XVI
International Congress on Training and Development
Of Senior Civil Servants
27th
– 29th June 2001
Warsaw,
Poland
Keynote
Address
Minister for Public Administration in Italy from 1996
to 2001
Professor of Constitutional Law in the University of
Rome
It is useful to face the themes of discussion of this 3rd Plenary Session starting from the explicit recognition of a discontinuity in the rapid development of the digital economy.
This discontinuity is the result of 2 events.
The first is the change of scale in the world diffusion of digital technology: the exponential growth of the numbers of social players interconnected to the net, of the quantity of information available, of the frequency of information exchanges, of the volume of business generated in the new economy is such to force us to see the opportunities and responsibility of government of innovation.
The second is the end of the first strongly expansive phase of the economic sectors tied to the new economy, directly dependent on the exceptionally positive dynamics of the financial markets. We are at the start of a second phase, more difficult but more solid, in which the entrepreneurial and professional energies concentrate on the effective creation of value in the new productive sectors of the new economy, and turn therefore their attention no longer exclusively to financial markets, but to governments, calling for an unpublished capacity of comprehension and of policy innovation.
What consequences emerge from this discontinuity?
The most significant consequence is the recognition by national governments of the necessity of responding to the question of a correspondent “discontinuity” in the capacity of government. E-government is no longer just the technological renewal of the most full-bodied among the sectors of the old economy, that of the public administration. It must instead be considered as a whole with those actions of government that allow adequate response to the request by social and economic players – old and new – that co-operate and compete on the networks of the global markets.
It is possible therefore to affirm that the new global scene, characterised by unmatched qualities and quantities of production and consumption of services and digital goods, requires – today – a radical, diffuse and rapid innovation aware of the functions and the activities of government. This capacity of innovation can be projected and implemented only if functions and activities of government are capable of utilising with great determination some specific opportunities offered by digital technology.
The change produced today by ICT for the economy and for society has been compared to that generated in the 20s and 30s by the discovery of energy and electrification. It is a change of era which also profoundly involves institutions and public administrations.
ICT and globalisation make the speed of diffusion of innovation much more rapid. Immediate access is possible to the ‘new knowledge’ in any part of the world.
For developing
countries it is an opportunity not to be missed for a leap in cultural, social
and economic development, reinforcement of democracy and modernisation of
public administration. For developed
countries it is an extraordinary resource for consolidating growth, deepening
knowledge and for making democratic government more transparent and
responsible. A revolution pervasive and
fast enough to enlighten, and as has been said very effectively, the prospect
of a new renaissance. A “digital renaissance”.
In effect, the democracies of the world find themselves in one of the most decisive passages of history. New technologies, particularly the Internet, are profoundly modifying not only the action of government – administration - but also governance itself, the relations between the different stakeholders, the interaction between governments and parliaments, the private sector, non-governmental organisations and international and supranational organisations. They make us rethink the functioning of the representative democratic institutions which are familiar to us.
With regard to governments, ICT, the digital economy and ease of access by all to a previously unimaginable amount of information have modified the frame of reference. The relevance of the market has increased, as has that of civil society, itself organised in new forms profoundly conditioned and promoted by ICT. Forms very different from the representative structures (political parties, unions) to which our democratic history has accustomed us.
It is a revolution that interacts with other well known long term processes . It interacts with the crisis, or at least the difficulties, of representative and parliamentary democracy, of the models of mediation and of promotion of collective interests. It interacts with the devolution process in progress in many countries, both developed and developing. On one hand ‘upwards’, from governments to international or supranational entities. On the other hand ‘downwards’ towards local powers and administrations, or from institutions to society and the market, implementing the model of a State that manages less and regulates better: less invasive but not less, on the contrary, more efficient in the protection of rights and liberty of each person.
This combination of factors, both for the causes and the effects, means inevitably that not only the old hierarchies and schemes, but also the organisation of administration, and the very mission of government itself, its role, legitimacy and authority come into debate.
ICTs don’t just allow the electronic supply of services and information to citizens to which they would anyway have been able to access in some other way. It offers new possibilities, new forms of citizenship: the possibility of not only accessing more rapidly information and public services, but of accessing new possibilities of dialogue and participation.
