is profoundly changing the way we live, work, run companies, and has already transformed whole industries. However, considering the sectors that have seen the greatest impacts, welfare services is not one of them. Our previous research study on digital innovation in welfare services (OCAP White Paper no. 1/2019)  has highlighted a landscape that is still far from ready to reap the fruits of the digital revolution.

A survey conducted in over 400 residential facilities for the elderly found that less than half of them had introduced some kind of digital innovation. Those that did so primarily experimentally introduced mobile devices and apps, while the extensive use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, 3D printing and other recent innovations is still far away into the future. Similarly, in educational services digital technology is often used to supplement the traditional service model, by expanding the possibilities of learning for children or improving the processes of communication with and involvement of families. However, the OCAP report highlighted that there didn’t exist a single case, not even in relation to services for people with disabilities, where digital innovation was able to expand the size of the public being served, change the role of the actors involved, modify the sites of welfare provision, and trigger mechanisms of co-production of value. In short, there was no real innovation in the supply of welfare services. In fact, what emerges from our research is that everyone knows how to say social innovation now, but few have shown they know what to do with it.