The Italian e-government action plan: from gaining efficiency to rethinking government

In 1997, the publication of the first "Bassanini law" gave rise to a general reform process of the Italian government, mainly based on devolution, restructuring, simplification and information/communication technology (ICT) leverage. In this context, the recent Italian e-government action plan is discussed, evaluating it in the light of a concept introduced by O.E. Williamson (1996), viz. the tradeoff between efficiency and consensus in public administration. On this basis, we conjecture that a relatively weak political class should try to seek consensus not only in the traditional ways (which according to Williamson's view may generate "inefficiencies by design"), but also using ICT leverage to re-think government according to a customer-centric vision, which is still lacking in the Italian e-government action plan. We conclude our discussion by outlining interesting new fields of further research, both from the theoretical point of view (the cited framework of analysis is only briefly defined) and from the application side, where the investigation of the organizational impact of new technologies like digital signatures is still only at the beginning.