A system dynamics approach to the Paper ...

A system dynamics approach to the Paper Dematerialization Process in the Italian Public Administration

Stefano Armenia PhD, MBA, Eng. DISP - Dept. of Business Engineering - “Tor Vergata” University, Rome (ITALY) [email protected] SYstem Dynamics Italian Chapter (SYDIC) Email: [email protected] – web: www.systemdynamics.it

Daniele Canini B. Eng. DISP - Dept. of Business Engineering - “Tor Vergata” University, Rome (ITALY) [email protected]

Nunzio Casalino PhD in Business Organization and Information Systems DPTEA – Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche ed Aziendali LUISS University, Rome (ITALY) [email protected]

Abstract The dematerialization problem is still young and hasn’t been well analyzed yet. Its definition is nearly absent in the literature. Nevertheless in some previous studies it has been pointed out that it may provide useful insights for logistic changes into the Public Administration, as also for mental changes at the citizens level. Our goals were to try studying the problem with a scientific methodology, to describe/formalize the underlying structures, the overall system behaviours, processes, stakeholders. Then we gave an interpretation of the not always linear relationships and of the feedback loops among the involved variables, also considering those soft interactions which typically arise in those complex systems connected with social environments and which often are not properly taken into account or even neglected. We thus formalized the available expert studies into a dynamical hypothesis so that, with a systemic approach, we could design a system dynamics model which helped us in validating those hypothesis and in building a useful decision support system, thus providing the Public Administration Management with the chance to make policy analysis and strategic support concerning the issues related to the dematerialization process.

1. Introduction This study has been conducted with the support of the Italian National Centre for the Information Technologies into Public Administrations (CNIPA1 – Centro Nazionale dell’Informatica nella Pubblica Amministrazione – www.cnipa.gov.it ) as long as the problem of dematerialization of paper documents is concerned, which does not only imply dematerializing paper archives but also allowing the whole Italian Public Administration to switch to innovative processes and technology in order to progressively abandon the old paper format for all kind of communications (internal or external) as well as for the official documentation (http://www.cnipa.gov.it/site/it-IT/Attivit%c3%a0/Dematerializzazione/)

A. THE CONTEXT2 Today, the dematerialization issue is identified with the progressive loss of physical consistency of the traditional paper documents archives belonging to the Public Administration and, as a consequence, with the progressive growth in the use of electronic documents, as well as of electronic archives. In the following subsections, we will present some of the main aspects and constraints which sum up to define the complex issue of document dematerialization. 1 The Italian National Center for the IT in the Public Administration - CNIPA (Centro Nazionale per l’Informatica nella Pubblica Amministrazione), acts on behalf of the Italian Ministry Council Presidency in order to put into practice both the decrees of the Italian National Department for the Public Function (DFP), and of the former ministry for the Technological Innovation, with its own independence of technical judgement, as well as administrative and financial. 2 Text “La dematerializzazione dei documenti: idee per un percorso”, (“Document Dematerialization: ideas for a roadmap”) Pierluigi Ridolfi, Coordinator of the Workgroup for the Dematerialization by electronic formats, and component of the CNIPA Administrative Council

2. Legislative constraints on the elimination of papers documents Recently, the former Italian Ministry for the Innovation and Technology has emanated the so called, “Code of the Digital Administration” decree (n. 82, 2005), by which the dematerialization process has been delineated and defined; also, the “Code of Cultural Assets and Landscape”, emanated in 2004 (n. 42, 2004) from the Italian Government helped defining after how long a document has to be considered as an “antiquity”, thus in effects putting severe constraints on the dematerialization of certain old paper documents; moreover, for those issues related to health, state treasury, justice, work, the dispositions issued by the related Ministries emanated their own dispositions which in turn contribute to put their own further constraints on document managements procedures.

3. Storage of substitutive documents Another issue in the dematerialization is constituted by the need for a “permanent storage” of substitutive documents. A substitutive document is the electronic equivalent of a paper document. So the “permanent storage” problem means the drumming up of computer files and the potential need for a format change in the future. This may imply transferring large quantities of data from a certain format or digital support to another, which is not a simple operation since most of the times the transfer of electronic files may result in data loss, which may be quite critical especially in the presence of digitally signed or marked documents. Moreover, some legislative aspects dealing with privacy issues tend to consider the electronic document as less safe, thus advocating for the need of maintaining a sort of original one also in paper format. All this, together with the legislative constraints evidenced in the previous paragraph, leads to the problem of the “Doubling of the Archives”, that is producing an electronic document does not necessarily mean that the paper one may be destroyed for several reasons.

