Italian CIOs at the crossroads of transformation and sustainability

Digital transformation is a gradual journey, and for many CIOs, becoming more data-driven hinges on how sustainability practices are systematically adopted. As if the constant redefinition of the CIO role wasn’t enough, ESG goals, specifically in Italy, are now irrefutable parts of the job.

“There’s no digital without sustainability, and there’s no sustainability without digital,” says Stefano Epifani, president of the Fondazione per la Sostenibilità Digitale, the first recognized research foundation in Italy dedicated to studying digital sustainability issues. “These are two interconnected issues, because sustainability not only shows how we can use technology to be more sustainable, but also guides the paths of technological development.”

Massimo Bollati, Agenzia del Demanio’s director of digital transformation, is also implementing a more advanced digital transformation of the agency, with a vision of professionalizing and industrializing the agency’s IT and digital capacity while contributing to ESG goals.

Meanwhile, the corporate philosophy of Generalfinance, a financial services company focused on SMEs in difficulty, also combines innovation and sustainability. “Business plans are focused on digital and sustainable transformation to bring us closer to the goal of a data-driven company,” says its CIO, Stefano Biondini.

Planning for the future

Data is the foundation of every business practice, and sustainability helps to anchor it. Agenzia del Demanio, a public economic entity of Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance with an estimated value of €62 billion, began a second phase of digital transformation with a strategic industrial plan, or Piano Strategico Industriale, which includes developing its first ESG sustainability effort, digitization of all core processes, and creation of a program management office under Bollati’s watch.

“In Piano Strategico Industriale, the traditional activity of heritage management and preservation is integrated with innovation, sustainability, and digitalization for the benefit of users, public administrations and territories,” he explains. “The Agency, thanks to the development of city plans, and in collaboration with stakeholders, not only manages but enhances the value of public real estate assets, collaborates with other institutions and private individuals, and communicates with territories to understand the social fabric and impact on resilience. On this basis, the Authority gives new life to real estate, with a pragmatic, digital approach for users.”

Data is needed, for example, to cluster buildings based on their specificities, and decide how to reallocate them. Smart buildings, sensors and building management systems are used to collect such building data, and the IT team starts with quality digital design and management, with building information modeling (BIM) and digital twins.

Bollati’s team also conceived and designed the Piattaforma Integrata del Demanio, a data platform that centers on the digital identity card of the property, and aggregates all the information from different platforms and databases that describe it, from management and administration, to litigation, geolocation, and physical and man-made information about the territory.

“Digital is the implementer of policies to streamline operational processes and management innovations for the entire lifecycle of the property,” adds Bollati. “We have projects for the re-functionalization of buildings and new initiatives relevant to the country, such as the Justice Park in Bari or the military compendium Caserma 8° Cerimant in Rome.”

The implementation is based on a new way of thinking, aimed at tracking objectives and evaluating results through KPIs, introduced by Agenzia del Demanio director Alessandra dal Verme. The agency uses a set of indicators based on the European Commission’s ESG KPIs, and adapted to the real estate world to measure activity impact.

When innovation and ESG come together

Generalfinance’s digital-focused path equally brings together innovation, transformation and ESG, “in the sense of concrete financial support for companies that need liquidity,” says Biondini. “Having defined a comprehensive path over two business plans, we’ve transformed Generalfinance’s operational process in all directions: from product to administration, legal to management, governance to credit. We’ve also adopted new digital management methodologies, including artificial intelligence tools, in areas such as compliance and organization.”

For Generalfinance, the first phase of digital transformation coincided with the release of an ecosystem based on a multi-cloud platform, which improved the customer experience, transformed the company’s operational machine into an end-to-end digital process, and promoted environmental sustainability by reducing the use of printed paper by more than 90%.

In the second business plan, things continued with implementing operational models into data-driven companies, and combining machine learning with decision-making intelligence from humans — another form of sustainability that addresses the ethical impact of work.

“Our path has been developed while maintaining the corporate philosophy of incremental innovation, and with a great awareness that innovation can mean making mistakes,” Biondini says. “Generalfinance has, therefore, created a digital ecosystem it calls EFintecH, where E stands for ESG, and H stands for Human.”

Timelines of sustainable digital transformation

Over in healthcare, sustainability is uniquely nuanced concerning cost management and patient focus.

