TRABAJO REMOTO EN LA ADMINISTRACIÓN PÚBLICA: UN ESTUDIO CUALITATIVO EN EL CONTEXTO ITALIANO COVID-19’s impact on organizational and working context produced consequences on employees, employers and companies across the world. The pandemic has certainly modified the quality of life at work of people and has accelerated the use of work from home, often generating confusion and misunderstanding between employees and employers: smart and remote working became daily words, but the consequences of them was not fully considered. Based on this context, this study’s aim was to define, in an exploratory way, potential thematic cores in discussion about smart/remote working. To achieve this aim, a focus group in an Italian Public Administration was analyzed. Participants were invited to describe their personal experiences of smart working during the period of health emergency. Analyses were performed to assess and identify two main principal thematic cores, in which the two meaningful words were “difficult”/ “problems” and “opportunity”. This ambiguity is coherent with the literature on the topic, which considers the experience of remote /smart working as two side of a coin. Indeed, smart/remote working provides at the same time benefits in terms of conciliation, economical and time savings and improved performance, but on the other side produces very important issues related to social relationships, technostress and constant availability to work. Palabras clave Qualitative - Remote working - Public sector ABSTRACT REMOTE WORKING IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: A QUALITATIVE STUDY IN THE ITALIAN CONTEXT COVID-19’s impact on organizational and working context produced consequences on employees, employers and companies across the world. The pandemic has certainly modified the quality of life at work of people and has accelerated the use of work from home, often generating confusion and misunderstanding between employees and employers: smart and remote working became daily words, but the consequences of them was not fully considered. Based on this context, this study’s aim was to define, in an exploratory way, potential thematic cores in discussion about smart/remote working. To achieve this aim, a focus group in an Italian Public Administration was analyzed. Participants were invited to describe their personal experiences of smart working during the period of health emergency. Analyses were performed to assess and identify two main principal thematic cores, in which the two meaningful words were “difficult”/ “problems” and “opportunity”. This ambiguity is coherent with the literature on the topic, which considers the experience of remote /smart working as two side of a coin. Indeed, smart/ remote working provides at the same time benefits in terms of conciliation, economical and time savings and improved performance, but on the other side produces very important issues related to social relationships, technostress and constant availability to work. Keywords Qualitative - Remote working - Public sector