Simple and fast wages guarantee. A winning project born in EMMAP

If objective indicators for innovation and efficiency that can be perceived by end users exist in public services, simple and rapid use is certainly in the number. All the more so when the services are (rightly) “fatigued” by such an extraordinary emergency as the pandemic is. This is the case with INPS’ CIG services (Cassa Integrazione Guadagni, Wages Guarantee Fund) and the project of radical innovation of the system led by Alberto Dotto, INPS executive and EMMAP - Executive Master in Management of the Public Administration alumnus, which was acknowledged as EMMAP11 Best Project.

Dotto’s project stems from the need to improve the management of unemployment benefit payments. This essentially means giving rapid and error-free answers to provide real and timely financial support to families, especially in times of serious economic and social crises such as the one triggered by Covid-19.

“We aimed precisely at simplifying the application process by standardizing procedures for companies and consultants to access social welfare programs,” Dotto said. “This involved digitalizing the entire process and adopting data-analysis systems to check and process applications.”

Above all, we needed to overcome various “bottlenecks” that slowed down the process, first and foremost an excessively complex system that loaded companies and professionals with a major procedural burden. We also realized - and this is probably one of the keys to the success of the project - that it would not be possible to re-engineer the entire system in this perspective unless all the stakeholders were involved. “It was true co-design,” Dotto underlined. The goal was to create active partnerships to increase stakeholder involvement, especially in the management of the most critical phases, in exchange for trust and collaboration.

The new system provides a unified and modular procedure for all types of benefits, both with emergency and ordinary motives. It can examine applications and give users an answer in a few minutes’ time either reporting any critical issues or allowing for a much faster provision of social security benefits to the remaining candidates when compared to the past. This is possible because the verification and checking stages have been overturned: until now they were concentrated in the final part of the investigation process, at the time of payment of the benefit; now they have been brought forward to the application stage in order to give the user immediate feedback and the opportunity to correct any errors without local Inps offices having to work on this.

“It is a high-impact project digitalizing the procedure in terms of co-production with the recipients, which is the essence of contemporary public services,” said EMMAP Director Silvia Rota. This point is also highlighted in the motivation of the award: “for the relevance of the project in terms of impact generated for citizens and businesses and for having been able to implement field change.”

Dotto himself identified the elements coming from his EMMAP experience: “During the Master, I understood the value of a new ‘agile’ approach to work, with multifunctional groups, and a systemic vision that engages all the stakeholders.” Once again, innovation in public services starts from a shift in perspective, from the administration’s to the citizen’s.



SDA Bocconi School of Management