3.1. Procedure for the storage of substitutive documents The mains steps for the permanent recording of substitutive document are defined in the following: -

A scanned image is first saved on an available electronic support. This step has no constraints on the chosen technology nor on the chosen electronic format. The resulting file is thus provided with a time-mark and digitally signed in order to either confirm the date in which such an operation was performed as well as attest the conformity to the original document. o Within the Public Administration, such an attestation is usually provided by one of the Public Administration’s Managers, that is a specific one having the special purpose of using his digital signature device in order to perform this operation. o In the private Sector, if the original documents are non-unique, the attestation is usually issued by an employee which is responsible for the storage process, at the presence of a lawyer, or another public officer.

-

After the “dematerialization” process, or better to say, as just described, the storage of substitutive documents, at every effect of law, instead of the paper document, the

electronic one may be exhibited by means of those consolidated visualizations procedures like displaying it on a screen, print or copy…

4. General Improvements deriving from Dematerialization3 Some of the possible and likely improvements that the electronic format could bring, and some possible recurrent situations within Public Administration, are described below. •

Improvement of the communication between administrations; the short-run communication, would be simplified and totally detectable by the use of e-mail account eventually matched by the use of the digital signature. The saving will turn out particularly effective when it comes to replacing the delivery of particularly important documents “by hand”.

•

Improvement of the internal communications; this consists in the replacement of the paper documents for the internal management by electronic communications, making use of the ordinary and certified e-mail. Most of all, this case concerns those administrations with distributed territorial structure that generally have inner flows with a mass of paper documentation of remarkable formal importance.

•

Creating Portals to spread the information; portals allow the replacement of the managed flows “one to many” today exclusively managed at a “paper” level, where the communication takes place between the Administration and external subjects (employees, citizens and other various stakeholders). Portals can rather support the communication between the external subjects and the Administration, in both directions. They allow citizens and enterprises to consult the state of progress of the procedures with perfect transparency.

The reengineering of the procedures and therefore the replacement of the paper traffic by means of electronic mail, would lead up straight to give birth to documents already in digital size; therefore the advantages would be extended to all the steps of transferring, handling and saving the document. This way, all of the problems relative to the certification of conformity and to the document’s original paper format, as described before, would be removed.

5. Dynamical Hypothesis and goals of this study Our study started from legislative aspects and from those few studies on this subject. However we found evidence in the literature, that some Italian experts derived some expectations around the dematerialization process in the national Public Administration. Thus the hypothesis we wanted to confirm and enforce (also by supporting them with simulation results), were those eventually contained in the so called “White Book on Dematerialization in the Italian Public Administration” These hypotheses and goals are described as follows:

3 Extracts from the “White Book on dematerialization in the Italian public administration” by the InterMinistry Workgroup on document dematerialization by electronic formats..

-

To reach cost containment results before the end of the second year after the start of a massive dematerialization process

-

To model the dematerialization process in the Italian Public Administration, starting from the process analysis up to describing the relationships among the various parts of the system.

-

To analyze and set the model in order to validate the experts results (Early Model simulation) and to provide a decision support tool which may enable in studying and understanding further and future developments in the model/system.

B. CARRYING OUT THE ANALYSIS 6. Systems thinking4 Nowadays, always more often, human beings have to face many problems related to economic, environmental, technical, political, social and moral issues, which most of the times interact or are strictly connected among each other, and which are for this reason often difficult to be clearly identified and isolated, and thus solved. So, the particular need for a methodology which may help in addressing these structured problems, due to the complex relationships among them, becomes particularly evident. This is however not a simple step to undertake, since deep in our mentality is the mechanic approach to problem solving, which most of the times implies at first a decomposition of the problem into smaller issues and then a linear solving of those smaller “linearized” problems. By doing so, the understanding of the Whole passes through the understanding of its single parts and of their properties. The risk of such an approach is that we may not grasp the underlying implications intrinsic in the “big picture” understanding. “The art of the systemic thought consists in seeing through the complexity, up to the structures below that provoke the change […]”5 . Generally speaking, a reading at a conceptual level is generally advised in order to identify the complexity of a system, to understand its behaviour and possibly to foresee its changes; this may be accomplished both by beginning with the analytic observation of every single event, and up to observing, at a metaphysical level, the forces that act on it from the outside. This dualistic approach can be seen as a two-ways one (from the particular to the universal and from the universal to the particular) and it is helpful when accurately analysing systems with a deep insight but also when going down to take corrective actions in order to solve eventual problems. Thus, since the systemic structure underlying the problem of dematerialization appears to be quite complex, and because of the relevance of this innovation, which puts in relation also many different stakeholders, we decided to recur to a systemic approach, and in particular to System Dynamics. This choice according to us has revealed itself to be essential in order to succeed in first understanding the root causes of actual behaviours, and thus the relationships among the different parts of the system, as well as also important in revealing where and why the most important

