Digital Transformation in the Public Sector: A Model, An Agile Paradigm And Collaborative Software

Digital Transformation is intended as the process of integrating digital technologies and solutions into all aspects of the activities of an organization, whether public or private. Here we concentrate on public organizations. Although there is a sizable amount of scholarly and regulatory papers, there are great margins of ambiguity about what it is, which technical contributions Computer Science can give for its success, and which software tools should be used to facilitate that process. In particular, although Agile technologies are perceived as the most suitable for software project management in that area, convincing general approaches to their application in the context of public administrations are missing. The first three parts of this Dissertation address those issues, in a coherent way. The last part offers conclusions and future avenues of research. A highlight of the first three parts follows. Part I. Based on an extensive Literature review, we provide the first model general enough to capture the main ingredients of Digital Transformation in the Public Sector (DT, for short), from a Computer Science point of view. The validity of the model is established through the discussion of DT initiatives implemented by two international cities, i.e., Barcelona and Chicago, in terms of technological, inclusive, and organizational responsiveness aspects. Part II. From part I, it emerges that there are very few examples of Agile project management in the context of public organizations for DT. Based on this fact, the first general paradigm for the adoption of the Agile Scrummethodology in the Public Administration context, referred to as Scrum@PA, is provided. The validity of our Agile methodological proposal is demonstrated by showing that Scrum@IMI, a quite successful Agile methodology developed by the Information Technology Institute for the city of Barcelona, can be aspecial case of Scrum@PA. Part III. From parts I and II, there emerges the need for better collaboration among the parties involved in the implementation of a DT project for Public Administration. Here, we provide a collaborative integrated development environment, referred to as Compositional Agile System, in which the main Scrum@PA professional figures, can collaborate to design and implement digital services that are more efficient, transparent and tailored to the needs of citizens. The validity of this environment is demonstrated by conducting an ex-post analysis of an already implemented Italian digital public service, using the environment as a quality controller of the developed software.