(by Alessandro Capezzuoli, ISTAT official and manager of the Aidr professions and skills data observatory) Open, updated, structured, machine readable and accompanied by metadata: the data produced by the Public Administrations, to be really usable, should have at least these characteristics. For decades now, we have been hearing about the numerous possibilities offered by data and the repercussions, in terms of knowledge and collective well-being, resulting from their sharing. Yet, although the value attributed to data is evident in the private sector, so high as to be "paid" with a consideration in free services of all kinds, the public sector still seems too unaware of the information potential available to it and unprepared for the policies to be implement. In reality, the unpreparedness is more than anything else due to a kind of bureaucratic and formal obstructionism that prevents the definition of lean and quick agreements between administrations.

For this reason, the sharing of data, before getting to the technological issues concerning application cooperation, is hindered by Manzonian memoranda of understanding signed and countersigned by managers, directors and presidents, which, in the best of cases, take months to be formalized. At worst, the negotiations end with nothing. There was a period, about fifteen years ago, in which talking about sharing and open data was fashionable: anyone who launched into imaginative reflections and reckless projections of all kinds, sometimes even those who really knew something about it were asked and who, precisely for this reason, he was excluded from important fora.

Then, the fashion passed and the open data question was considered more or less resolved. Also because a certainly more communicative, mysterious and fascinating word has emerged, the term "big", which had the power to stop the process of dissemination and sharing of data: everything stopped at some virtuous experiences and a few files of text that still resists, heroically hanging on the pages of a forgotten site, like an old ribbed undershirt stretched on the rusty threads of an abandoned house. As often happens, the legislation exists and it is clear: Article I of the CAD provides that open data must be:

  • available with a license or a regulatory provision that allows their use by anyone, including for commercial purposes, in a disaggregated format;
  • accessible through digital technologies, including public and private telematic networks, in open formats and provided with the relative metadata;
  • made available free of charge through digital technologies, or made available at the marginal costs incurred for their reproduction and dissemination (except for the provisions of article 7 of legislative decree no. 24 of 2006 January 36).

In spite of the rules, however, the real situation is very different. Firstly, because within the PPAAs there do not seem to be many people who know the data and its life cycle in depth and are able to implement stable and long-term sharing strategies. The data produced and shared by the institutions, at least those that are part of the National Statistical System, should guarantee the quality, completeness of the metadata and compliance with international standards of dissemination. To produce data with these characteristics, it is necessary to industrialize the production process and make sure that the dissemination is not the task of some willing person who manually inserts a text file on one of the many portals, but the conclusion of an information flow that passes for collection, validation, archiving, publication and, possibly, display.

Building the "public data industry" is very onerous and demanding: the pandemic has amply demonstrated the unpreparedness of the country system, especially in an emergency situation, in the construction of a rigorous and reliable collection methodology and a validation system and transparent and structured sharing. These limits, in a condition of normality, often have to deal also with the double soul of the institutions, which simultaneously produce flow data and stock data. The two production processes, despite having common elements, are governed by very different logics and require the use of different methodologies and technologies as regards the validation, dissemination and visualization phases.

The stock data are processed through the use of consolidated techniques and are aggregated with the aim of describing a certain phenomenon in its entirety, the flow data describe the temporal evolution of a phenomenon and, in addition to being numerically more consistent, have specificities that require treatments and validation and dissemination techniques other than stock data, also in relation to the GDPR. The validation of stock data, generally referring to an entire year, takes a long time as the archives must be consolidated and the scientific process to guarantee their quality is very onerous: this constraint does not allow to have data updated in real time, but allows to describe the phenomena with great precision. The validation of the flow data follows a very different process, through which it is not currently possible to guarantee the same quality of the stock data, but on the other hand it responds to the growing need of numerous research fields.

Then there is a delicate question concerning the distinction between summary data and precise data: the former can be processed and shared without particular constraints, the latter, in most cases, are subject to the regulation on data processing and impose numerous limitations not only to dissemination but also to the treatment and analysis by researchers.

Having overcome the organizational and methodological obstacle, which in itself represents a significant limitation, the political question has to be addressed. Despite the proclamations and guidelines (very often ignored) of the AGID, public administrations are still fiefdoms in which the regulae societatis of the Jesuits reign, i.e. unconditional obedience to the will of hierarchical superiors and the denial of evidence, through the omission of the diffusion of knowledge, to direct thought by means of precise orders dictated by Divine Providence, which, for some reason, always has a very human appearance. This aspect makes the archives of the institutions comparable to impregnable forts, protected by a fence called "privacy", which effectively legitimizes their isolation.

While it is true that in recent years collaboration between institutions has been strengthened, and some archives, especially stocks, have been shared, it is also true that the methodologies adopted for sharing data are absolutely inadequate compared to the means available and still make use of old and insecure manual transfer methods (upload or FTP). In other words, there is no national governance that defines sharing strategies, methods and infrastructures, there are more settled practices that do not take into account the evolution of the world and technology and, above all, the need to create a public data industry. .

Yet, public administrations have very rich information assets, ranging from the characteristics of individuals to economic data, from personnel needs to budgets, from skills to professions, through which it would be possible to consciously implement all the reforms that the country has need. The renewal of the PA passes through a more effective and aware recruitment of personnel, a fluid and transparent provision of public competitions, an enhancement of the merit, knowledge and experience of workers, an optimization of expenses and organizational structures through '' implementation of sustainable labor policies in economic, productive and environmental terms. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine a reform that, once again, ignores the value of data and resorts to the will of Divine Providence. If it is really necessary to surrender to the idea that the salvation of men is not the result of the contribution of each individual to the well-being of the community, but a kind of miracle performed by one of the many saviors of the homeland, very dear to the masses, we might as well identify the savior in the data and not in an improvised holy man who dispenses the elixir of perfect reforms.

The public data industry, the engine of public administration reform