Little is said about it, yet the first 11 decrees of the Madia Law on the reform of the PA could represent an epochal change for the functioning of our public administration. Politicians have not made it a subject of their daily controversies, while public opinion awaits, with some skepticism, the concrete results of the announced revolution. Yet it is a truly important set of innovations. To clarify the many aspects contained in the delegated decrees approved by the Government and which will now have to be examined by Parliament and the Regions in a very short time, we asked the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Simplification and PA, Angelo Rughetti, Pd deputy, former general secretary of the ANCI, to highlight the most important points of the new regulations and what still needs to be done to complete the enabling law.
Let's start from what is not in these decrees, namely the reform of the management which is the fundamental point from which to start if we actually want to make the PA function differently. One of the decrees deals with the issue of Local Health Authority managers by creating a single national register of people who actually possess the requisites to manage a health facility by limiting the arbitrary nature of appointments made by the Regions. Are you thinking of similar rules for management?
“We still need a few weeks to finalize a decree that will have to profoundly change the figure of the manager. In the meantime, a single central register of executives will be set up who will be evaluated on the basis of their professional characteristics and merit. For all the central and peripheral administrations of the State it will be mandatory to choose their managers from this register through a questioning and evaluation by an independent commission. This should reduce the space for external calls, but requires all executives to send a resume and then be judged. And I don't know if all the current leaders will want to undergo this test. Then it will be necessary to change the methods of remuneration based on a fixed table and a variable one, i.e. a position allowance which is linked to the position held and therefore does not remain stable for the entire working life, but can vary according to the position held. The old floating system is abolished and a real management market based on merit opens up. Naturally this will involve weighing the value of each position for variable compensation purposes and this takes some time. But it will certainly be a real change and not just an apparent one. Just as the one decided for the choice of health managers is a real change, accepted in principle by the Regions which therefore will have to strongly limit the subdivision ".
Among the rules contained in the 11 decrees, some of the most important concerned companies owned by local authorities and the organization of local public services. It is a question not only of deforesting the jungle of companies controlled by local authorities, but also to encourage progress towards a more efficient structure of the services which will in any case be provided by the administration. However, there have been several criticisms because it seemed that in the folds of the decree there were various rules that will allow local administrations to continue with their opaque and patronage management.
“It doesn't seem like it to me. The fundamental point of this decree is precisely in the "effectiveness of the rules" that is, in the fact that
a closure of the process of reorganization or sale of these companies owned by local authorities is always foreseen. If the latter do not act (that is, they do not close the useless companies) it will be up to the higher bodies to replace the defaults. As far as local public services are concerned, the rules impose the search for optimal basins for the size of the service, making a clean sweep of the current excessive fragmentation of society in fundamental fields such as energy or transport. It is clear that up to now each entity has wanted to maintain its own small company for reasons of prestige or power, while we have identified the size of the current provinces as the optimal basins. It will be up to the regions to proceed in applying the rule and if they are in default, it will intervene
central state. We are setting in motion a process that will lead to the total transformation of public presence in the area.
I hope that this process can see the active participation of the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti which has been active in this field for some time, and in any case also in this case certain times must be respected ".
Other decrees concern the functioning of the Services Conference, which is often a real "Via Crucis" for a company or an individual who wants to undertake a new business or build a house, and that of the SCIA for which today requests for different types of practices among the various entities in the area.
“The services conference will change profoundly. Meanwhile we reduce the number of participants. There will be only four, one for each level of administration, state, region, municipality, province or other intermediate body. Each representative will have full decision-making powers, including those of changing the opinion of one of the various administrations of his level which must express themselves on the project in question. Furthermore, the times will be limited and the lack of response from an administration counts as approval. We consider that with these changes the maximum duration of a services conference will be 5 months against a current average of 18 months. In short, everyone will have to respond within pre-established times, superintendents included, and in any case silence always counts as assent. Furthermore, the deadline for a change of its original position by a Municipality is set at 18 months, while today there is no time limit with the consequence that a company, despite having obtained the necessary authorisations, can always be subjected to the risk that the Institution that gave the go-ahead, change your mind and then withdraw the concession”.
But will these changes be enough? A basic problem of our PA is that the office should be investigated
for the office to understand if what they do is still useful, and then if "the how" is done meets efficiency criteria or there is confusion of skills.
“That's just what we did with the Wake rules. In this case, in fact, we have identified a big one
number (about 850) of recurring proceedings for which we have decreed the unification of the typologies and forms on all
the national territory. And this after identifying all those current administrative procedures that will not exist in the future
most popular with citizens. And it's not a question of repeating what has already been attempted several times with the one stop shop. In fact, in this case it is not a question of a simple coordination between administrations that each remain anchored to their own times and procedures, but a real change of powers for which a single administration is responsible for everything".
The fact remains that soon, when the decrees will be definitively approved, their implementation will be very important, ie the ability to apply them in everyday practice. In this regard, the forthcoming decree on management seems to me to be fundamental, just as the possibility of terminating the public employment contract by making the most of the professionalism and merit of officials appears to be of great importance.
“Yes, we are discussing the preliminaries of the contract and that is the examination of large sectors which in our opinion should be three but
that the trade unions insist on four (health, school, local authorities, state). On the actual negotiation I wouldn't want that goal
trade unions was to blow up Brunetta's law on the methods of disbursing performance bonuses which, moreover, has not yet
have been rigorously applied. Brunetta had established that employees had to be evaluated up to a maximum of 25%
of very good, 25% of good and 50% of sufficient who would not have received any performance bonus. In order to be effective
implementation of the reform it is necessary instead to confirm the rankings of merit and reward those who commit themselves to the maximum”.
Finally, the controversy over the dismissal of slackers. Above all, are you sure that without the intervention of the judiciary the documentary evidence can hold up in a possible trial?
“Our rules are especially aimed at executives who will be severely penalized if they let it slide in front of
cases of clear violations of work commitments by their employees. As for the admissibility of evidence (such as video surveillance), there are new rules in the delegated decrees of the Jobs act. But we are seeing that the first applications of these rules are not satisfactory and therefore we will see if it is necessary to make some further modifications to make them effectively binding".
