The Machinery of Government: Bureaucracy, Automation and Institutional Black-Boxing

This paper examines how the automation of public services is not only a technological transformation but also a deeply institutional and cultural process. While algorithmic governance is often discussed in terms of technical opacity (Pasquale 2015; Burrell 2016), this case study investigating public automation in Italy reveals that the most critical barriers to transparency lie within bureaucratic institutions themselves. Drawing on a constructivist ethnographic approach (Latour 1987; Bijker & Pinch 1987; Christin 2020), the research analyzes how algorithms are adopted, governed, and obscured in the Italian public sector. Through a detailed methodology, the study identifies key sources of institutional opacity – including legal constraints, lack of digital competence, over-reliance on private vendors, and bureaucratic resistance to reform. The controversial Buona Scuola case, where algorithmic teacher assignments led to significant misallocations, serves as a pivotal example of how flawed governance, not just flawed code, undermines accountability. The findings argue that automation in public administration risks reinforcing historical tendencies toward black-boxing – where decision-making processes become increasingly opaque, not due to technological complexity alone, but because of embedded organizational practices. By shifting attention from the algorithmic “black box” to the institutional one, this paper challenges dominant narratives and emphasizes the need for a cultural and structural shift toward meaningful transparency in algorithmic governance (Wieringa 2023; Yeung 2018).