Experiences of electronic forums are noted, although their diffusion is more limited than the literature about them. A crucial element in the positive development of these experiences is the active participation of public opinion leaders. It is their effective presence in the network that transforms these experiences of telematic participation from merely exemplary events to organisational instruments capable of improving the quality and sharing of public decisions.
ICT can be a useful instrument in order to re-establish trust between institutions and citizens. It permits the confrontation of important problems of governance, opening concrete prospects of participation by citizens in public decision making processes and thus increasing the grade of openness and transparency of these. Opening the possibility of knowing and valuing the results of public acts.
There are two problems to be confronted and resolved. The first is a variant, or a component, of the great question of the digital divide. A fundamental instrument of democratic participation cannot be reserved just for the few. It is necessary that access is available to all. Network terminals in all the front offices of the public administrations help overcome the digital divide. But that is not enough. In Italy, together with the representative organisations of commerce, the government is preparing a plan for transforming a series of private commercial structures (tobacconists, bars, restaurants, food retailers …) in to terminals for the service of citizens. Every citizen not equipped for access at home or at a place of work will be able to use these terminals to talk with the administrations, if necessary using an electronic ID card for recognition. The merchant will act as a substitute for the front line public servant, lessening also the costs of personnel of the public administration.
The second problem concerns the impact of ICTs on the traditional and vexatious question of the delicate and complicated relation between representative democracy and institutions of direct democracy. We are not talking about using electronics for developing week forms of participation, like surveys and consultations. This use is in fact particularly exposed to practices of manipulation. We are talking instead about building, through an effective use of on-line tools of cooperation, intermediate levels of community policies capable of reinventing, in a virtual context, the functions of mediation and of proper representation by the traditional political organisms. In any case, it is obvious that the new forms of participation cannot be considered a substitute for the institutions of representative democracy, and the possibilities of democratic participation based on the Internet shouldn’t be over-emphasised.
ICTs must contribute to rebuilding the trust of citizens in institutions that in the last two decades has been eroded in many industrialised countries. In developing countries they must serve to start up irreversible processes of democratic growth.
In fact, the development of individual and group potential produced by the use of ICT, and the profound social transformations produced by globalisation, correspond with a general fatigue of the political function, of its capacity of representing social changes, its organisational mode of functioning. This weakness produces a loss of legitimacy of the function of government and of its operational capacity. It is necessary to contrast this impoverishment of politics by adequate use of the opportunities offered by information technologies: the renewal of the politic will infact act positively on the adequacy and on the effectiveness of government action, on the quality of policies, on the transparency of decision making processes, on responsibility and trust, and on the accountability of government. The use of ICTs to deliver this objective requires consciousness of and attention to the dynamics that the use of the net can generate.
Here then are the questions which we have to face: how to respond to these challenges, how to ensure that the IT revolution maintains the intrinsic promises of more democracy, more equality, more uniform and sustainable development, in short, of progress for all, and how likewise to avoid the intrinsic risks that it brings for inequality, exclusion and unanimous and antidemocratic drift.
Globalisation and local governement
Systems of local government
As globalisation has not reduced, indeed it has increased the role of local government institutions, (which have the task of creating the favourable conditions for competitiveness of territorial socio-economic systems in the global market place) thus the delocalised economy of the net has not overtaken the territories. On the contrary, the spontaneous dislocation of the economic activities of the new economy, the creation of new productive communities in the sectors of invisible goods are evidence of the new value of the local and regional communities.
There is a reciprocal interdependence between the growth of the global networks of finance and of electronic commerce (wide networks) and the contemporary growth of local networks that connect territories characterised by common productive, cultural and social characteristics. The Net economy not only does not eliminate the value of social and cultural proximity, but, in certain cases, permits the reconstruction of it in a ‘virtual’ terrain.
The model of functioning of the internet, based on an effective and experimental combination of autonomy and co-operation, suggests to government systems analogous models of implementation of principles of subsidiarity.
