Nunzio Casalino

Transparency, Openness and Knowledge Sharing for Rebuilding and Strengthening Government Institutions

The developing of the Open Government Model is allowing an organizational revolution for public administrations, providing to citizens and entrepreneurs a better access to information and public services. It also can allow the increasing of transparency in public agencies and citizen participation, indirectly enhancing collaboration and facilitating democratic processes. Transparency and open data can be powerful tools to stimulate and support public services’ improvements, faster innovation and empower citizens’ rights. So actually many governmental organizations are reviewing and rearranging their processes, information and data to improve policies, enhance legitimacy and openness toward outside parties and citizens. An “open” public knowledge may contribute to establish a collaboration and participation culture among the main stakeholders. In this paper authors focus on a new organizational model to deliver transparent services and to improve an effective collaboration between the public administrations. The research methodology adopted is based on a theoretical-deductive approach. The study describes general principles to come, through the case strategy, to the empirical analysis of an innovative national government portal called “Transparency Compass Portal”. It tries also to identify the distinctive aspects of some administrative services offered by several public organizations.

A System Dynamics Approach to the Paper Dematerialization Process in the Italian Public Administration

The dematerialization problem is still young, it hasn’t been well analyzed yet and its definition is nearly absent in the literature. This paper concentrates on the problem with a methodological approach which will try to describe the underlying structures, the overall system behaviours, processes and stakeholders. We will give an interpretation of the not always linear relationships and of the feedback loops among the involved variables, also considering those soft interactions which typically arise in those complex systems connected with social environments and which often are not properly taken into account or even neglected. We will thus formalize a dynamical hypothesis so that, with a systemic approach, we can design a system dynamics model that may help us in validating those hypothesis and in building a useful decision support system, in order to provide the Public Administration Management with the chance to make policy analysis and strategic support concerning the major issues related to the dematerialization process.

Defining a Model for Effective e-Government Services and an Inter-organizational Cooperation in Public Sector

Accomplishing interoperability among public information systems is a complex task not only by the variety of technological specifications and by the nature of the organisations in which the systems are implemented, but also because a detailed evaluation and analysis of the multiple aspects involved is lacking. The aim of this paper is to identify and summarize the main aspects regarding the field of interoperability (strategic frameworks, laws, regulations, specific requirements, organizational and technical issues) by means of the location and assessment of works that focus on the identification and analysis of the barriers, the organizational issues and the success and risk factors in information systems (IS) for public sector. Most of the interesting studies, based on the literature review of organisational studies, focus on other related themes such as bond interconnection, information sharing, and process integration in public administration but not on the specific subject of interoperability between European public administrations IS.

An Innovative Model of Trans-national Learning Environment for European Senior Civil Servants - Organizational Aspects and Governance

The purpose of the study will be to investigate the benefits of the introduction of e-learning and of a specific online environment in the training process of European civil servants. It describes the final results and the organisational impact of a first pilot training course combining 24 hours of e-learning and 27 hours (one week) of in-class courses. For each module, the e-learning preparation provided general training contents to enhance participants background necessary for in-class sessions. The project implemented a pilot to demonstrate the effectiveness of the overall system (applications, contents and organizational aspects), to promote the use of e-learning in the EU Public Administration field. After one year, the project concluded its pilot phase and the results will be analyzed. With a view to stimulating co-operation and the exchange of best practices in Europe, its purpose is to build and test an innovative model of trans-national networking, thanks to the active involvement of European schools and institutes of Public Administration.

Relational Networks for the Open Innovation in the Italian Public Administration

The diffusion of collaborative principles and cognitive-strategic interactions for the innovation are phenomena that are not limited to private business contexts, but can also involve the public sector. The modernization action of the public administration (PA), in fact, gets through to a new innovation governance that puts to system resources, processes and actors, these last still too fragmented in their strategies and action models for interactive and collaborative innovation concept. Nevertheless, the full deployment of strategies and public politics inspired to the network innovation and open innovation logics requires appropriate conditions and the adoption of specific managerial tools [2]. This work try to evaluate the efficiency of a groupware as management tool to organize and manage inter-institutional networks, create participatory and collaborative conditions for innovation processes in public administrations. The research methodology is theoretical-deductive. The dissertation departs in fact from the enucleation of theories and general principles to come, through the integrated cases strategy which places emphasis on holistic main aspects of the case [13], to the empirical analysis of the experiences tested at DigitPA (ex CNIPA) and to the analysis of some innovation projects.

