Abstract
The chapter focuses on the ‘invasion’ of technology into the functioning of public administration and how it affects the ‘political quality’ of its decision-making. The latter constitutes the main source of legitimation of administrative authorities by linking their action to an accountable representative, which is traceable, in turn, to the fundamental constitutional rule that entrusts the government to the parties with the confidence of the Parliament. By focusing on digital administration, the chapter explores new ways of functioning and accountability, and then, of legitimacy of governmental activity as opposed to political accountability. Within this scenario, it discusses how and to what extent e-government and automation are changing both the functioning of public administration and some doctrinal traditional concepts of administrative law.
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Notes
- 1.
See Bromley (2002).
- 2.
Severino (2012).
- 3.
The difficulty to reconcile the political content of administrative decision-making with the constitutional mandate to bureaucrats to be impartial is patently showed by the endless discussion on the extent to which a ‘spoil’s system’ is desirable and lawful in the Italian context. See Carboni (2010).
- 4.
Civitarese Matteucci and Torchia (2017).
- 5.
See at http://www.corrierecomunicazioni.it/pa-digitale/39379_marianna-madia-il-digitale-cuore-della-riforma-pa-basta-indugi.htm (last visited 4 September 2018).
- 6.
Osnaghi (2013).
- 7.
Hiller and Bélanger (2001).
- 8.
Batini (2013).
- 9.
One can find a similar classification in the Guidelines of 2011 regarding how to set up the institutional websites of any public administration issued pursuant to article 4 of the Directive n. 8/2009 of the Minister for the Public Administration and Innovation.
- 10.
Berti (1986).
- 11.
- 12.
Morison (2003).
- 13.
- 14.
- 15.
Koops (2008).
- 16.
D’angelosante (2017).
- 17.
Tat-Kei Ho (2002).
- 18.
Codagnone and Osimo (2010).
- 19.
Keen (2010).
- 20.
‘Monitoraggio dell’attuazione dell’Agenda digitale italiana del Servizio Studi della Camera’, 20 March 2015, n. 159 http://documenti.camera.it/Leg17/Dossier/Pdf/TR0270.Pdf.
- 21.
The main provisions concerning the Italian Digital Agenda can be found in the following law decrees: D.L. n. 83 del 2012 (c.d. “Crescita”); D.L. n. 179 del 2012 (c.d. “Crescita 2.0”); D.L. 69 del 2013 (c.d. “del Fare”); D.L. n. 90 del 2014 (“Semplificazione e trasparenza amministrativa ed efficienza degli uffici giudiziari”); D.L. n. 133 del 2014 (c.d. “Sblocca Italia”).
- 22.
This discipline resembles the Spanish’s one as set up by the Act of Parliament n. 11 of 2007, where a right to communicate with PA through electronic means has been established. See Delgado (2009).
- 23.
See, however, the following section as regards the limitations that EU law establishes concerning fully automated decision-making.
- 24.
Harshly critical remarks are made by De Michelis (2013).
- 25.
Petrakaki (2010).
- 26.
Article 6 of the Directive 2006/123/EC of 12 December 2006 on ‘services in the internal market’.
- 27.
Pollitt (2003).
- 28.
Zouridis and Bekkers (2000).
- 29.
- 30.
Motzfeldt (2017). Denmark is a world leading country regarding e-government and indeed it occupies the first position in the Digital Economy and Society Index.
- 31.
H.M. Motzfeldt, cit., 743.
- 32.
By automated decision-making one means “breaking down a decision to a set of ‘if then’ rules and criteria: a decision is understood as an algorithm (a sequence of reasoning) that selects from predetermined alternatives. An ‘inference engine’ can systematically check whether the condition of a rule is met; if so, it can ‘conclude’ that the consequent of that rule applies” [Le Sueur (2016)].
- 33.
Administrative Review Council, ‘Automated Assistance in Administrative Decision Making: Report to the Attorney-General’, Report No 46 (2004) available at http://www.arc.ag.gov.au/Documents/AAADMreportPDF.pdf.
- 34.
‘Automated Assistance in Administrative Decision-Making’ http://www.ombudsman.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0032/29399/Automated-Assistance-in-Administrative-Decision-Making.pdf.
- 35.
In the report an ‘expert system’ is defined as a “computing systems that, when provided with basic information and a general set of rules for reasoning and drawing conclusions, can mimic the thought processes of a human expert”.
- 36.
Le Sueur, see at note 32.
- 37.
Delgado (2017), at note 4, 287–288.
- 38.
Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation), OJ 2016 L 119/1.
- 39.
The analogous provision in the previous EU legislation (Directive 95/46/EC) has sometimes been interpreted by the Member States as a right to opt-out rather than a prohibition Veale and Edwards (2018), Korff (2002) but the guidelines issued by Article 29 Working Party (A29WP), Guidelines on Automated individual decision-making and Profiling for the purposes of Regulation 2016/679 (WP 251, 3 October 2017). https://perma.cc/ 3X54-2DGC, are adamant in interpreting the provision at stake as providing for a prohibition.
- 40.
A29WP, Guidelines…, at note 39, 399.
- 41.
The provision stems from French law which inspired article 15 of the Data Protection Directive which responded “to fears in the early days of digitisation that automated, and hence potentially inscrutable and unchallengeable, decisions might prejudice access to important facilities such as credit, housing or insurance. In practice, the provision was little known and largely unused” (Veale, Edwards at note 37).
- 42.
It is fitting to note that when automated decision-making is admissible the GDPR (articles 13–15) provides for rights of information and access in favour of the affected parties amounting to “meaningful information about the logic involved, as well as the significance and the envisaged consequences of such processing for the data subject”. Such rights, though, seems to only guarantee general and ex ante explanation regarding “the system functionality, including the general logic (such as types of data and features considered, categories in the decision tree), purpose or significance” but not ex post explanation on the “rationale, reasons, and individual circumstances of a specific automated decision” Wachter et al. (2017).
- 43.
A formidable theoretical challenge lurks here, which revolves around the characters of legal interpretation and whether or to what extent AI can mimic human mind, provided this is desirable. Should not we seek to avoid human bias after all? Normally, however, the interpretation of the legal rules to apply is laid down in the algorithmics and in this way it is still a human artefact in the form of text-oriented, or in abstracto, interpretation as opposed to fact-oriented, or in concreto, interpretation (Guastini 2005). Somehow, the difference between text-oriented and fact-oriented interpretation relates to the distinction between ex ante and ex post explanation discussed in the previous note.
- 44.
See at note 32, 190.
- 45.
What is missing of the ideal Weberian’s bureaucrat is the intimate adhesion to a bundle of values and skills which inform bureaucracy as a profession.
- 46.
Luhmann (1964).
- 47.
- 48.
The point is disputed. Buffat (2015), in reviewing the relevant literature detects tow opposite attitudes. which she labels respectively ‘curtailment thesis’ and ‘enablement thesis’, and calls for more empirical research on the topic.
- 49.
Klapp (1982).
- 50.
- 51.
- 52.
Op. Loco ult cit.
- 53.
Pruyt (2015).
- 54.
Kaku (2011).
- 55.
Delgado, at note 37, 299; Giannini (1981).
- 56.
M Perry and A Smith, ‘iDecide: the legal implications of automated decision-making’ (FCA) [2014] FedJSchol 17, available at http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/FedJSchol/2014/17.html.
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Civitarese Matteucci, S. (2021). The Rise of Technological Administration and the Ragged Route Towards a Digital Administrative Law. In: Sorace, D., Ferrara, L., Piazza, I. (eds) The Changing Administrative Law of an EU Member State. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50780-0_8
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