4 5

Extracts from the INTEGRA eLearning module “Systems Thinking” (http://odl.casaccia.enea.it/). P.Senge - The Fifth Discipline - Sperling & Kupfer.

changes may take place and thus, in the end, understanding which variables makes the system sensible to disturbance/variations in input.

7. Causal maps A causal map is basically an oriented di-graph G (V,E), where the vertex set V represents “parts” (or variables) of the system, and the edges set E represent effects (positive or negative) that a particular variable causes on the next linked one. A causal map, also called as conceptual map, shows the main cause-effect relationships in terms of mutual influence, either positive or negative. The algebraic sign shows either the direct (positive) or inverse proportionality (negative) between each couple of elements which are put into a certain relationship in the model. The value of a causal map is mainly a conceptual one, even though it may help in identifying at a qualitative stage some important archetypical structure and thus some typical expected behavior. Moreover, cycles which appears in the graph G are called causal feedback loops, and they may be of two types, Reinforcing Feedback Loops (tend towards instability) and Balancing Feedback Loops (which tend instead towards stability of the system). We thus developed a causal map of the dematerialization system by first analyzing the problem of the Adoption and Diffusion of a New Technology, basically making use of the Bass model (effective adopters of the new technology grow in number since they tend to spread into the relevant population and thus the “epidemic” contact becomes more and more likely to happen). We introduced also some aspects like the word-of-mouth effect as well as the influence that a marketing campaign may have. We also introduced an abandoning rate from the new technology, that is those users who are Unsatisfied with the New technology and thus revert to the older one, We didn’t however explicitly consider those who “jump on the next innovation curve”, since we neglected their influence for the scope of this work. We also analyzed the influences that an electronic document average costs have on the diffusion of the new technology, with the assumption that a wider diffusion of the new technology would in the (not so) long run pull down the document production costs, then again allowing for a further positive effect on the technology diffusion. At last, we also introduced some other issues acting in the system, like the “saving of paper” (in terms of “kg”) and “occupied storage volume” (in terms of cubic meters).

This is the resulting casual map:

+

Total Volume of Paper Environmental Advantage

AVG Cost of Paper Document + -

Potential Adopters

+

+

-

Total Adopters of New Technology

New Technology Diffusion +

-

-

+

Introduction Rate of Paper Documents

AVG Cost of Electronic Document -

+

Dgitalization Average Time

+ Introduction Rate of Electronic Documents

+

-

Advantage Perception + + Internal Electronic Document Flow

+ Word of mouth

Available Documentation

+

+

+

+ + Security of Electronic Document

New digital related sevices introduction rate

+ Learning Curve New Technology Positive Negative

Figure 1. The Causal Map

The causal map of the relationships which act in the system has been kept minimal for the scope of this work even though the relations among the variables have been validated by CNIPA experts as well as it has been found evidence of such relationships in the relative literature (dematerialization and system dynamics)

C. THE MODEL Starting from the causal map, we proceeded on to building a stock and flow model, that is a system dynamics model. The main SD “building blocks”, or elements, like stocks/level, flows, rates, auxiliary variables and constants, all contribute to build the “world” around the processes concerning document elaboration both inside and outside the Public Administration, thus making it possibile to formalize quantitatively the interactions between PA and Citizens, and, after the simulation of the model, to immediately visualize and understand those problems which may arise over a certain time horizon. Over a 10 years period, we simulated several scenarios by trying different policies for the introduction of the digital document format. The several simulation runs have allowed us to first

draw some realistic conclusions on the values of some parameters of the system, and then to validate the robustness and the reliability of our dynamical hypothesis as well as to check if they were well founded, since they were drawn by the experts expectations.