Furthermore the needs of coordination, that in the past could only be adequately satisfied with the centralising of decisions on public policies at a higher territorial level, find today an adequate response in the new possibility of coordination peer to peer that ICT allows. Once, the choice for federal models, based on the pluralistic diffusion of public decision centres, if it guaranteed benefits in terms of proximity of decision centres to the territorial area (and therefore in terms of transparency, controllability and adherence to individual needs) it nevertheless paid elevated prices in terms of coordination and compatibility of the decisions adopted.
Today, ICT allows every decision maker to have, in real time, the picture of compatibility between his choices and those that others choose, each in their own area of competence. This allows therefore conscious and consistent decisions, naturally coordinated and compatible with those that others make. The plurality of decision makers is no longer a source of anarchy, but a guarantee of adherence to needs and demands of citizens.
The exercise of the functions of government (governance) in complex societies in which globalisation presents an unheard plurality of contexts, needs and demands, requires the utilisation of sophisticated systems of management of information. It is necessary that information for government grows not only in quantity, but in quality and timeliness, in other words in the capacity of describing phenomena at the moment they reveal themselves and to strengthen in this way the capacity of government. The growth of the quality and timeliness of information for government requires a plurality of active information sources networked together and capable of interacting between themselves and with the functions of government. The hierarchy in the functions of government unduly simplifies the complexity; co-operation by network instead allows an adequate government.
E-government allows full realisation of the objective of truly placing the administration at the service of the citizen, of bringing citizen and administration closer together.
It radically changes the way in which services are offered to citizens and business. It is essential that public administrations are on-line, in order to communicate more effectively both between themselves and with citizens and users. Administration on-line is infact capable of overcoming the logistical and temporal barriers that impede the supply to users of information and services where and when they want them.
Furthermore, by eliminating useless procedural trips and ‘pilgrimages’, it allows a reduction in costs necessary for producing and obtaining the information and services, with benefits for the budgets of administrations and private organisations. E-government multiplies exponentially the possibilities for procedural and administrative simplification.
A radical re-engineering of processes is needed in order to deliver services to be supplied on-line via the Internet. Not only quick and at home (or in pocket, if we think of cell-phone developments) but also personalised, in other words tailored to the specific needs of every user (or user profile) and really capable of anticipating the needs of clients like the private firms that offer on the market the most sophisticated services.
Anticipation of these process and product innovations exist already in some of the more advanced digital cities thanks to the use of smart cards, local portals and to the civic net in wideband.
While for citizens the advantages deriving from easy access to services which are more responsive to their needs translate into savings and improvements in quality of life, for business they translate into a real production of wealth. One-stop-shop initiatives are particularly important, and supply not only information but also all the authorisations for the start up of a business, as in the case of Italy, via specialized portals capable of suppling personalised services for different needs, from the information for internationalisation and access to foreign markets to information on local incentives.
ICT can contribute to shortening the times for putting in operation a modern administration capable of confronting the challenges of our times, also in developing countries, on condition that they can be put on solid foundations in term of standards of professionalism and integrity of public officials and financial management systems.
In industrialised countries ICTs offer extraordinary opportunities for improving the quality and the efficiency of public services but also impose a rethinking of internal organisation starting from the organisation of work. We are not talking only about possibilities for tele-working. We are also talking about the moving away from hierarchical organisational models towards models capable of adapting the decentralisation of responsibilities and the empowerment of individual workers with the necessity of ensuring leadership, consistency and effectiveness with the complex actions of every organisation.
The possibility of reinventing public administration through new technology depends also on the availability of adequate human resources. This can be obtained with correct mix of training and re-qualification of existing personnel: with actions that go from computer literacy to higher level training both on the technical and the managerial front. Public managers have to learn how to become managers of information and knowledge, capable of being in step with this rapid evolution. But actions are also necessary for the recruitment of professionals that the administration has to be capable of attracting in competition with the private sector in order to confront the challenge of the digital age.
The use of ICTs, by combined innovations of service (telemateds system for supply of services), and of process (re-engineering of administrative processes) has to improve the quality and efficiency of servicies: it is a “traditional” action of government to which this Congress will dedicate adequate attention. But to deliver this objective it is not enough just to reduce costs of public administration, or to increase the value of services for citizens and business.
