From 14 to 17 June, the 2022 edition of Forum PA: il PAese che riparte took place; four days aimed at assessing the state of implementation of investments, NRRP reforms and European programming. On 16 June, the Department of the Treasury organised, within the Spazio MEF online events section, a seminar entitled “Data Governance: teoria e pratica dell’innovazione” (“Data Governance: Theory and Practice of Innovation”).

The round table brought together experts in data governance, academia, public decision makers and experts in PA digitisation processes to reflect concretely on how to strengthen decision making and the PA's ability to make plans, assessments and estimates through analysis and forecasting models.

The event was opened by Michele Petrocelli, General Manager in charge of coordinating innovative projects and transversal activities of the Department of the Treasury, MEF - Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance.

During the event, the digitisation projects implemented by the Department of the Treasury and financed by the Governance NOP were presented, and the debate broadened to include different topics, with a focus on the future in the different areas of the PA where innovation is advancing, more or less quickly. The discussion dealt with technical, scientific, regulatory and organisational issues in the idea that, as Michele Petrocelli stated several times:

“The ultimate goal of innovation is not change for change's sake, but ultimately to have created value for someone, concretely improving a way of working and living. Creating value for an administration and eventually for the citizen. If this does not happen, we have failed”.

The debate continued with speeches by guests such as Carla Ramella, Head of Economy and Central Public Administration Division – Sogei; Ottavio Ricchi, Head of the Economic and Financial Analysis and Research Directorate of the Department of the Treasury, MEF – Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance; Francesco Nucci, Professor of Political Economy, Sapienza University of Rome and member of the Board of Experts, MEF – Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance; Rocco Affinito, Head of the Data Chapter of the Department for Digital Transformation – Italian Ministry of Technological Innovation and Digital Transition.

On 16 June, the Department of the Treasury will participate in ForumPA; the event entitled “Data Governance: Teoria e pratica dell’innovazione” (“Data Governance: Theory and Practice of Innovation”) will bring together experts in data governance, academia, public decision makers and experts in PA digitisation processes to reflect concretely on how to strengthen decision making and the PA's ability to make plans, assessments and estimates through analysis and forecasting models.

Thanks to Governance NOP funding, the Department of the Treasury has been working on digital transformation with the aim of defining a new data governance paradigm. The new data management models have been implemented thanks to the redesign and enhancement of the monitoring systems of public debt, assets and financial crimes, in order to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of strategic choices in many core PA sectors by making the best use of new mathematical-financial analysis and risk assessment models.

During the event, 3 case studies of digitisation financed by the Governance NOP and the related results achieved by the Department of the Treasury will be presented, and information will be provided on the digitisation projects and the lines of action along which the Italian NRRP is moving.

The event will be moderated by General Manager, Consulting, Studies and Research Michele Petrocelli, who will illustrate the results of the Department's digital transformation programme and the challenges for a data-driven management model.

The debate will see the participation of guests such as Carla Ramella, Head of Economy and Central Public Administration Division – Sogei; Ottavio Ricchi, Head of Office II – Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance; Francesco Nucci, Professor of Political Economy, Sapienza University of Rome and member of the Board of Experts – Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance; Rocco Affinito, Head of the Data Chapter – Italian Ministry of Technological Innovation and Digital Transition.

Public debt management is one of the main institutional missions of the Department of the Treasury, which it pursues by directing, coordinating, monitoring and managing relations with international institutions and bodies. In this context, the programme for the renewal of the public debt management system within the 'Empowered, Digital & Open Platform for Public Debt Management' public finance ecosystem aims at increasing the efficiency of the entire process and fostering a collaborative approach based on data sharing and exchange. In fact, the planned project lines include the redefinition of some areas of the Department with a view to improving Open government project management skills.

The design and implementation of 'Experience Centres', which is currently underway, is one of the last operational steps of the projects financed by the NOP, which first of all envisaged the implementation and activation of new platforms aimed at enhancing the systems' analysis, interoperability and forecasting capabilities.

However, as management systems evolve, thereby providing more opportunities for data integration and analysis, it also becomes necessary to intervene in organisational processes and models involving the people who work on these systems on a daily basis.

It is precisely from this context that the Department of the Treasury's 'Experience Centres' project was born: the idea is to allow digital tools to evolve hand in hand with the organisation of work, thus profoundly rethinking the office experience and the way people work together.

Indeed, the pandemic has already brought about a leap forward in the use of digital tools for remote collaboration, thereby significantly modifying work habits and enriching them with technological and organisational solutions that were unprecedented until a few months ago.

On the basis of these elements, and taking into account the return of many staff to the headquarters after the end of the health emergency, new collaboration areas are being created within some of the Department's rooms by remodelling already existing work areas, which are now to be utilised to the full in terms of activities.

The new areas, which have been designed with different, yet integrated functions in mind, are intended to foster collaboration among employees and multiply the points of connection with other offices and entities, even outside the Department.

In fact, these areas will be designed to enable working groups and task forces to work together and connect them with other offices or other spaces under construction. One of the areas will be dedicated to stand-up (i.e., shorter in terms of duration and effective in terms of objectives) meetings and will offer Department employees a place where they can hold their alignment activities, both in person and remotely.

The spaces will also be interconnected through a specific videoconferencing system that will enable the creation of a single phygital workspace, in which the new areas will become a welcoming place for external guests thanks to the technological collaboration tools already adopted by the Department.