8. Goal Identification Since, as said, there is still a certain lack of analytic studies on this topic, we haven’t explicitly considered any particular constraints on the involved processes; this has allowed us to freely concentrate on understanding the dynamics of the system and on the interpretation of problems that may arise, by paying attention to the obtained simulation results. Also, even though some minor data were missing, all the input to the model has been team-discussed and validated together with CNIPA experts before introducing them into the quantitative model. An early goal has then been that of modelling and reproducing the behaviour the real involved processes as closely as possible, also by taking into account those likely evolutions which are typically found into the problem of document dematerialization as well as the introduction of documents in electronic format into the system. Moreover, another aspect that brought us to build a first model of the system by resorting to a systemic and dynamic point of view has been the fact that, having the issue not been extensively studied until now, the observer/analyst is generally fully involved into the analyzed problems, thus being sometimes unable to fully distinguish symptoms from real causes. The following goal has been that of simulating such an early model in order to obtain some useful results in order to analyze the behaviours of the system and then understanding those high gain structures on which to act so as to drive the evolution of uncertainty towards ideal behaviours. We were able to do this also by means of some optimization tools which are part of the used simulation software suite.

9. Model Description The model basically describes two main processes. The process of technology adoption which puts in strict relation the Public Administration and its Customers, the citizens, and the process of real document dematerialization, which consists in the transformation of paper documents into electronic ones as well as the introduction of documents directly into electronic format. Cost relationships, as already said, are taken into account so as to eventually justify the growth in the adoption of the new technology as well as its abandoning.

As shown in Figure 2, the first sub-model basically reflects the process of technology adoption by means of the Bass-model6 structure:

Exit Rate Unsatisfied Adopters Inizialization

Unsatisfied Adopters

Advertising Effectiveness Contat Rate

Importance of Technology

Word of Mouth Effect on Adoption Rate

Marketing Effect on Adoption Rate Importance of Quality

Total Population

Approval Fraction

Potential Adopters

Actual Adopters Epidemic rate Constant Epidemic Rate

Total Population

Actual Adopters Inizialization

Custom Utent Rate Digitalization Rate Managed

Avg Number of docs produced per person

Figure 2. The Adopters World

Potential Adopters belong to the class of those users still using an older technology (in this case, paper documents). This level is depleted by means of an actualization (or epidemic) rate, thus incrementing the level of Actual Adopters, which represent those users “converted” to the new technology (which basically makes use of electronic documents). We also introduced a level to take into account those Unsatisfied Adopters, that is those converted users which after a while decide to abandon an innovative technology, either to revert to the older one or to jump on the next technologic paradigm. We didn’t consider the latter possibility, thus in the model, those adopters which drop off the electronic format, completely revert to the use of the older technology. The abandoning rate has been defined as a constant also likely to be influenced by Customer Satisfaction. 6

Bass Model

Nt = Nt-1 + p(m – Nt-1) + q(Nt-1/m)(m-Nt-1) where: Nt =Actual Adopters at T; m = Potential Adopters;; p = Adoption Probability; q = External influence probability.

Another aspect of main relevance is the epidemic rate, which has been modelled as the linear combination of two functions: the first, on the PA side, which is mainly due to marketing campaigns and to investments in quality and technology; the second is concerned instead about the effects which mainly derive from the “word-of-mouth” among the people which are part of the system. An opportune weighted sum of such functions determines the switching rate to the new technology (measured in usr/yr). As shown in Figure 3, the second sub-model depicts instead, as said, the “Document World”, that is the documents state transitions from paper to electronic (measured in doc/yr). Archive of Documents which cannot be put into Electronic Format

Percentual of digitalization

Paper docs Archiving Rate

Total of Documents potentially put into Document Electronic Format Generation Rate

Electronic Archive Digitalization Rate

Number of annually introduced Paper docs Avg Number of docs produced per person

Actual Adopters Number of annually introduced Electronic docs

Introduced Electronic Rate

Figure 3. The Documents World

The Overall Document Generation Rate is defined as the sum of the paper documents produced by users (Potential Adopters), thus constituting an input to the PA World, plus the electronic documents produced by those users who have already adopted the new technology. In the model, as it can be seen from the previous figure, we split these two flows into two relative subflows.

The paper document input flow thus accumulates over time into the stock representing documents which can be potentially converted into electronic or digital format, which in turn is depleted by two outflows representing archiving processes, one for the paper and one for the digital documents. The Paper Documents Generation Rate is positively influenced by users who, as already said, make still use of the old technology plus those unsatisfied users which have reverted to paper formats. For length reasons, we won’t delve in this paper into further details on cost functions or on typical soft effects like Word-of-Mouth or Customer Satisfaction, which, moreover, for simplicity’s sake, have been kept very simple in their definition or curve shape.

10.

Our Case Study

In order to experiment with the model, we have had access to data on an aggregate national italian scale; specifically, we considered the document management problem that the Italian Local Public Administration (Local Government Units - LGU) is today facing.

