That PNRR promises a digital revolution that modernizes the country, including in the direction of a “simpler public administration”. Until 24 June, schools will be able to participate in 2 Notices funded by the Plan with reference tocloud-enabled and implementation of sitesareas which in many respects represent the basis of the digital strategy in the ongoing cultural transformation.
A change that has come to one maturation point where the concepts of accessibility, security, transparency, simplification, recycling must – finally – be put into practice, in order to avoid overturning the preconditions of democratic openness that animated the intentions of the founders of the Internet and the creators of the Internet. .
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The two notices intended for educational institutions
With regard to the two communications intended for educational institutions, a first aspect which is obvious and yet important to emphasize is that they are addressed to schools and thus to citizens. The more than 8,000 schools that PNRR envisions on national territory actually represent an audience of diverse users, which includes workers and citizens: school staff, parents, teachers, students.
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The digitalisation of public administration in schools represents a goal that meets different needs for simplification, accessibility, transparency, which must be pursued jointlyto avoid the same digitization being translated into a procedure (perhaps new), but without meaning and poor in content, both for school staff and for citizenship school users.
For the first communication, schools may participate “in the implementation of a cloud migration plan (including assessment activities, migration planning, execution and completion of migration, training) of the administration’s databases and applications and services”. As clarified in the Communication, “all services provided in all their forms by the individual entity” may be subject to migration to qualified cloud platforms or appropriate PA infrastructures. Depending on needs and requests during the application, the migration is expected from 3 to 23 services.
The Communication “Citizens’ Experience. Scuola April 2022”, on the other hand, aims to improve the experience of online public services within a broader objective, which in PNRR covers the various sectors of public administration.
In this case, the schools are applying for implementation of a standard website model for school communities.
The communication seems to draw the attention of the various parties involved in the digitization process: to those of the school staff who must develop and keep the school’s digital presence alive, to those who can contribute and identify with it, to the citizens who can, should or will deal with the digital interface to find answers, information and services.
That is why it offers schools a standard but adaptable architecture, pre-packaged and flexible solutions to more easily implement your own website, thus giving “every school the opportunity to concentrate resources on value-creating activities, especially content and teaching”. And therefore also to offer a path to digitization that enables school staff, at the different administrative and teaching levels, to reap the benefits on different fronts.
The investigation that preceded the alarms
The study that precedes the announcements, the results of which are published in support (project sites for schools | Italian schools website) focuses precisely on user experience and highlights, for example, the desire for integration between the various online work environments registered among teachers, who complain about the fragmentation of environments and platforms that have been gradually introduced in the school.
Research predicted desktop and benchmarking analysis, a quantitative phase through a survey and a qualitative study through interviews involving teachers, school leaders, technical-administrative staff, parents and students across the country. Among the various data that the study reveals, some can be quickly recalled as food for thought. For example, the benchmarking analysis carried out on 14 websites of national educational institutions records that in all cases official school documents. Taking the PTOF as an example, in the subsequent qualitative analysis phase, it is noted, however, that although its importance is recognized by all target users, the publishing method is “not very attractive in terms of information presentation”. In general, websites appear “of little appeal to the school community”,
In terms of teachersThe results of the qualitative interviews reveal, among other things, the need to be able to easily receive and consult updates about his professional career, to find and suggest educational and leisure activities, to be able to share activities and experiences with colleagues from one’s school.
For parentsthe need arises to use the services easily, to communicate with the school, but also to be able to consult information, updates, activities that have been implemented and planned, to be able to compare services, methods and objectives for the different local schools.
That student would like a space to promote activities, projects and awards, there are those who feel that they do not feel “represented by the school website” and also would like to easily find teaching material, be updated on activities and tasks in terms of performed, communicate with the class and with classmates.
Between administrative staff, there are those who point out that the amount of inbound communication is too large and difficult to handle in daily life, even in the face of a sometimes low digitization of teachers, which creates difficulties in managing communication. And the goal of a school website that becomes a real reference point for families and teachers, to easily find useful information in real time, remains strong, even for the technical-administrative staff.
Last but not least, two important aspects emerge regarding participation. First, “the school community does not fully identify with what is shared on the school’s website”. The survey further highlights that the identity of the school conveyed by the website should represent the territory and the relationships the school intertwines with it: “almost all users believe that the school website should describe the activities carried out in the area with local authorities , associations and companies. Telling the active projects on the school’s website encourages the promotion of the department to external subjects. Furthermore, it affects the perception of the school’s identity: A school that is not very active in the area could appear as a cold institution ”.
The importance of interfaces in the citizen-PA ratio
The public administration, on the spot and online, represents to the citizen the meeting place with the state, an interface that mediates access to its function and enables the use of the services it offers. Modernizing and streamlining public administration is a goal that involves digital opportunities, as has been clear for decades, and which draws attention to dissemination of digital interfaceswhich conveys our relationship to technological systems, in the interaction with the various units.
The comprehensibility and immediacy of use occupy a priority role, as noted by design researchers, and as evident in practice for anyone using digital systems. The interface has the task of mediating between the parties (citizen-state, user-technology) and getting them to communicate. The opening hours of a public office in the area, the availability of employees to provide information, the clarity and completeness of the same information, the ability to easily retrieve them and the ability to perform operations in a streamlined and fast way are some of the requirements that they restore the citizen’s satisfaction with the experience of using a public service.
In the digital system, the design of the system of codes and rules defines the methods of relations between the parties, for access to content, the typology and the wealth of resources it offers. Even more than in the territorial offices, the possibility of immediate retrieval of information, the simplicity and clarity, the speed of the operations to be performed, restores for the citizen the image of efficiency and satisfaction in relation to the public administration.
Trust in the methods of conservation, collection, treatment and management of personal data that we transfer, by filling out a paper form or in our digital action, is the additional and fundamentally implicit assumption that we as citizens need in our relationship with PA. In the pollution between the physical world and the digital world in which we are immersed, the handling and preservation of data becomes a central issue, the value of which becomes all the more amplified the greater the amount of bits that convey our very existence and methods of interacting with social reality.
Conclusions
As always, the digital path is a favorably rich path of elements whose focal point remains individuals. Teachers, parents, students, technical-administrative staff, stakeholders and more generally citizens. The perspective necessarily remains multidimensional when looking at different types of users and for their specific needs, design a “school website” as a service area for the citizen and as an environment with cultural and didactic content, sharing and interaction. A space that represents the individual educational institutionits territorial “presence” and its identity, and at the same time that it can be an expression of the Italian school and its role in the growth of the country.
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