DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR: ANALYZING THE EFFECTS OF AUTOMATION ON WORKFORCE IN THE ITALIAN CONTEXT

Public organizations are faced with several opportunities for creating public value deriving from digital technologies, while the complexity of processes that they must undertake to create public value increases more and more. In recent years, public organizations have increasingly relied upon digital technologies in order to deliver services that satisfy citizens’ needs and expectations. Indeed, digital technologies provide two different outcomes: first, they increase the value that each public service delivers while, at the same time, maximize the value that the consumption of public services delivers altogether. Namely, automation as a digital technology promises to improve a wide range of processes. The introduction of controlled procedures and systems in place of human labour can enhance efficiency as well as certainty and consistency. In this paper, we estimate the potential impact of Digital Transformation (DX) on the Italian PA, defining the latest by the collection of the value of its labor (ie. PA workforce salaries), and by the collection of the value of its outputs (ie public services’ costs). Our work estimates benefits from DX looking at the time and cost savings coming from the substitution effect with an adoption of digital technologies. For example, Automation, AI and Cloud technologies would change ways of working, substituting and replacing many of the tasks that are currently done by PA employees and labor processes underpinning PA services. We ultimately map out the magnitude and trends of how likely the PA occupations and services could be substituted in a wider process of digital transformation. To do this, we triangulate secondary data collection, from official accounts of Italian Ministry of Economics and Statistical Institute, with methodological antecedents from the UK ONS and experts’ insights. 2 Results provide a snapshot on the amount of PA jobs projected to be affected by automation over the next 10 years, along with the magnitude of potential savings. We discuss drivers and barriers to the actual realization of such savings and potential challenges related to equity in job creation and user access to automated services.