10.1.

The Context

The overall quantity of documents yearly introduced in the system (that is, generated), without loosing in generality, has been considered constant throughout the simulation. In particular, the data provided by the CNIPA is reported in the following table: Table 1

7

Number of documents in 2004 (millions) 7

46,4

Average number of pages (per document)

3

Average number of copies (per document)

5

Average Needed Archiving Volume (pages/m3)8

20.000

Average Number of Needed Containers

543.750

Average Price per Container (eur)

2

Yearly Rent per square meter (eur/m2)

60

Number of “internal” transmissions/doc.9

2

Number of external transmissions/doc10

1,5

Estimations based on data from a 2005 survey. In boxes having a volume of 0,064 m3 A container box of 40cm*40cm*40 cm is thus an optimized package with a capacity of 48 liters. 9 Internal to the Generating Public Administration. 10 Towards other Administrations or externally 8

Cost per copied page (eur)

0,02

Manhours per internal transmission (hrs)11

0,10

Manhours in order to prepare external transmission/to receive (hrs)12

0,50

Transmission Net Cost (eur)

3,00

Cost of manyear (eur) 13

25000

Total Net Archiving Volume (m3) - (40% exploitation)

87.000

10.2.

First Results

The simulations of the early model produced some preliminary results which were then used to set the initial parameters of the Bass Model. These were obtained by iterating simulations through several runs in which the relative variables were each time combined with a different (reasonable) value. Our interpretation of the results has thus allowed us to determine the range of three among the main variables involved, which specifically are: -

adoption fraction 2,5 %– 4 % (max 5%)

-

contact base rate (50% 60%)

-

marketing effectiveness 3%- 5% (max 7%)

By correctly setting the input values of these endogenous variables we have thus bound the following simulation runs more tightly to the dynamics of the system, and in particular to those of the users behaviours.

11.

Policy Analysis

The following step has been that of carefully identifying, also with the help of some experts of this subject, those management leverages on which the Public Administration may act in order to develop those policies, by means of which it will possible to drive the evolutions of the system. The two main identified leverages, after some sensitivity analysis and after a tuning of the model, were:

11

•

the Digital Document Generation Rate: this is influenced by variables like the Quality Level (intended as the saving of time in order to record the document, to search and retrieve it, to safely archive it) and the savings obtained on the average cost of a digital document, in comparison with a paper one.

•

the Marketing Expenses: this is directly influenced by the PA, which can act on this leverage in order to try to drive the adopting dynamics

Transmit and receive Transmit and receive 13 Cost per hour. 12

11.1.

Digital Documents Generation rate

By trying to improve quality (which depends on the aspects previously identified), the PA will be able to establish a positive feedback loop on the attitude towards the use of the electronic format, while at the same time establishing a balancing loop on such attitude because of the increment in the costs sustained to switch to a new technology

11.2.

Marketing Effectiveness

Such a policy variable has been designed and adapted to our model by carefully studying the dynamics as described by the use of the Bass Model and by integrating simulation results of the early model with the sensibility of the modellers and the knowledge of experts of this sector

12.

Simulation Results

The positive impacts of investing in quality has started to become evident approximately at the beginning of the 10th month of simulation, and converges at the desired value between the sixth and the seventh year of simulation (carried out over a 10 years period). Before the 10th month, the negative contribution is mainly due to the fact that initial investments in quality and an initial increase in the cost of production of electronic documents provoke and intrinsic increment in the average costs of general document production, thus also generating an intrinsic delay in the adoption of the new technology since the first perception of the users is negative because of the increment in the costs, and only after a while, the marketing stimulation effects start to be evident, also because the effective adopters start to sensibly increment in quantity. In fact the epidemic rate has its peak around the second year of simulation. A general equilibrium is thus established around the third year. These results are totally consistent with the expected results shown in the “White Book on Dematerialization in the Italian Public Administration, by the Inter-Ministry Workgroup for the dematerialization by mans of electronic formats The starting goal of creating a simulation model able to describe the organizational and management structures, as well as fit the behaviour of the as-is system, has then be reached. Moreover, data obtained by the optimization have produced quite convincing results, even superior to those expected (though to be taken as a first mathematical and dynamical interpretation of the dynamics of dematerialization), thus generating an added value to the organization which initially committed this study (CNIPA). Such an added value, again, is that of having a model which correctly depicts the behaviours of the various processes by systemically taking into account the dynamics of the involved structures. In order to prove these results, also a graphical interface has been designed, that is an interaction tool capable of customizing input data (though constrained to the identified feasible ranges) in order to provide the chance to experiment with different what-if scenarios. Several aspects have been then made customizable, allowing the decision-taker to experiment with different geographical dimensions (at local, urban, province, region or country level) in a simple and intuitive way. The “world” may thus be defined by initializing the desired parameters also in terms of costs and several other aspects.

