Contrasting positions have often been taken on this transformation but united by the fact that they are based on subjective data and influenced by personal experiences. We try to clarify.

Digital transformation: the barometer of Italian companies

A complex national structure

The writer does not have access to specific technical data on the global structure and infrastructure of the IT system of the Italian PA, therefore what follows is the result of empirical deductions.

It is essentially an extremely complex and articulated structure in which the interaction between man and machine, manual skill and automation merge together in a distributed way.

An example of this is the enabling of online services for Poste Italiane customers. The first problem posed by this procedure is customer identification. The traditional identification of many online services is based on the cross between e-mail, mobile phone number and, recently, facial recognition.

This procedure guarantees a good safety margin, but since this is the case of access to bank data, it is not sufficient.

The post office then takes care of the physical identification of the user. The manual part in this sense is carried out by the employee who fills in the forms with the requested data (for example the identification number of the identity card).

At this point automation intervenes: the file data are entered into the management system of Poste Italiane and added to what could be defined as an activation "queue" (in fact, the services will be accessible to the user in his online profile only after 24 hours from the entry of the practice).

The potentially most problematic point in this procedure is the interaction between user and operator: here communicative, psychological, behavioural, social and cultural factors come into play which require careful analysis and, if possible, a series of sample tests on users and employees who go beyond simple customer satisfaction and who know how to dig deep and scientifically in order to identify the moments in which this interaction did not have the desired effects.

It's not about blaming the user or the employee, but understanding how to improve this interaction to increase customer satisfaction, eliminate stress factors for employees and make the process more effective, thus increasing productivity.

Innovative software for the websites of the Swiss Confederation

The human factor: strength or weakness?

A machine, if properly programmed to perform a task and placed in a controlled environment, can virtually carry on with its task indefinitely. Continuously.

Human beings, on the other hand, find themselves operating in an uncontrolled environment which often positively or negatively affects their work.

A human being has its own well-defined psychology: as Gödel maintained when replying to Turing regarding the fact that human thought is made up of finite states, these states remain finite in a machine but in a human being they tend virtually to infinity. We are talking about emotions.

The digitization process cannot ignore the human factor: operators, employees, users, customers, managers, programmers, disseminators are human beings, each with their own personality, training and needs.

The human factor must be understood, studied and analysed, but always keeping in mind the fact that to improve the existing situation, taking the efficiency of a machine as a model can often prove counterproductive.

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