Without being super experts in information technology, we all know that the web was born to simplify social life and at the same time maintain the values of the protection of democracy, citizenship and relationships.
In short, the internet, in itself, is not the bearer of 'absolute evils', on the contrary it is the bearer of great good but to do this it needs rules, not even too 'restrictive'
In short, the electronic channels need 'clips' that allow the encryption of 'sensitive' news but at the same time the necessary opening for total transparency of everything that is of public interest.
It is not simple, by definition.
The 'neo-humanism' which necessarily imposes itself in times of 'resolute market' struggles to find an ideological and/or philosophical way, from which to derive data and technical settings that can clearly resolve the 'internet question' which is increasingly emerging.
At the base there is always an aspect of 'ill will'.
Unwillingness of governments to open up to total transparency, for let's say 'obvious reasons' of opportunity - some data become 'sensitive' for the governments themselves and also in general for the security of citizens and not only of the States - and unwillingness for reasons economic: speed and transparency come at a cost, especially in a market that still follows the 'old rules' of the system, which are difficult to bypass.
All this is transforming the Internet into an element of social problematic to the point that governments often try to 'manipulate' it precisely to allow the maintenance of the 'obsolete' market schemes.
Maybe in a few decades, but the fundamentalists they hope sooner, we will regard these times as 'primitive'.
All of this is linked to the issue of cybersecurity, which on the one hand always opens up new prospects and job opportunities, on the other it is the weakest link in the whole 'internet issue'.
Because cybersecurity is linked to another discourse of discourses: procurement.
What is 'less transparent' in the modern world? : the contract. So internet security is linked to the economic factor of the management contract with specialized or pseudo specialized companies, and here our 'sensitive' data run serious risks.
The main point is this.
An all-Italian case
This is the case of the story relating to Poste Italiane spa and Gepin Contact spa, and the related employment implications.
The Gepin was used by the Italian Post Office for the delivery of parcels and mail. Since 2015 there has been a resolution of the relationship with Gepin, by the Italian Post Office, which has laid off 287 units out of a total workforce of 347 workers, including managers, for 20 percent of the total number of hours. Then again we proceeded to other phases of Cigo: from 10 August to 7 November 201 and from 9 November to 5 December 2015, at zero hours in rotation regime. In the Casavatore (NA) Naples office, until August, layoffs involved 60 percent of employees.
This in the face of a tender launched by Poste Italiane - apparently with an illegal procedure - for «the provision of services of Customer Services of the Poste Italiane group» where it seems that there was a general insufficient assessment and/or certification regarding the professionalism of the personnel of the candidate companies, i.e. both of the individual professional figures to be employed and of the relative employees.
In the subsequent tender, despite the formula of the "most economically advantageous offer", the economic-financial aspect prevailed (60 per cent over the technical one of (40 per cent).
The assessment of the technical specifications was based exclusively on quantitative (days) and not qualitative values. Also in this last tender, in fact, the parameters concerning every professional aspect, therefore of know-how, appeared limited only to the formal participation of the company in other tenders and experiences, without specific, detailed and certifiable evaluation criteria concerning the experiences acquired and/or studies or insights into each specific qualification of the assigned personnel.
The underlying logic of tenders, therefore, always seems to be that of 'excluding existing experience' in order to 'rebase' on new experiences but evaluated almost exclusively on efficiency – i.e. on the ability to carry out the public service using minimal resources – rather than on effectiveness: relate the objectives of this service to the accuracy and completeness of the results achieved also in terms of user protection which appears only formal or residual.
Some time ago I attended a Formez training course on tenders for 'internet services' and/or public communication.
Now unhooking for a moment from the particular case of Poste Italiane, which in any case must necessarily base their entire strategy on the perspective of inter-communication and interactivity with users, and this should be remembered, in general, there is a protocol, recognized and wanted by the government Italian, at the Department of Public Function of the Ministry for simplification and public administration, called E-Glu
It is a protocol for tenders for telematic services based on the Human Centered Design – man at the center of projects, designs that focus on the human … because this should be the web, otherwise it would only be an empty vector, which cannot even transport money ..
Presented for the first time at the PA Forum conference "Smart sites" in May 2015, it is available in exclusively digital format, version 2.1, for the creation of simplified usability tests, to formulate tenders or efficient services for users, electronically
The protocol aims to achieve the objective of providing essential guidelines, to those involved in tenders in the public administration, which must be strictly followed in order to correctly carry out a memorandum of understanding and/or a tender for public services.
What is the data you want to highlight
It is that the protocol expressly speaks of 'human value' to refer to in relation to usability as an evaluation parameter of all services.