Finally, all the technologies and tools needed to set up the new work areas have been selected based on their ability to be integrated with the solutions already in use at the Department and the possibility of being easily reusable for any different purposes or new logistical needs.

Therefore, after updating its management systems, the Department is accompanying its digital transformation process also by intervening on its working model and on relationships among colleagues, in the belief that in order to make true innovation, the transformation must make the evolution of tools go hand in hand with the working models for people working in person.

The Department of the Treasury's Digital Transformation NOP programme was developed over the 2019-2021 three-year period with the aim to enhance working processes and methods in the areas of financial malfeasance prevention, asset management and public debt. Now that 2021 has ended, it seems useful to review the main innovations introduced by the Governance and Institutional Capacity NOP on the three defined project strands. Indeed, in the last three years, the Department has chosen to embark upon a path of innovation and digitisation, thus enhancing the use of new technologies in order to increase the efficiency of organisational processes and models, as well as data security and accessibility.

1. Prevention of financial malpractice

The project on the prevention of financial malpractice has enabled the implementation of SiMEC, the system designed for the Central Means of Payment AntiFraud Office (Ufficio Centrale Antifrode dei Mezzi di Pagamento, UCAMP) of the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance, which boasts more than 80,000 users and brings together all the data necessary for monitoring fraud as well as the counterfeiting of cards and the euro, thereby providing a unique point of connection between the private sector and the Public Administration. The functionalities and monitoring areas of SiMEC, which was designed starting from the processes whereby fraud and the counterfeiting of the euro (Banknotes and Coins) and non-cash means of payment (Cards, ATMs, POS) are monitored, were defined starting from the different organisational needs of the organisations involved, especially the banking system, which is the main stakeholder of the project. For this reason, the system was integrated with the National Interbank Network (Rete nazionale interbancaria, RNI) in order to process the most precise data on the Cards area. In 2020, the Department expanded the platform by implementing a Business Intelligence system aimed at enhancing the management and prevention of malpractice with regard to means of payment and adopting a mix of technologies based on Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Investigation & Entities Behaviour Analysis; as a result, the system is now able to recognize, predict and report the trends and characteristics of malpractice phenomena with an increasing level of detail.

2. Asset management

In 2020/2021, the Department carried out several projects dedicated to the central and local management of property assets with a view to enhancing the value of public property assets by improving the management of data relating to buildings and the area concerned. The application of Business Intelligence tools is enabling a real paradigm shift in the definition of the value and use of real estate assets to take place, going from taking into account the single housing unit to the whole building, thus supporting more effective management and building allocation rationales. This new property valorisation model is a huge opportunity to improve not only knowledge of the asset, but especially the better assessment of its use and reuse for social purposes. In fact, thanks to the data coming from local authorities, it is possible to understand how and to what extent public real estate assets can respond to actual local needs, as is the case with school and health facilities, up to specific cases of housing need. .

3. Public Debt Management

The project on public debt management, which is a key issue for economic recovery, and its implications for the management of the Sure funds and the NRRP by means of the GEDI platform, which has replaced several vertical applications intended for the management of public debt, remains to be explored.

Within the 'Empowered, digital & Open platform for Public Debt Management' public finance ecosystem, the programme for the development of the public debt management system aims at ensuring a greater efficiency of the entire monitoring process and fostering a collaborative approach focused on the sharing of data and information, according to a transversal logic. Specifically, the actions implemented by the Department of the Treasury of the MEF, aimed at improving the system, have pursued three fundamental targets:

– equipping the Department with tools ensuring the quality of the data in the system and its processing, thus guaranteeing its monitoring, validation and consolidation;

– improving the exchange of data, communications and documents with other institutions and administrations through technological solutions promoting collaboration;

The GEDI platform has been implemented in pursuit of these targets, thereby replacing several vertical applications for domestic and foreign public debt management such as GEDDEP, Sistema Previsionale, GPO, MTS, and Valutazione Specialisti, as well as the CEAM (Comunicazioni degli Enti locali e territoriali per il monitoraggio dell’indebitamento e l’accesso al mercato dei capitali – Local and Territorial Authorities' Communications for Debt Monitoring and Access to Capital Markets) system.

The new GEDI platform enhances the features of the previous applications and brings together the operations of individual offices, thus guaranteeing greater collaboration among users, thanks also to the sharing of data sources.

The innovations introduced with GEDI include:

–the adoption of the Java programming language for the management of the application components;

–the integration with the authentication and authorisation system of the DT portal for greater security and integration with enterprise solutions;

–new mathematical models for calculating the optimal portfolio mix in risk and cost management.

With its functional set-up, GEDI has enabled the MEF to considerably broaden the database processed, as it can now also monitor the debt contracted by Local Administrations, in order to have an overall view of the economic-financial trends and debt exposures of Public Administrations, without limiting it to central Administrations.

Indeed, thanks to GEDI, individual Administrations can directly input and update the descriptive data of the liabilities that compose the stock of debt of the Local Administrations, thereby allowing public debt managers of the Department of the Treasury to constantly monitor the exposures through a real-time, reliable and accurate scenario.

The expansion of the Public Debt monitoring and management system shows that the application of innovative solutions centred on Digital Transformation can not only improve analytical capabilities, but above all verify in real time the health of local community resources, which has a significant impact on the quality of life of millions of citizens. In short, having a more 'intelligent', powerful integrated monitoring and management system is an essential added value for the Italian public debt management process and a very useful tool when it comes to recovering from the health crisis and using PNRR funds.