Digital transformation, involution of transparency

How digital is the Italian public administration really? Do we know when an algorithm decides the provision of services to citizens? Who verifies the requirements to access Italian welfare measures, such as the Citizenship Income?

These questions prompted those of us at Privacy Network who deal with the Automated Administration Observatory to reflect, almost a year ago now, on the fact that in Italy we always complain about those who request public benefits without having the right to them, the so-called “cunning ones”, without asking ourselves what makes it possible for them: the allocation mechanisms. In a nutshell, that set of practices – based on rules, established by law – which range from the verification of the requirements to the direct provision of the subsidy or service. So we thought we’d ask directly INPS and the Revenue Agency how do they work. It followed one year of exchanges (mostly one-sided) unsatisfactory, and above all expectations, which have generated a lot of frustration. The story, and their answers, can be read here.

This work started in 2021, precisely by studying what happened to other European governments – such as the Netherlands or Denmark – when they automated the allocation of welfare and public benefits using opaque algorithms (whose use ended up with discriminate thousands of citizens). We decided to implement a project, the Observatory (OAA) which would return a picture of how and when Italian public administrations use algorithms and software to provide services or implement their functions. The idea of ​​the Privacy Network is to spread transparency and awareness, first of all for citizens, because they have the right to know these mechanisms and when they exist to make decisions about their lives, but also for the press and for the administrations themselves, which often they do not communicate and do not know the existence of these algorithms.

To understand what to publish in the Observatory, we send requests for generalized civic access (governed by the Freedom of Information Act, FOIA, in Italy by Legislative Decree No. 97 of 2016) to request information from the individual PAs, on a case-by-case basis. In a nutshell, we make a formal request which, at least on paper, would allow us to obtain an explanation of how the service in question is managed by the public body. We realized how much attention to the theme is totally absent. The fact that a practice is somehow mediated by a code for administrations is absolutely a detail. Basically, nobody knows anything, there is no shared vocabulary, and therefore no guidelines on how to behave, on how to monitor processes. We almost never get anything backdespite the deadlines imposed by the FOIA legislation, but unfortunately we do not have the power to wage battles against all defaulting administrations.

“We are convinced that a certain amount of automation is desirable and necessary to manage some of these practices. However, we are even more convinced that no automation can be implemented without the right mechanisms of transparency, information and explanation.”

This is the incipit of our story in request transparent information and practices from INPS. It is incredible for us to read that in other contexts, such as in the Netherlands, for every journalistic investigation into the use of algorithms by national or local authorities that sparks scandals and brings to light significant problems with their governance, the information is obtained from journalists and researchers precisely through the FOIA. In the latest investigation by Lighthouse Reports and WIRED, funded by the Pulitzer Center, on the city of Rotterdam and the allocation of welfare, the comment by Annemarie de Rottedirector of revenue of the city: “The City of Rotterdam considers it very important that not only us, but also other governments and organizations are aware of the risks associated with the use of algorithms, as in the risk assessment model you have reviewed. Nonetheless, we decided to provide you with the greatest understanding of the model we used in 2020. We did this not only because of our desire to be an open and transparent organization, but also so that we could learn from the insights of others”.

This openness to public scrutiny does not belong to us in the slightest. And in fact, INPS answered us in an absolutely unsatisfactory waymaking it more difficult for us to understand the processes, talking about “computer systems” and not about “algorithms” (as if the distinction between the two is clear and sharp). Doing this, they made the mapping work impossible for useffectively blocking the idea of ​​recording these systems within our Observatory.

What else do we know about the digital transformation of these institutions? In December 2022 she was born 3-I Spa, the Italian software house with the specific purpose of providing Inps, Istat, Inail, the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies and other central public administrations with important digital technologies. Its creation, according to the Undersecretary of State to the Presidency of the Council with responsibility for technological innovation Alessio Butti, is the achievement of one of the objectives of the PNRR. So was it enough to found it? What do we know about his goals, what applications will he develop? How does it fit into the panorama of investee companies dedicated to the development of IT systems for the PA? Or, more generally, what is its function in the digital transformation of the public administration in Italy? Is it about giving a boost to digital government by empowering top management with greater innovation capabilities? These days many people have come to know about it for the first time thanks to the news of resignation of Claudio Anastasio, who was appointed chairman of the public company by the government just a few weeks ago. The resignations resigned “with immediate effect”, with absolutely inadequate citations that refer to “responsibilities”, “faults”, of which we obviously know nothing, leave us stunned.