So in tenders it is almost necessary to make explicit reference to 'usability tests' and user perception defined as 'user experience'.
The e-Government and Open Government process, which aims to digitize public services and make administrative acts "transparent", can only be completed if it is able to ensure that every citizen is able to use the enormous amount of information and services, regardless of working condition and position, age, level of education and the device used (computer, tablet, smartphone).
Nonetheless, the diffusion of usability in the PA is still very limited if we consider that only the 2% of the administrations at the end of 2012 declared that they systematically carry out usability tests and that the presence of usability requirements in tenders is little more than episodic.
And that's not all. The protection of sensitive data held by administrations is always a matter of opinion. We are in 'interpretation' mode also regarding 'statistical and/or IT data'
It is the best example of the all-Italian 'schemes' that constantly unravel and sometimes even go beyond the needs of the internal or international market, showing that continuous characteristic of the 'stop and go' which makes it a country prey to nervous breakdowns
In conclusion, what are the splendid policies for the computerization of the country, telematic literacy, the dictates of the law on the Italian, European, international and even global Digital Agenda, if then the underlying philosophy is a philosophy of pure market and tends 'down'?
There is a risk of frustrating a lot of work well done, emptying many words well spent and impoverishing the entire social ethic ... as if there were a need ...
PS.
For those interested in knowing the outcome of the Gepin Contact affair, I transcribe below the answer of the undersecretary FRANCA BIONDELLI, to the parliamentary question of the Honorable Miccoli and others, concerning the case.
New tender for the provision of customer service services of Poste Italiane Spa and the consequent employment events of Gepin Contact workers.
Biondelli : In this regard, I point out that the safeguarding of jobs in the event of a new contractor taking over was precisely the subject of reflection by the Government in the context of the parliamentary work for the approval of the draft law authorizing the Government to reform the Procurement code, law n. 11 of 2016. I recall, in fact, that article 1, paragraph 1, letter fff), of the aforementioned law, identifies, among the principles and directive criteria which the Government must comply with in exercising the delegation, the provision of a specific discipline for public service contracts, with particular regard to labor-intensive ones, providing for the introduction of social clauses for the employment stability of the personnel employed, taking as a reference the National Collective Labor Agreement, which presents the best conditions for workers, and expressly excluding the use of the sole criterion for awarding the price or cost understood as the criterion of the lowest price or the maximum auction discount or, in any case, in compliance with European Union law.
This represents an important innovation, especially for companies that carry out call center activities, since it aims to safeguard employment levels, favors the role of bargaining at national and company level, contrasting precisely those practices of social dumping to the detriment of workers. More specifically, with regard to the recent tender for the assignment of customer care services by Poste Italiane Spa, which includes the previous contracts of the Gepin Contact group, the Ministry of Economic Development announced that the aforementioned tender is still in progress and that Poste Italiane Spa is verifying the adequacy of the offers.
With regard to the award criteria established in the specifications, Poste Italiane reported that the criterion adopted in the tender is not that of the lowest price but that of the most economically advantageous offer which, as is known, provides for a weighting of the economic parameter with the technical parameters - qualitative. Furthermore, Poste Italiane Spa specified that in the tender in question the price criterion is not prevalent but has an incidence equal to 50 per cent, similarly to the technical-quality parameters. Poste Italiane Spa also highlighted that it has its own supplier register dedicated to contact center services in which it carries out periodic assessments on the basis of certain parameters of an economic-administrative nature, in order to avoid participation in tenders by subjects without the characteristics necessary for the provision of quality services. With regard to the aspects of specific competence of my Ministry, the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies, I would like to remind you that with reference to the Rome office, the directorial decree of 2 April 2015 authorized the wage integration treatment following the stipulation of a solidarity contract in favor of 131 units for the period from 1 January to 31 December 2015. I would also like to point out, again with reference to the same office, that on 16 December last the company presented an application for access to treatment of wage integration for the period from 18 January 2016 to 17 January 2017, following the signing of a solidarity contract. In fact, this application is currently in the preliminary investigation phase. With regard to the problems reported by the honorable interpellants, a meeting has been convened at the Ministry of Economic Development regarding the situation of the Gepin Contact company for 9 February next, therefore within days. Lastly, in highlighting the relevance of the matter in question and in representing that to date no instance of evaluation of the corporate situation in question has been submitted to the Ministry that I represent, I can however assure as of now the willingness to evaluate any future developments of the employment situation by possibly putting in place, where the conditions are met, all the income support instruments envisaged by current legislation.
