Strolling through Informatics #32 – Governing digital transformation in the national interest (part one)

previous #31 ––– next #33

by Enrico Nardelli

(versione italiana qua)

As we discussed in the post "It's easy to say digital", the digital dimension is now closely intertwined with all dimensions of our existence and defines a social space that can be built according to different visions. For example, we recalled in the previous post how we've moved from a vision of society where role models for young people were individuals with careers that could provide good economic satisfaction for the majority of people, to a vision where these models are people of great talent (and great luck, because unfortunately talent alone is often not enough) with very high earnings, who however constitute a small minority of society.

The point is deciding which vision of society we choose. This is a typically political task, given that political activity (in the sense that Aristotle gave it as a natural component of being human) is precisely the way to decide what objectives to pursue and how to do so, within the communities where humans habitually gather, to meet everyone's needs.

In the same post "It's easy to say digital" I quoted Evgenj Morozov who wrote in his book "The Lords of Silicon": «for today's mass party, not taking care of its responsibility regarding digital matters is equivalent to not taking care of its responsibility for the future of democracy itself». Over the past ten years this statement has become even more true while, at least in Italy, politics – ever since we began talking about the "information society" in the 1990s – has largely chased fashionable terms, playing around with operational aspects, granting funding and loans for acquiring "turnkey" digital systems that after six months or a year require significant updating expenses. Instead, we should invest intensively in training internal personnel who can contribute to developing digital solutions and make them evolve in harmony with changing commercial scenarios. This is an essential element for relaunching the country's economic development, all the more relevant as services gain weight in the economy. Not to mention that in some strategic sectors, handing over "the keys to the house" to a stranger is hardly the smartest solution! While in industry the cost of production facilities is a percentually significant item directly proportional to production volume per unit of time, in digital service delivery the necessary "means of production" consist essentially of the brains of people who develop and update the software for their management, and are substantially independent of the number of users. Platforms like Uber and Airbnb are the most striking proof of this.

But services delivered through digital systems allow for flexibility and speed of adaptation at contained costs only on condition that one is able to make them evolve "in-house" or nearly so. Only this way can we obtain computer systems that can ensure increased productivity for companies as they evolve. For our production system, the challenge is on this terrain, which isn't a field reserved only for the "big players," since informatics – when used well – allows for advantageous exploitation even of very small market niches.

It's useless to think we can go back. Society will become increasingly digital: in this world, digital infrastructures constitute what a nervous or skeletal system is for mammals. Their control must be in our hands so that our country doesn't become a colony. We need to understand that digital space, like the solutions connected to it, must be managed in the nation's and its citizens' interests. We need politics that returns to exercising on behalf of the people that sovereignty which Article 1 of our Constitution assigns to them, without delegating it to Big Tech companies that have virtually unlimited reserves of resources to pursue their own interests.

We must maintain control over citizens' digital data, which in the digital world are the equivalent of the citizens themselves. Control of this data is what provides power in digital society. We must avoid leaving this control in the hands of private entities pursuing business objectives that are perfectly legitimate, but cannot override the common good. We must develop the country's capacity to create informatics services and systems. We've never lacked the will to work and creativity, and software development doesn't require heavy capital investments. However, it does require investment in training, which must begin from afar, starting in school. We should have started the day before yesterday, but – in this case it's truly so – it's never too late. How do we think we can manage Italy's digital transition if we don't provide all students with basic education in informatics? Every citizen, when seeing any machinery, no longer thinks it's some "devilish contraption" because they studied those basic scientific principles in school that allow them to understand there are no "miracles" in technology. What are we waiting for to do the same for the cognitive machines of the digital world?

Fortunately, it seems that at least in schools, with the revision of National Guidelines for the first cycle of education, we'll begin doing something concrete. It's been 11 years since we began, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education, with the Program the Future project to spread training on basic informatics concepts in schools, but it's truly a case of "better late than never!"

We'll conclude our analysis in the next post.

[[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]].

--
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 14 May 2025.