“For us, the IT strategy to support digital innovation is based on several levels, with a different time perspective,” says Anna Giardini, CIO of private hospital operator ICS (Istituti Clinici Scientifici privati) Maugeri SpA, Società Benefit. “Every day, there’s support for users, who are sometimes disoriented by changes. Think of the patient who has to book or download referrals online, the healthcare professional who has to interface with the systems, or the administrative staff. But there’s also a long-term perspective, where we’re looking at future innovations, such as AI support for procurement or personalized patient management in care pathway.”

In this way, ICS Maugeri’s IT department is working on both adaptation of the new administrative software according to the latest national and regional regulations, and on the patient management processes, including those related to the new computerized medical record. The company has also implemented a digital procurement platform to optimize management processes, and increase traceability.

“The project was initiated to further implement the digital innovation path we’re taking at the group level to make the activities we carry out more effective in 18 facilities and seven regions where we are,” says Giardini. “We assessed the compatibility with our needs, and consequently chose technology partner Jaggaer, which has been offering solutions to support procurement processes for more than 25 years.”

The platform includes a spend management function, critical in healthcare, which evolves rapidly under national and regional decrees and regulations, but where rates don’t evolve at the same speed. “Optimization, rationalization, and efficiency are mandatory actions for corporate sustainability,” she says.

A framework in the making

As in other areas, the EU has provided a regulatory framework on sustainability. This year, EU Directive No. 2022/2464 on the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which promotes the integration of sustainability into business models, began to be implemented.

This new directive affects more companies than the current NFRD (Non-Financial Reporting Directive). With the introduction of the CSRD, the sustainability reporting requirement will be extended to listed SMEs, with implementation starting in 2026. In addition, other companies not included in the scope of the standard will also have to comply, either because their buyers require it, according to the green procurement criteria of the supply chain, or to not be at a disadvantage against more environmentally friendly competitors. 

This expands the pool of organizations that will have to embrace the principle of dual materiality or dual relevance, a new concept introduced by the CSRD, under which companies will have to provide information on both the impact of their activities on people and the environment, and how sustainability issues affect them. In essence, companies will have to make a concrete commitment to integrate ESG objectives into their strategy by situating their business in a broad environmental, economic, and social ecosystem that impacts the business — and on which the business impacts. 

More than green IT

This broad understanding of sustainability changes the role of the CIO.

“It’s just the beginning of the road to digital sustainability, and represents a conservation approach,” says Fondazione per la Sostenibilità Digitale’s Epifani. “Technology is not only a source of emissions, but it reduces the emissions generated by all business activities.”

The paradigm shift occurs when the CIO uses IT to make the entire business more sustainable, interpreting that mission not just as using less CO2, but balancing environmental, economic and social impacts. It also means the digitization of the enterprise is consciously designed and implemented to ensure that digital creates the greatest possible value for the enterprise and its stakeholders.

In this context, Epifani continues, the CIO is one of the key change agents in the sustainability processes, because he or she controls the digital levers that can turn sustainability into an opportunity, overcoming the vision of it as a cost element and a compliance obligation.

“CIOs will increasingly have to integrate sustainability into their role since they are the actors who develop sustainability processes to grow the business,” explains Epifani. “This is why the Foundation has developed the Digital Sustainability Index corporate, which helps companies assess the level of sustainability of their IT. We’ve also developed the first UNI Reference Practice on Digital Sustainability, with 58 KPIs that link to environmental, economic and social sustainability in a systematic way.”

These represent measurable data that provide CIOs and companies with reference points to guide technology implementations from a broad perspective.

Relevance of the CIO

The next phase of digitization is more complex, says Giardini, because gradually applications have to be replaced or upgraded to ensure business continuity, or new processes have to be digitized.

In particular, she emphasizes the importance of business continuity to make the digital transformation sustainable. In fact, ICS Maugeri’s IT department has activated a disaster recovery system for medical records that allows complete patient management in the event of a network outage. But is the role of the CIO itself still sustainable?

“Many chief information officers are confused by the constant changes in their tasks and their professional image,” says Epifani.

Agenzia del Demanio’s Bollati notes that his role in the agency’s overall transformation goes far beyond that, as he’s also responsible for coordinating the strategic plan, the sustainability plan, and the review of digitally driven business processes.

This is a complex but fascinating challenge for a CIO, requiring great flexibility in order to guide users and stakeholders along a path of continuous transformation, on which a company’s competitiveness depends.