Spending review: precisely on the spending review, the government aims to recover the resources necessary to "cover" the interventions it intends to initiate. In reality, spending reviews have been talked about for almost a decade, since 2006 to be exact. With results, in terms of cost savings, that are anything but exciting.
The spending review was introduced on an experimental basis in Italy by the Finance Law for 2007 (Law No. 296 of 2006), which assigned the Ministry of the Economy and Finance the task of setting up an extraordinary multi-year program of analysis and evaluation of the central government expenditure. The program was made permanent by the Finance Law for 2008 (n. 244 of 2007) which also established the obligation for each Minister to send to Parliament, for examination by the Parliamentary Commissions, by 15 June each year, of a "Report on the state of expenditure, on the effectiveness of the allocation of resources and on the degree of efficiency of the administrative action". The quantitative and qualitative expenditure review process was further strengthened by the law on public finance and accounting (Law No. 196 of 2009).
We then arrive at 2011, with the legislative decree n. 123 which further extended the scope of application of the expenditure analysis and evaluation activity, also placing the focus on monitoring the effectiveness and efficiency of administrative action for the purpose of defining expenditure requirements. Two decrees also intervened on the matter in the same year. One, in particular (Decree No. 138) imposed the obligation for the Minister of the Economy, in agreement with the Ministers concerned, to present to Parliament by 30 November 2011 a program for the reorganization of public spending. Well, this program was not implemented, but some of the aspects that it should have addressed, such as, for example, the identification of any critical issues in the production and provision of public services, were taken up in the "Giarda Report".
Here we are in 2012: in May, the Prime Minister issues a Directive governing the contribution of central administrations to the achievement of an expenditure reduction target of 4,2 billion euros for 2012 through a reorganization of the activities aimed, among other things, greater efficiency in the provision of services, with the consequent elimination of waste, and the definition of priority lines of action and the consequent elimination of the others. A new spending review cycle was launched with decree no. 52 containing "Urgent provisions for the rationalization of public spending". On this occasion, Enrico Bondi was identified as the extraordinary commissioner who then elaborated an analysis of the expenditure for intermediate consumption of Regions, Provinces, Municipalities, Universities and research bodies in order to derive indicators of inefficiency to be used in formulating hypotheses for reducing expense.
This brings us to 2013: the quantitative targets for spending savings deriving from the review were set on the basis of the provisions of the stability law for the three-year period 2014-2017. In particular, the overall cost savings target was quantified at 32 billion in the three-year period 2014-2016 in a joint press conference by the former economy and finance minister Fabrizio Saccomanni and the extraordinary commissioner Carlo Cottarelli. And now here we are with the new counts and new spending review hypotheses.
