Canadian Government Executive - Volume 24 - Issue 07

February/March 2019 // Canadian Government Executive / 31 TRANSFORMATION But Piacentini said in an interview he was happy not only to be completing the role at full term — it was always a two- year brief — but to be handing the proj- ect over to a chosen successor, who will oversee a doubling of the size of the team Piacentini set up. Across the divide Asked whether his progress in Italy dem- onstrates that the nuts and bolts of digital transformation are relevant to all politi- cal shades, from the new breed of popu- list politicians to their more moderate predecessors, Piacentini said: “Correct.” “The most emblematic example… is universal income,” Piacentini continued. The new government plans to intro- duce a citizens’ income. The policy is politically charged, and relatively radi- cal. But, Piacentini said, while “you might agree or not agree in the abstract” the policy raises practical, technical ques- tions aside from the political debate: “Who gets it? How is the money received? How is the money spent? How is the pol- icy assessed?” Answering those questions by putting in robust digital systems that allow the gov- ernment to implement and monitor the policy will not only let this government deliver on this initiative, but benefit any future government that wants to tweak what money the state gives to its citizens. “Governments give money to people in one form or another, [so] let’s make it ef- ficient and measurable,” Piacentini said. “Any government wants to have that in place.” Technical work undertaken during Pia- centini’s tenure included improvements to PagoPA, a digital platform that lets citi- zens make payments to government, co- ordinating SPID, a single digital identity for citizens to access different govern- ment services, and accelerating the con- solidation of data from Italy’s 8,000 mu- nicipal registers into one digital registry. Private to public Piacentini moved back to his homeland to take up the pro-bono role from Seattle, where he has spent 16 years as a senior vice president at Amazon. He previously worked for Apple. In Rome, he was supported by the “Dig- ital Transformation Team” he set up — 90 per cent of his staff were recruited from outside the public sector, but the team is now to be led by a public servant, Luca Attias, CIO of the Italian Court of Audit. Piacentini said skepticism of people who join government from the private sector had to be challenged head-on. “Don’t see me as an Amazon executive. See me as an executive who’s worked for 30 years in a very large corporation, and had to manage very complex situa- tions, including scaling,” he said. “Those complex situations in many aspects re- sembled the same situations I’m finding in government.” His biggest contributions were not in introducing new tech, but in instituting best practice around how large-scale technology projects should be run. “I didn’t bring artificial intelligence and blockchain to government. I brought some basic, highly scalable project man- agement processes,” he said. Now, he said, a “very high critical mass” of the administration is committed to im- plementing the digitisation projects his team has been pushing. But, he warned, in two to three years: “we’ll have to inter- vene with the [sections of the public ad- ministration] that are resistant to change”. The best talent Piacentini would like, he said, for govern- ments including Italy’s to make it easier for others to follow his lead. He’d like them to put in place schemes allowing people to join their ranks for short peri- ods, perhaps two to three years. Doing this would, Piacentini said, not only allow public-spirited people to serve their country more easily, but also build vital expertise in government to manage outsourcing to, and regulation of, innova- tive technology companies. “In a genera- tion I think you [would] build something really powerful and really strong,” he said. Building such expertise one way or an- other is crucial as governments begin to procure more from technology firms — including large companies like Amazon. In Britain, the recent fate of the out- sourcing giant Carillion, which went into liquidation leaving services from con- struction to school lunches to be picked up by government, showed the danger of procuring too many analogue services from a few super-providers. Now, there could be a risk that a few large tech com- panies could take on similarly outsize amounts of public work. “The point is that there is this tendency of solving problems with one [size] fits all solutions,” Piacentini said. He empha- sised the importance of building a digital approach based not only on grand vision — though that is necessary — but on care- fully planned and managed individual projects. As Piacentini returns to Seattle to spend time with his family — he does not yet know his future plans — he leaves Rome with much done and much still to do. But if his team continues to succeed in pushing for change in the coming years, it could hold lessons for governments ev- erywhere about how to best combine pri- vate expertise with public service. This piece was originally published on Apolitical.co and has been reprinted here by permission. Apolitical is a global network for gov- ernment, helping public servants find the ideas, people and partners they need to solve the hardest challenges facing our societies. “Don’t see me as an Amazon executive. See me as an executive who’s worked for 30 years in a very large corporation, and had to manage very complex situations, including scaling. Those complex situations in many aspects resembled the same situations I’m finding in government.” — Diego Piacentini