Efficient public services and efficient monitoring systems on administrative processes are a powerful and effective instrument against corruption in the public sector - one of the principal vehicles for criminality in many countries in the world.
The quality and characteristics of the demand for public services today is characterised by an exponential growth in complexity. Public service is no longer precisely a “service” equal for all. Think of the growing variety of information that constitute the “service profile” of a citizen (cosmopolitan, flexible work, multiple life styles) in relation to his/her ability to receive public services. Ever more often, especially in relation to welfare service renewal policies, the public service finds itself, for reasons of economy and efficiency, other than for quality objectives, adhering to users’ needs. The technologies for identification and qualification assume in this prospect a finalisation turned toward the wealth of services and not towards the exercise of control.
The relationship between e-government and privacy has often been described in terms of incompatible tendencies, if not in absolute conflict. Privacy could be an obstacle to an expansion of the growing possibilities offered by ICT for making relations between public institutions and citizens more fluid and transparent.
This scenario simplifies rather arbitrarily and distorts the terms of the problem. Respect for the privacy of citizens cannot be considered as in opposition to the efficient action of government. On the contrary, in a democratic society good electronic government and raised levels of protection of privacy support each other. And there are two points of view from which this question must be considered.
First of all, posing the theme of privacy, there are some conditions of the legitimate action of government that, in a democratic system, must always be respected as fundamental rights. Personal information must always remain under control and the public institutions must only be able to use it for particular ends, and always under adequate protection. The protection of privacy is in this way a guarantee of the democracy of public action.
Furthermore, only if citizens are sure that some areas of their private lives won’t be invaded will they accept the use of their data by public servants. It is very important, in this period, for government action that produces trust. The protection of privacy can be an instrument that reinforces the relationship of trust between citizen and institution.
The pervasiveness of the Internet and the establishment as standard of its architecture and attached technologies has contributed to deepen in reality and above all in the individual perception the conviction that information and data, by whoever retained and whoever managed, can be made accessible to whichever user in any part of the world.
Therefore the citizen, above all the young citizen, has today the expectation that also access to the information and data of the public administration can and should be available in the Internet form. Administrations have to respond to this expectation by supplying via internet services of a B2C nature, but also and above all they have to become users of services of other administrations and establish telematic relations with other administrations of a B2B nature.
On the networks all the administrations both central and local should be able to operate according to the architectural peer to peer model, in other words between equals, and connect themselves together for the direct exchange of data and services.
This model does not impose hierarchies between administrations, nor doesn’t necessitate nodes of concentration of information flows, and is well adapted to decentralised administrative models in implementation in many countries.
q Tools for cooperation
on-line
On-line interconnections of the public administrations can deliver, immediately, the interchange of electronic documents. For this it is necessary not only in the public context, but also in the private, that certified email services are available, that respond to formal requirements of protocols and of registration, both for entry and exit, and whose delivery can’t be disowned.
The technology of the digital signature is one of the tools necessary for ensuring the identity of the sender and to give legal validity to documents exchanged digitally.
To this proposal not only the definition of rules and regulations for the exchange of documents internally to a country becomes ever more important, but also for the formal exchange of documents between administrations of different countries.
The European Union, for example, has started an activity of regulation of electronic reports based on electronic signatures, and some countries, Italy among the first, have introduced the modifications in law necessary for their full use.
Email is a communication tool that substitutes paper and takes part in the improvement of efficiency and effectiveness of a phase of administrative processes without substantial changes.
Today it is possible to use in a network also integrated models in which individuals are no longer found, but in which the applications interact directly between themselves, exchanging digital documents directly interpretable by automatic procedures. This mode of use of the net, already adopted in industrial sectors, allows real innovation in internal administrative processes and elimination of all those phases of a procedure in which human intervention does not bring any added value.
Integration of applications has to happen between compatible IT systems and has been obstructed until now by the lack of shared standards supported by all parts of the IT market. Fortunately the convergence of standards to achieve ”applicative cooperation” that is direct interaction among different administrations and applications seems very close, if not already reached.
The administrations on-line can therefore start up through procedures completely automated reciprocal interrogation of data bases, but also transactions and exchanges for the notification of events.
