Strolling through informatics #25 – Informatics and the world of work

previous #24 ––– next #26

by Enrico Nardelli

(versione italiana qua)

After concluding in the previous post some reflections on the increasingly dense interweaving between the digital dimension and other dimensions relevant to human society, we begin with this one to discuss the specific field of the working world. Digital technologies are indeed one of the factors that has most contributed to the productivity increases of recent decades.

For many years in Europe, we have been hearing about the importance of developing digital skills in the workforce, so that various productive and service sectors become more effective and efficient. However, if we don't understand that informatics is nothing without human control, we will continue to waste millions of euros. Traditional industrial automation first replaced people's physical actions with the power of machines, under the guidance of people's cognitive faculties. Then it successfully mechanized bureaucratic tasks of low cognitive complexity: transferring money from one account to another, purchasing goods and making payment, checking inventory levels and ordering replacements. Now more complex cognitive tasks are at stake: the automation of informatics, especially with the rapid development of generative artificial intelligence (GAI), is attempting to replace human intelligence with a machine.

However, the automation of informatics, even when GAI is deployed, is not enough on its own. It is not sufficient to digitize business processes or integrate them with GAI tools, because the month after the computer systems have been installed they will need to be modified to adapt to changed contextual conditions. And this maintenance process goes on endlessly, because a computer system is not a human being that adapts to novelties and learns from its mistakes. Even GenAI tools don't have these totally autonomous learning capabilities, despite commercial propaganda. The automation of informatics therefore requires human supervision to achieve that flexibility that computer systems don't possess. Too often, instead, informatics was first considered and now GAI is seen only as an easy way to cut costs (i.e., having fewer staff). People fail to understand that the barely one and a half kilograms of gray matter that people have has an adaptability and situational understanding capacity that not even the one and a half tons of the Watson supercomputer can match. Moreover, at an enormously lower cost. Just last month came the news that an international leader in digital payments, which had thought to replace its customer support staff with GenAI tools, cancelled this decision with these words: "In the world of artificial intelligence nothing has as much value as people!"

This consideration is also supported by economic studies (you can find the references in the book The Informatics Revolution) that highlight how companies without informatics skills can hardly improve their productivity simply by investing in digital technologies. They need an appropriate level of investment in support services, either by creating internal departments with the necessary skills or acquiring them from outside. I'm convinced that the first is the better choice, because the flow of data and the information it conveys has always been the lifeblood of every organization, an essential factor for the effectiveness and efficiency of all its activities. Every person with strategic or managerial responsibilities knows this well, and the ability to process them automatically through informatics is a key factor for competitiveness. It is therefore certainly better to have the necessary professional skills internally.

However, the automation achieved by information technologies involves a cultural and conceptual leap that requires appropriate accompaniment and adequate preparation of the people involved. Precisely because of its profound conceptual scope, this topic cannot therefore be fully understood only with a few training courses on digital skills. This is one of the reasons why digital transformation will be long and difficult: one must have absorbed ideas and concepts, rather than knowing tools and being skilled at using them.

Unfortunately, the informatics revolution, unlike the industrial revolution, occurred within the span of the same generation. Do you remember 1993? In the life of ordinary people there were no social media, companies were beginning to use email, newspapers and television were still the undisputed lords of media. Now thirty years later these situations have completely changed, while human beings are still the same, they have not yet developed sufficient awareness of the digital world in which they suddenly find themselves immersed up to their necks.

The Italian system will not be able to use informatics to improve its future if, alongside more immediate literacy measures, it doesn't intervene to foster the growth of informatics culture and, in parallel and immediately, doesn't define actions to unleash the potential of informatics in revitalizing and restoring competitiveness to the productive system.

The shortage of true informatics culture is obviously just the most striking example of the general state of decline in Italy of scientific culture, now prolonged for too long for an advanced country. I believe it is particularly serious because of the strategic nature of informatics in the productive system of a country that is part, let's not forget, of the seven most industrialized countries in the world.

An indispensable component for a real and effective relaunch of the Italian economy in the near future is therefore the flexible and adaptive use of informatics to continue developing high-level products and services with high added value in a craftsman-like approach – as far as qualitative aspects are concerned – but with an industrial approach from the point of view of the production and distribution chain.

To achieve this objective, it is necessary that informatics culture be widespread at all levels, so that in our country an industrial sector of "knowledge workers" develops capable of creating at competitive costs those highly specialized and personalized computer systems that are necessary for this type of economy, while ensuring the capacity to maintain and adapt them flexibly to the continuous changes in market and society needs.

A necessary step to reach this objective is to begin teaching informatics from the early years of school, as was also recommended by the Council of the European Union in November 2023. Finally, it's news from just a few days ago, the Ministry of Education and Merit has proposed a revision of the National Guidelines for kindergarten and the first cycle of education that sees the inclusion of informatics as a subject of study. Our country too is therefore embarking on a path that is essential to travel in order to be protagonists in an increasingly digital society.

We will continue in the next post our reflections on the use of informatics in the working world.

[[The posts in this series are based on the Author's book (in Italian) La rivoluzione informatica: conoscenza, consapevolezza e potere nella società digitale, (= The Informatics Revolution: Knowledge, Awareness and Power in the Digital Society) to which readers are referred for further reading]].

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The original version (in italian) has been published by "Osservatorio sullo Stato digitale" (= Observatory on Digital State) of IRPA - Istituto di Ricerche sulla Pubblica Amministrazione (= Research Institute on Public Administration) on 26 March 2025.