LA FUNZIONE CONOSCITIVA DELL¿AMMINISTRAZIONE PUBBLICA DIGITALE: LA CIRCOLAZIONE DEI DATI NELL¿ERA DELLA BIG DATA ANALYTICS

This dissertation examines the knowledge function of public administration in the era of big data analytics, with particular attention to the mechanisms of data circulation within the public sector. Starting from the context of the knowledge society, in which data constitutes a strategic resource for informed decision-making, the research analyses the impact of digital technologies on administrative fact-finding, highlighting how the analysis of large datasets significantly enhances the administration’s capacity to understand complex phenomena and to orient public action according to criteria of greater efficiency, effectiveness, and economy. The study focuses in particular on the relationship between big data analytics and the legal framework governing data-sharing among public administrations. After reconstructing the relevant regulatory evolution, the work shows how the legislator has recognized public information assets as a “system” resource, providing tools to facilitate their circulation within the public sector. However, the implementation framework remains incomplete, especially with regard to the sharing of aggregated and anonymised data for analytical purposes, which largely depends on the autonomous will of individual administrations rather than on a general legal obligation. As a result, a “weak” configuration of the coordinating power emerges, capable of ensuring data exchange only for procedural fact-finding needs, but not for broader and strategic data-driven knowledge activities. The analysis then considers the urban dimension, examining local experiences in the construction of territorial digital ecosystems, where data-sharing platforms are created in the absence of comprehensive legislative regulation and are therefore based on voluntary cooperation. While these practices respond to the information needs of the smart city, they also confirm the structural limitation arising from the lack of a generalised legal duty to make data available for analytical purposes. The dissertation concludes that knowledge activities based on big data analytics, although not always directly connected to a specific procedure, remain functionally linked to the exercise of public functions. They therefore merit inclusion within a “strong” coordination model, capable of recognising the instrumental role of data access also in a prospective and programmatic sense. Such an approach would give full effect to the principle according to which the public information asset is a resource of the entire administrative system, ensuring an exercise of public power consistent with the principle of good administration and with the needs of digital governance.