They can in this way overcome inefficiencies, costs and negative consequences for the citizen and for business due to the fragmentation of information concerning the same subjects and objects but dispersed in many administrative data bases.
One can furthermore maintain a constant automatic alignment between the different copies of the same data held, and allow citizens to notify the public administration only once about life events and other personal details.
q Tools for identification
The supply of public services via internet to citizens, both informational and interactive or transactional means access to personal data and requires therefore, for protection of privacy, secure identification of those requesting information and possibly the underwriting of the service request.
Secure identification is therefore strictly related to on-line services. ID cards are not only tools for improving security, but a technology capable of improving the quality of service and guaranteeing the citizen protection of his or her personal information.
q Tools for the electronic
supply of services
Citizens and business will be able to access integrated services of the public administration: checking inquiry of information about them, filling forms, or executing transactions, also involving payments they will be able of users, locally distributed one-stop-shops care of local authorities, but also privately provided, because of the authentication through use of electronic ID cards.
In the same way it will be possible to access services supplied on-line through national portals that integrate services many dministrations and are organised to respond direct to the needs of citizens.
The development of e-commerce, well as the development of the e-business of the e-government, is dependent directly by the trust that users have in the security of information held about them and of the systems that manage it.
Security of information system is intended to make information available, only to those who are entitled to access it. That implies an adequate security both of systems that store this information and of communication systems that provide its distribution. Only through secure systems is it possible to make secure also the application software, thus guaranteeing the protection of personal data and sensitive information that in an advanced administration can only be managed electronically.
Technology makes available tools ever more sophisticated, not only for protection, but also, unfortunately for attack. For this reason the maintenance of adequate levels of security requires continuous up-dating and innovation.
The key element for making systems secure rests in the possibility of guaranteeing secure identification of the entities that interact within the system, whether we are talking about people or other systems or applications. In other words it is on the processes of authentication that must be concentrated all efforts for raising the level of security of systems that are used directly by citizens for accessing services offered by a modern and efficient public administration. In this sector the tools made available by digital certification that are now employed in numerous applications – digital signature, electronic ID cards, as in the Italian example – produce a real revolution in the relationship between State and citizens.
The Italian public administration has undertaken the modernisation route, implementing secure networks. Beyond systems of military nature or for dealing in State secrets it is important to remember, for civil use, the Unitary Net of the central department that widens into the National Net, in order to cover the demands of all the public administration and the requirements of the e-government action plan.
PA and Business in the New Economy
The use of ICTs causes public service processes to disperse beyond the borders of public administrations. In the production and supply of public services, managed with telematic instruments, it is possible to put together new types of reciprocal relations between government, private sector, voluntary sector and social partners, these last, whose weight in the production of public services is ever more significant.
The processes of public service no longer coincide with the public administration.
The digital economy, as is known, is the economy of the invisible, production of information and means of information. Information is its principal resource.
The public administration in its innovative processes and in those concerning improvement of internal efficiency, is transforming a great part of the data collected and managed by its offices into a digital format. We are talking about an information estate of great value, not only for innovation of public services, but also for the productive activities of the new economy. Specific technologies today allow with limited investment the use of this data to produce results in many contexts: environmental, cultural, tourism, economic and research.
The relationship between development of the public demand for innovation and development of the innovative industry in the IT sector assumes particular importance. The principal world and European players in ICTs are redefining their business profiles, alliances, commercial organisation and productivity and the nature of the services offered. These changes produce an irreversible crisis of the traditional client and supplier relationship between public administration and business, based until now in many countries on the backwardness of the solutions requested by the public administration through public procurement. Today the relation between technology offer and public demand must assume new characteristics when the public administration is called to promote and realise plans of strategic value based on the more advanced technologies.
There are certainly quantitative effects. The whole estate of the public administration will have to be renewed generating quantitative increases in public spending for innovations stimulated by the new opportunities allowed by the net.
Nevertheless, the aspects most relevant are not the quantitative, but the qualitative.
By using more advanced technologies, by cooperation and exchange of experience at international level, the public administration will present itself, in every country, as an evolved, exacting and up-dated “client”. Private business will no longer see the backwardness of the public administration as an opportunity for business, but will be able to concentrate their efforts on the capacity of adding quality and value to public services acquiring an elevated capacity to compete in markets.
