Services that serve?

A conversation with the former Head of Design of the Italian Government

Apr 09, 2025

I had the chance to talk with Marco Maria Pedrazzo, former Head of Design of the Italian Government and one of the minds behind Design System .italia, the official framework for designing digital services within the Italian Public Administration.

In plain terms? Design system italia. is the toolkit of guidelines, components, and resources aimed at creating consistent, accessible, and user-centered digital experiences across Italy's 22,000 autonomous public administrations.

In other words, if a school has to build its new website, it just takes those components without reinventing the wheel every time.

You can find its assets on Figma, built to match national design guidelines and easy to use across platforms, or check the Web Development Kits online (and many other resources)

But as Marco pointed out, Design System .italia was just a tool - not the end goal. The real objective of his team was far more ambitious: to build better digital services for citizens.

Our conversation was genuinely inspiring - a reminder that some of the brightest minds out there are working in the public sector.

Marco, who describes himself as a Design Manager (with a soft spot for Management Design), is an architect by training, used to work with Carlo Ratti, and is now bringing his design chops to Pininfarina.

What follows is my attempt to distill the most valuable insights from our discussion.

The Interview

The interview has been conducted in English. For clarity and readability, the transcript has been reviewed and lightly edited.

So, what did you do when working for the Government?

The key thing I’ve worked on is shaping and guiding the creation of Design System .italia. But let’s be clear - it didn’t start with me, and it won’t end with me - some brilliant people were there before me and others are still building great services now.

Where did everything start?

From a simple data: the Italian public sector includes around 22,000 entities. If each designed and implemented its own digital interface from scratch, it would be incredibly costly and frustrating for citizens, who would have to figure out a new system every time they interacted with a different authority.

When the Team di Trasformazione Digitale first started working on this challenge, they had to think broadly. The first step was the creation of a design system and UI Kit, alongside Bootstrap Italia, which provides the code framework. Right after the time extraordinary commissioner Diego Piacentini, when I joined the team, we began assembling a larger team of designers who asked: How do we solve this in a way that scales?

That led to the first iterations of what’s now the Design System .italia, which includes extensive documentation, the contribution guidelines, and has been extensively tested in each component.

Why is it so important that public digital services just work? How are they different from private services both in the building and delivery phases?

Public services exist for a very different reason than private ones. In the private sector, digital products are designed to create engagement, drive revenue, and foster customer loyalty. Public services, on the other hand, exist to uphold rights and fulfill obligations.

Citizens don’t “choose” to interact with public services the way they might choose between different banking apps or food delivery platforms - they have to use them.

That’s why a public digital service should be as seamless and invisible as possible. A well-designed government service shouldn’t require citizens to jump through hoops or learn a new system every time they need to interact with the State.

It should work effortlessly, without friction, because the main focus is not about delighting users — it’s about ensuring they can access what they need without unnecessary effort.

How does this impact the way you build a digital service or product?

The key feature for public service design is openness by default. By law, any technological asset created for public administration must be open-source, for public use and scrutiny. But it’s not just about compliance — it’s about creating a genuinely open design and development process. That means having a GitHub repository, setting up clear contribution guidelines, and building a community around the project.

Then there’s privacy by default: in the public sector privacy isn’t just a feature - it’s a foundational principle.

Similarly, accessibility by default is non-negotiable. Public services exist to fulfill citizens’ rights. If they’re not accessible to everyone — including people with low digital literacy, disabilities, or other impairments — then they’re failing in their mission.

What are the challenges of designing and building technological artifacts in such open and transparent way?

I think the first thing to ask is: What’s the alternative? If public authorities didn’t work in the open, we’d be trapped in a market of proprietary digital tools with high barriers to entry.

Becoming a supplier for the public sector isn’t like entering a commercial market - it involves navigating regulations, procurement processes, and a distinct ecosystem. If we relied on closed systems, we’d be trapped vendor lock-ins, where both institutions and citizens become dependent on a handful of companies.

What I'm trying to say is that the scenario where we don't build open and interoperable is just a non-starter for the public sector.

Take a public school website as an example: why should every school invest time and money to research, develop and test its own web page? And why should a parent learn new ways of interacting each time her kid changes school?

Yet, not only the tech was open but also the process itself. How was it?

We engaged citizens including professionals and non through a multitude of channels (newsletters, LinkedIn, Instagram), asking them for their input on services as well as for their more concrete capabilities and knowledge. And it just happened.

How many people partake? It’s hard to put an exact number on it. We’ve seen contributions from a mix of people — some from within the community who participate in public calls and workshops, and others who contribute directly via GitHub, sometimes anonymously.

The beauty of open-source is that anyone can step in and add value.

But do people really have the time and motivation to contribute?

I think people are in desperate need of purpose. Some might contribute for altruistic reasons, others for personal or professional growth or interests in building a professional network.

But when a government, which has historically being perceived as distant, comes to your city and says, “We’re testing this, and your input could directly shape it,” people engage.

For example, when we tested new website templates for municipalities at an event at Fabbrica del Vapore in Milan, we had 20 participants, including people with disabilities, sign language interpreters, and accessibility experts. It felt great.

Let’s move to the services you built. In “Platformland”, they write that we are moving towards a future in which people’s interactions with technology tend more towards passive and real time, rather than being active and transactional. Did you see it happening?

In the private sector, digital services are designed to maximize engagement. Companies optimize for “delight” because that’s what keeps customers loyal and willing to pay. Now, take money and delight out of the equation. What’s left? A completely different set of design challenges and a higher order of priorities.

As we said, public digital services exist to enable rights and fulfill obligations, so they need to be informational and proactive so that people can be passive.

If social media wants you to spend as much time as possible online, the goal of a digital public service should be to have you there as little as possible to get what your right is.

In other words, the best public digital services are the ones that don’t require interaction at all — they just work in the background.

For instance?

A truly proactive public administration should help people before they even ask.

If someone moves from Paris to Turin, has a child, and falls within a certain income bracket, the system should automatically suggest schools for their child and inform them of relevant tax benefits. Instead of forcing citizens to navigate bureaucratic processes, the government should anticipate their needs and provide support seamlessly.

At the end of the day, public services shouldn’t be intrusive. The government should be as invisible as possible while being as helpful as possible.

So it’s not just about making the government more efficient - it’s about reducing the administrative burden on citizens?

Exactly. That’s the difference John Maeda draws between digitization and digitalization.

Digitization is just turning paper forms into online ones. Digitalization asks: why should a citizen keep typing in their fiscal code when their digital ID already contains all the data the government needs?

Take certificates. Nobody actually wants a certificate — they want what it gives access to. The certificate is just a bureaucratic middleman. So instead of investing in better ways to issue certificates, why not invest in getting people directly to the service?

That’s what interoperability is about: databases talking to each other, exchanging information behind the scenes. In the best-case scenario, digital services disappear entirely. All that’s left is the outcome — what the citizen came for in the first place.

What’s the bigger picture behind all of this?

It’s about rights and duties, not purchase preferences.

Most digital products are optional — you can live with a cheap, basic phone. You might live slightly better with a smartphone. You live even better with the latest, biggest iPhone. But that’s just preference.

Public services aren’t about that. They’re not lifestyle upgrades - they’re rights and responsibilities. And that puts them in a different category altogether. We need to treat them as such when we design digital systems.

They have a higher order of priorities.