In the end, the model created provides both a careful reconstruction of exogenous and endogenous dynamics in the process of dematerialization which is actually carried over into the Italian Public Administration, allowing to examine the behaviour of the overall system and understand the structures which enable such dynamics; in other words, it has allowed us both to understand the root causes of the identified dynamics as also to identify those high leverage structures which enabled us to build a decision support system that will allow the decision maker to experiment with the model and try to anticipate possible evolutions of the dematerialization process, and also anticipating its possible risks and advantages. Some of the obtained results have been expressed in the following graphs, in a time window of two years, which is a sufficient temporal horizon that allow us to derive significant knowledge by examining the behaviours of the variables at play.

Effect of Quality on Adoption Rate 0,05

%

0,00 -0,05 -0,10 1 ge n 2007

1 gen 2009

1 ge n 2011

1 gen 2013

1 ge n 2015

1 ge n 2017

Years

Figure 4. Effect of Service Quality on Adoptions

We can observe the initial fall due to the investments in quality. These costs actually act negatively at the beginning before the effects of the newer technology start to be perceived as positive, thus affecting positively the adoption rate rather than only the negative effects of direct costs.

Effect of Quality on Adoption Rate 0,05

%

0,00 -0,05 -0,10 07

08

09

10

Years

Figure 5. Effect of Service Quality on Adoptions (2 years focus)

On a 2 years scale, we can observe the peaking of the Adoptions between the third and fourth year of the simulations

Epidemic Rate Mil. Users

40 30 20 10 0 01/01/2007

01/01/2009

01/01/2011

01/01/2013

01/01/2015

01/01/2017

Years

Figure 6. Adoption Rate

Si nota la stabilità sistemica alla fine del terzo anno, l’ambiente analizzato ha raggiunto così il suo equilibrio sistemico.

Epidemic Rate Mil. Users

40 30 20 10 0 07

08

09

10

Years

Figure 7. Adoption Rate (2 years focus)

The adoption rate peaks at the beginning of the third year after the introduction of the dematerialization process.

Variable Cost Mil. Euro

€ 150 € 100 € 50 €0 1 ge n 2007

1 gen 2009

1 ge n 2011

1 gen 2013

1 ge n 2015

1 ge n 2017

Years

Figure 8. Variable Costs of Digital Documents Production

Variable Cost Mil. Euro

€ 150 € 100 € 50 €0 07

08

09

10

Years

Figure 9. andamento costo variabile documenti digitali (focus 2 anni)

13.

Future work and developments

By critically analyzing our work, we must say that a further expansion of the model may be carried out by delving more into details; for example, adding significant data on certain aspects like fixed vs. variable costs, may help in better understanding their impact on the average costs of digital vs. paper documents and on the effect that this variation may cause on the adoption of the “digital” technology. Moreover, it could be necessary to define more precisely the digitalization procedure, with particular reference to the problem of the “doubling of Archives”, that is the need for some PAs of maintaining the same documents both in a paper and in an electronic format. This of course adds to the overall system costs as well as it has a certain impact on the delay with which paper archives are effectively “dematerialized”. A last consideration is about the need for further investigating the dynamics which underlay the definition of Quality and on its impact on the attitude towards a “digital world” rather then the more “reassuring” paper one!

14.

Final Considerations

Our analysis allowed us to build a model which has been able to help us demonstrate our initial dynamical hypotheses, thus technically and mathematically validating those expert studies which hypothesized for the PA to reach an added value for the dematerialization process around the end of the second year after the introduction of the “new technology”. Also, particularly interesting has been the evaluation of the quality weight over the epidemic rate, since we were able to define an economic range in which investments in the new technology are reasonable and feasible. In the end, our research provides, at its actual stage, important issues in order to effectively carry out the process of dematerialization into the Public Administration Environment, by pointing out its eventual advantages. Among these, we can surely name: savings on the citizens side (reduction of average document costs), general time saving in managing or producing a document, increment of archiving safety, extreme simplicity and quickness of document retrieval. Along with these direct and immediately quantifiable impacts, it’s also important to take into account the savings in terms of paper production as well as the impacts on the environment.

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2.

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