The Italian Case
Today, for no country in the world is it possible to conceive a programme of “reinventing government” without attaching it to a precise strategy for e-government.
That is how it has happened in my country. A country that, in the last 5 years, has undertaken a decisive and organic action of reform and that has realised (among the first in the world) how a strategy based on the use of ICTs is functional for the whole design of mondernisation of the administrative system. The inefficiency of the public administrations (aside from isolated cases of excellence), the complexity of procedures, the high cost of regulation, and the stifling bureaucracy represented for Italy a competitive handicap.
We have undertaken an action of revision of regulatory systems intended to simplify procedures and laws and reduce onerous bureaucracy on citizens and business. We have submitted the system to a genuine revolution that has involved its own basic structure. The old State centralised model, typical of the continental European experience has been submitted to a radical rethink. The former status of civil servants has been substituted with a private sector discipline, based on the collective and individual contracts, in which officials have the same rights and responsibilities as employees of private firms, and the public administration the powers and obligations of private employers.
In the prospect of a State, slimmer and lighter but not less, on the contrary more effective, a vast programme has been started for the shedding of functions no longer essential via contracting out privatisation and the liberalisation of functions and services.
We have reordered the competences between State administrations, regions and local authorities, in favour of the last group, on the basis of the principle of subsidiarity and realising an imposing operation of devolution of tasks and resources to local powers.
We have redesigned the macro organisation of the government, reducing ministries from 22 to 14, with the grouping of functions and principal policies with the intention of improving their consistency and effectiveness and with the attribution of natural operational tasks to proper agencies.
We have created a lighter Prime Minister’s Office with less of operational tasks, but also more capable of ensuring the effective performance of functions and coordination for the Prime Minister.
We have completed a radical simplification of rules, procedures and administrative actions.
We have eliminated 90% of certificates thanks to auto-certification. And with the full actuation of the e-government action plan we will eliminate all certificates and autocertificates through the electronic exchange of data between administrations.
In hundreds of cases we have substituted authorisations, licences and administrative acts with statements of start up activity and with silent assent. We have established certain and short timescales for completion of procedures.
We have started reordering existing legislation through consolidated texts replacing hundreds of laws and regulations, and introduced regulatory impact assessments to reduce unjust costs that regulation loads on to citizens and business.
Costs, times and procedures for the constitution of society have been drastically reduced. We have created the One-stop-shop for business which is the only point of contact and procedure for all matters for the start up of a productive business instead of the more than40 previous procedures.
We have radically transformed the models and systems of management. We have replaced attention to formalities with attention to results. Next to legal controls, today exist strategic and management controls for ensuring effectiveness of policies and efficiency of the public administration machine.
On this basis we have rethought public work, providing remuneration for directors based much more on results.
We have operated a net distinction between political tasks that establish the objectives and verify results, and those of administration that is responsible for management and delivery of results.
We have privatised the working relationship, providing a reinforcement of national contracting, unifying jurisdiction with that of private sector workers.
These actions aim to make our public administration orientated to results and to the user, capable of supplying services of better quality, closer to citizens, more accessible and more efficient.
ICTs contribute by giving operational solidity to these objectives.
The e-government plan
The Italian e-government plan represents an original combination of some of the technological models recorded above.
It proposes to accelerate the process of radical reform and modernisation of public administrations, which has been in act for some years, by massive and systematic employment of ICT. The relationship between citizen and administration will be revolutionised: all services for which it is technically possible will be supplied on-line; citizens will be able to obtain them via portals, without need to know which administration provides the service, as the request will be forwarded as appropriate. Funds assigned to the plan are equal to 800 billion lira (400 million Euro) for 2001 – 2003 and are in addition to the ICT investments (9 billion euro) already allocated by central and local administrations for the supply of their services and for the improvement of the internal efficiency. The plan’s objective is the realisation by 2002 of electronic interoperability between all administration as required for the supply of integrated services. The enabling tools of the plan are the electronic ID card for access to services and the digital signature for electronic documents. The plan involves all the institutions of the country: regions, provinces, communes, health associations, chambers of commerce and schools.
