1 - The goal of the reform
The restructuring of the public administration is aimed at improving the productivity in the provision of services, the effectiveness and efficiency of the administrative action, also by increasing the qualitative level of the services; redefines, in the interest of citizens, businesses and social formations, the perimeter of the administration's activity, including that carried out through investee companies or instrumental bodies; pursues these objectives in an economically sustainable framework, based on the programmatic stability of financial resources; it ensures the organizational structure of the administration a degree of flexibility sufficient to ensure a timely response to the need for remodulation of expenditure that emerges over time.
Improving the productivity and efficiency of administrative action eliminates bureaucratic obstacles to the development of the company; it produces in itself a reduction in public spending; it dries up the breeding ground for corruption, which feeds on the inefficiency of the administrative apparatus.
Restructuring can set itself the goal of increasing productivity and the quality of services, according to a shared metric that makes the results measurable; reduce the length of proceedings; reduce current expenditure for final consumption by 20% and primary expenditure by 10% (current expenditure net of interest expense), net of excluded transfers, due to the political delicacy of the expenditure objectives (think, for example, to pension or health transfers).
Cost savings of around 60 billion are estimated as a result of the restructuring of the Central Administrations and the main local Administrations (Regions and Municipalities with over 200.000 residents). If the action is pursued with determination, and politically supported with the necessary commitment, Germany's results, in terms of efficiency and spending, are within the country's reach.
2 - The field of action
The intervention pursues both objectives, PA reform and spending review, with innovative methods, suggested by the experience of the productive world and by some successful experiences in the reform of the public sector in other countries.
The two objectives must be connected since they are linked by a close relationship of cause and effect. It is wrong to act only on spending; it is necessary to act simultaneously on the causes that produce the excess, which lurk in all aspects of the Italian administrative apparatus, which is the result of the overlapping of rules from the unification of the country, partly inherited from the pre-existing states. No organic review has ever intervened. Also due to the way in which it has historically formed, the country has to deal with a confused legal system, made up of rules that are not easily interpretable, characterized by overlapping and contradictions, by a plethoric organization, very long procedures, an Administration, its despite, engaged in a myriad of small services, often useless but which absorb a large share of current expenditure.
It is therefore proposed that the revision be general: that is, it should concern all the Administrations with the same method, which are also transversally linked, not only by operational connections, but also by logical and juridical ties. The proposed law also includes regions and municipalities with over 200 inhabitants in the revision, including regional bodies and unlisted subsidiaries. This takes place according to the same principles and purposes, but the discipline respects their autonomy, with the adaptations required by their specificities and by the constitutional provisions.
3 - The logical setting of the reform. Restructuring plans and social shock absorbers
The law establishes that the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the Ministries, the autonomous central administrations, the national public bodies, as well as the local bodies with the specific features of the case, submit restructuring plans to the Government within six months.
The restructuring plans contain an organizational project aimed at improving productivity in the provision of services, the qualitative level of services and at redefining the perimeter of the activity, selecting among the interests surveyed in the first phase, those on which to concentrate activities and resources, in a fiscal sustainability framework. They must also identify the need to adapt the regulatory framework and verify the surplus of the current endowments of personnel, structures, financial resources, with respect to the needs of the service redefined when fully operational.
The law is addressed to the Administrations themselves: only the Managers who lead them know well the labyrinth in which it is necessary to move: without their collaboration no one could set up the work effectively. The vastness of the field of action does not allow delegations to third parties.
Managers, however, cannot be left alone. They need to be helped. The proposed law therefore provides that they are supported by a high-level operational and technically qualified technical unit, which ensures the contribution of professionals who have gained adequate experience in similar processes, in the private sector and in administration, in Italy or even abroad. 'abroad. A specifically established bicameral Parliamentary Commission also intervenes in the proceeding to ensure that the restructuring plans are consistent with constitutional values. (see points 3.1 and 3.3).
The restructuring of the administrative apparatus is thus entrusted to a trinomial, made up of the Administrative Management, the Technical Unit and the Parliamentary Commission, called to pursue the objectives in a coordinated way.
It would be unrealistic to believe that the rational restructuring of an obsolete administrative system can be achieved without repercussions on personnel. Redundancies that emerge must be managed sensibly. From a concrete point of view, the law combines internal mobility solutions, also between administrations and investee companies, and a social shock absorber for the restructured administrations, consistent with the need to rapidly guarantee the recovery of productivity pursued.
4 - The qualifying aspects of the discipline
4.1 - To set up the restructuring on a rational basis, the law provides that the administrations consult, also through telematic channels, the citizens and any other body receiving their services, even within the PA itself, to know the judgment on their own activity; survey the activities they carry out, identify the personnel and resources allocated to them; identify the interests to the protection of which their entire apparatus must be functional; objectively measure their level of efficiency.
The procedure provides for forms of liability, substitutive interventions and automatic sanctions to ensure that the results sought are actually achieved. Rationalization and simplification of the regulatory framework are pursued through the drafting of consolidated texts, formulated according to a unitary drafting style, which the law itself requires.
4.2 – The Technical Nucleus for the Restructuring of the Public Administration, set up by resolution of the Council of Ministers, is made up of jurists, public accounting experts, corporate experts in organization. It is an operational structure. He will not only have the task of supporting the Administrations in the elaboration of restructuring plans, providing a consultancy contribution: he will be called to stimulate change by constantly monitoring the development of the procedure, with suggestions and prescriptions, up to proposing to the Government the appointment of commissioners ad acta to obtain the desired result. The Nucleus makes use of the staff of the Prime Minister's Office.
4.3 – The restructuring plans constitute the executive project of the reform. It is expected to be approved by delegated legislative decrees, to ensure its rapid implementation, which is then immediately implemented. The legislative decrees also approve the new discipline, according to the revision needs that become necessary to achieve the objectives of the reform, indicated by the Administration. In the course of the procedure, the administrations can in any case initiate, with unchanged legislation and with the ordinary tools, the immediately possible interventions. The restructuring of the Regions and of the larger Municipalities takes place according to similar procedures, with the constitutionally necessary adaptations.
4.4 – The law also provides for the establishment of a single Parliamentary Commission for both branches of Parliament. It expressly gives it the task of expressing a judgment - necessarily political - on the selection of interests carried out in the plan, in addition to the traditional role entrusted to the parliamentary commissions involved in the process of issuing legislative decrees.
In summary, the law sets the procedure in two stages. The formulation of the project is entrusted to the internal structures of the PA, to the Technical Unit, to the Parliamentary Commission (a trinomial that ensures, in order, knowledge of the context, technical expertise corroborated by the experience gained on similar projects, political evaluation) ; the approval is left to the Government, which operates with legislative decrees, in fact delegated according to the proposed law. Without prejudice to the possibility of carrying out, with unchanged legislation, the immediately possible interventions consistent with the indications of the project.
Attachments: hypothesis 24 March 2014.pdf
