Abstract

The massive spread of new digital technologies has opened a new era, bringing about disruptive innovation for traditional collective actors. While the use of information technologies has been one of the most important instruments of the administrative reforms since the Nineties, it is only in the last few years that the astonishing development of Icts has stimulated the re-elaboration of the role and functioning of public administration at a pace and scale not witnessed before in history. After considering the main drivers for digitalization of the public sector, largely accelerated during the phase of the pandemic emergency, this article will devote particular attention to the spread of the use of algorithms in public action. On the one hand the extreme richness of digital data displays clear benefits in terms of public efficiency. On the other hand, the growing digitization of governmental operations poses a series of vital challenges to the democratic State and its constitutional principles. A problem which is transversal to the different regulatory models is the question of who governs the algorithms, and what is the level of possible political direction of the new processes of automation