The plan assumes that local government will carry out the front office role, while central government that of back office. This redistribution of roles, made possible via cooperative IT, is absolutely consistent with the new distribution of tasks between central and local authorities realised on the basis of the principal of subsidiarity.
The plan has identified all the actions necessary to deliver 3 objectives.
The first is that of computerising the supply of services to citizens and business, when necessary integrating the services of different administrations. In this way we are creating the virtual public office to which users can go regardless of the functions, organisation and logistics of the public administrations.
The second is that of allowing final users access to public services and information. In this way public administration will go to the home of the citizen and not vice-versa.
The third objective is that of improving the internal operational efficiency of each administration in this way reducing costs on the public budget and therefore on citizens.
The possibility of realising an administration that is truly at the service of the citizen depends on the realisation of this plan.
We are determined to ensure to the citizen the possibility of obtaining a public service via any front office administration, independently of residential address.
Secondly, the possibility of obtaining a service, without having to supply information that is already in any part of the government’s possession, aside from personal identification.
Thirdly, the possibility of requesting services according to needs and without being expected to know the finer details of the organisation of the State machine.
Finally, the possibility to communicate various information only once to the public administration, which will then automatically pass on this information within the system as necessary for the supply of services.
In our passage towards digital administration we have already realised the on line revenue service with 40 million tax statements and 200 million connected documents presented annually on-line and dealt with electronically for their entire life-cycle.
The electronic ID card not only replaces the old ID card, with higher level security functions, but also constitutes a multi-functional, multi-service card that, in line with the action plan, represents the fundamental tool for access to the network of public services every time that it is necessary to identify the subject.
We have created the legislative and regulatory conditions for an immediate use, in both public and private sector, of the digital signature with legal validity in order to promote the development of services for citizens and business, resolving the problem of interoperability between digital certificators.
With regard to e-procurement, from an initial phase limited to an on-line catalogue of goods and services, we are passing to a true and proper electronic market with electronic auctions and management on-line of all purchase procedures by the administrations.
The Italian reforms are still in the complex and difficult phase of implementation. The results are not disconcerting. Resistances are still strong. But I think one could, objectively, affirm that it can already be marked as a success, because an inefficient, obsolete and costly administration is today involved in a process of innovation and re-engineering, of which we can already see the first positive results.
In confronting this difficult commitment to radical reform of the Italian system we have learned much from the experiences and best practices of other countries. We have, after initial criticism and resistance, decided to put up for debate consolidated models in order to learn from all. We have tried to conserve the positive aspects of the traditional continental European model, but correcting the more evident defects, and above all statism, centralism, burdensome regulation and excessive bureaucracy. The experiences of the anglo-saxon countries and of some of the developing countries have offered us models for analysis and use.
This is one of the principal reasons for the success of our approach. But there are others.
Above all the definition of a clear strategy for change, of an organic project, in which e-government had a decisive role.
Secondly, the assumption of strong leadership at the highest level of government. Our programme of reform and e-government plans have always enjoyed the full support of all the three Prime Ministers of the last parliament.
Finally, the search for the correct mix between a strong leadership at the national level and autonomy of individual levels of government in the choice of solutions suitable for delivering the objectives of the system, evaluating the differences, on the basis of subsidiarity.
The Digital Divide
Digital divide or digital opportunity for all: the new frontier of
international cooperation.
There is in front of us at the start of this century a decisive question, the problem of the digital divide. New IT developments can be the cause of new “moats”, new inequalities, new exclusions. But they can also represent the decisive card to win the fundamental game: that of guaranteeing to all women and all men equal opportunity.
Equal opportunity in the diffusion of knowledge. In the quality of life. In the exercise of liberty and of rights, that are the essence of dignity of every human being. In the promotion of growth – cultural, economic and social. Therefore a great opportunity for filling in moats and much more important fractures: hunger, disease, illiteracy, exclusion of women and exploitation of children.