ASSESSING INDIVIDUAL LEARNING AND GROUP KNOWLEDGE IN A WIKI ENVIRONMENT: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

The aim of this study was to investigate the collaborative learning in an online environment in order to assess the role of technology in determining individual learning of students. It describes the benefits of using a wiki in education and how it can allow students to work together to reach a common goal, giving them a sense of how writing can be effectively performed in collaboration. In collaborative learning with a wiki, students need to agree the structure, the contents, and the methods that are necessary to accomplish cooperative activities. The technology investigated is PBworks Education (PBwiki Edu), a collaborative tool that offers a variety of powerful information sharing and collaboration features in order to improve student’s learning activities. Respect than traditional in-class course, PBwiki Edu facilitates the communication and encourages collaborative finding, shaping and sharing of knowledge, all of which are essential properties for student’s learning process. A survey methodology was used in undergraduate students of “Management Information Systems” course who used PBwiki Edu for doing four reports concerning to case studies on specific lesson topics. With regard to these topics, we measured individual learning of students before (traditional learning) and after (online learning) any case study and compared these results through t-test method. Findings have shown significant differences between learning before and after case studies, pointing out the contribute of PBwiki Edu to student’s learning.

An Innovative Approach to the Governance of E-Government Knowledge Management Systems

In this paper we describe an innovative approach to the governance of knowledge management systems and services, currently applied in the Italian Public Administrations domain, which could be easily replicated in other countries as well. This approach is being applied in the framework of Italia.gov.it, a governmental on-going project aimed to the establishment of a big knowledge management system and of vertical search services for Public Administrations’ data. The Italia.gov.it project comes after a 3 years long period of studies and experimentations jointly performed by DigitPA and research teams from several Universities, with the aim to define an economically viable information system aimed to gather and manage the knowledge currently published in open data and over the Internet by public administrations on a national scale. We both summarize some lessons learned during such activities and describe the overall technical and organizational solutions being adopted for Italia.gov.it.

Extensiveness of Manufacturing and Organizational Processes: An Empirical Study on Workers Employed in the European SMEs

To enhance the competitiveness and the turnover of businesses in the fast-paced world of today means adopting the emerging Automation & Robotics (A&R) equipment that, in turn, require the upskilling and training of employees to enable effective implementation of the business processes. This poses a significant challenge to manufacturing Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which often lack the funds and human resources to invest in staff training, and translates into a distinct need to provide comprehensive A&R upskilling and training programs in the form of smart learning solutions designed to enable SME personnel to pursue their training goals in a flexible, customizable and easy-to-access way. The paper sheds light on the perceived upskilling requirements of SME workers and the broad scope of A&R systems training materials developed by the innovative methodology of ARIALE smart learning system.

Design Principles at the Edge of the Designable: Non-formal and Informal Learning in SMEs

Informal learning is defined as the learning process which occurs in the workplace and is neither determined nor designed by an organization. Designing a methodology for identification and recognition of non-formal and informal learning could help managers to give employees a better autonomy and better forms of experiential learning and skills. So the main goal is to explore and describe in depth the organizational concept of informal learning. It is fundamental also to understand and improve in depth the recognition of non-formal and informal learning acquired by employees in SMEs, as a central part of lifelong learning processes. This is an essential feature to find the designability edge at which organizational systems designers can effectively operate to enable learning to occur. The reflections transpired have important implications about the development of detailed procedures for the accreditation of informal learning in the workplace.

Organizational Aspects and Governance of a Learning Environment Aimed at a Common Curricula for European Senior Civil Servants

The purpose of this work is to investigate the benefits of the introduction of a specific online environment in the training process of European civil servants. It includes the final results and the organisational impact of a training course combining 24 h of e-learning courses and 30 h (1 week) of intensive in-class courses. For each module, the e-learning part provided general training contents to enhance participants background required for in-class sessions. Through the designed learning activities and the analysed project results we want to demonstrate the effectiveness of the overall system (tasks, contents and organizational aspects) and promote e-learning adoption in the European Public Administration field. With a view to stimulating co-operation and the exchange of experts’ experience and best practices in Europe, the goal is to identify and test an innovative model of trans-national collaborative learning environment supported by European schools, Public Administration Institutes and e-learning experts.