Information and Communication Technology and Public Administration: through the Looking-Glass

Many regulatory documents in the European Union regulatory framework itself, in many Member States of the EU, but also outside of the European Union have recently emphasized the role and centrality of digital administration through the use of symbolic terms such as "digital citizenship" and "digital first". But what exactly is a Digital Administration and what does the use of ICT within Public Administration really imply? The implementation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in administrative processes shall indeed render Public Administration more efficient, improving on the one hand the quality of public services provided to the citizens and, on the other hand, decreasing the relative costs for the community : at least in a medium-long-term perspective. These are all very ambitious targets; more so as the perspective is both an organisational and a "relational" one. However my perspective won’t be here the citizen’s perspective. It will be rather - as it is written in the title of my paper - the perspective of a modern Alice walking ‘through the looking-glass’ . Which means that I am going to try and examine a few (and only a few!) potential problems related to the use of ICT, from the perspective (and the point of view) of the Public Administration.