Technologies can today realise within months what a short time ago would have taken years. This possibility is not only open to the industrialised countries. It is one of the central themes of the next G8 meeting which in Genoa, under the Italian presidency, will be discussed with other governments of the PVS. It is a theme that has for months been the subject of reflection between industrialised countries, PVS, international organisations, ONG and representatives of private industry in the area of the Digital Opportunity Task Force. The United Nations are by now conscious of the enormous relevance of the problem and of the necessity to confront it as soon as possible with decisive and incisive actions. I would also like to remind you of the III Global Forum on Reinventing Government which the Italian Government hosted in Naples in March 2001. Italy also chose the theme: fostering democracy and development through e-government. The Global Forum - with 120 delegations from governments around the world, 15 international organisations, many among the world leaders in ICT and leaders from the major IT companies - gathered together the largest knowledge community ever on the themes of administrative reform, use of ICT and on their implications for democracy and development. Another step has been also the study seminar on ICT and e-government, organised by the Italian Government and the United Nations, that has recently reunited here in Napoli 125 Ministers and senior officials of PVS from around the world, with 60 speakers and 135 structural interventions. An initiative that has had great success and that the Italian Government proposes to repeat every year, offering an instrument for up-dating, of deeper understanding, of benchmarking and of spread of best practice, useful for both industrialised and non- industrialised countries, to profit from the constantly developing innovation technologies.
How to bridge the digital divide that separates the North and South of the World and that also divides many countries internally? 70% of the men and women haven’t ever used the telephone. To 400 million users, Africa contributes 3 million, Latin America 16. New York alone has more Internet users that the whole of Africa. 95% of providers are located in industrialised countries; of the rest, 4.4% is divided between China and Taipei. At first sight it looks more like a insurmountable abyss than a moat.
But the digital divide can be eliminated, and rapidly, at least in countries in which there exists two fundamental conditions for any plan for growth and development: basic literacy and an efficient electrical network.
To realise a phone network is, in fact, an operation much more rapid than the realisation of all the other “classical” infra-structural networks. ICTs are not expensive, they don’t consume great quantities of energy, they respect the environment, and permit the redistribution of all activities - not just the less esteemed ones. 100km of fibre optic cable with a capacity of 100 Terabit per second costs a thousand times less than 100km of motorway.
Mass computer literacy also has containable cost and time requirements as long as you start from a situation of good basic training. This is demonstrated by the rapid progress of countries like India, Brasil and Egypt, and by developed countries, but late starters, like Italy.
It is necessary, obviously, to guarantee favourable environmental conditions: a clear, simple regulatory scenario, open to investments and competition; political stability and democratic trust; an organic and consistent plan for human empowerment of modernisation of the administration and of development of e-government.
It seems to me – and I would like to submit this conclusion to your reflection – that on these bases it is possible to outline a new frame of reference, a new frontier of international cooperation.
It is possible to trigger off widespread and sound processes of growth and development, self propelled and self managed by the same PVS, through coordinated, systematic and massive employment of ICT across government.
The spread of ICT and the realisation of effective plans for e-government improves the quality and transparency of government decisions, reinforces the legitimacy and credibility of governments, favours diffuse access to knowledge, allows the actuation of distance learning programmes, of tele-medical services and of technical and commercial assistance for business. The developed countries measure the overwhelming impact of these innovations in the re-engineering their administrations. But also developing countries like China, Mongolia, Bangladesh, South Africa, Bolivia or Senegal have had significant experiences in this area. .
The new frontier of international cooperation passes therefore through strategic investment in 4 sectors. Two “classical”: mass basic literacy and electrification for overcoming situations of under development. Two innovative: telephone infrastructure and computer literacy.
Of these investments the most costly, most difficult and most complex appears to be the first. This is the decisive priority for beating inequality and underdevelopment in the information society.
But more generally I believe that it is possible to say that a strong acceleration of development plans on the four points indicated can contribute in a decisive way to resolving the fundamental problem, that is not, as is evident, only that of the digital divide, but more those of the numerous fractures between countries and people, that regard human empowerment, feeding of those dying of hunger, quality of life, opportunities for development and growth, desertification, the environment, the prevention and cure of disease and the access to knowledge and culture.
If it turns out this way then we will really be able to say that the barriers of poverty, underdevelopment and social exclusion can be broken down by the digital revolution.