CGIA: Our last PA in the EU

We are desolately last. In Europe, no Public Administration (PA) has such a low level of approval as ours. The data presented by the CGIA Studies Office refer to the sample survey that is periodically carried out by the European Commission among the 27 countries of the Union. From the last survey, held in the months of February-March 2021, some pitiless results emerge; only 22 percent of Italians consider the offer of public services provided by our PA to be “quite good and very good”.
The European average stood at 46 per cent: while in Spain it stopped at 38, in France at 50 and in Germany at 55 per cent. Among the very first positions we see that the third step of the podium is occupied by Finland, with an appreciation of the services rendered by its PA equal to 81 percent. In second place are the Netherlands with 86 per cent and, finally, at the top of the ranking we see Luxembourg with 92 per cent.
Although the downward trend has also occurred in other important European countries (such as Spain, Germany and Austria), Covid has worsened the sentiment of Italians to our PA. If in the sample survey held in November 2019 the percentage of people who were satisfied with the efficiency of the services provided by our PA was 30 percent, between February-March this year it dropped to 22 percent.
The reasons that have caused a worsening of the level of satisfaction of Italians with the quality of the services provided by the "public machine" are, in our opinion, to be found in the events that have taken place in the last year which, in summary, are:

  • the severe delays with which at the beginning of the pandemic refreshments were provided to companies or redundancy payments to employees;
  • the blocks and then the restarts, which took place mainly in remote mode, which further slowed down the judicial activity;
  • the vaccination plan that started with great difficulty;
  • the expansion of response times that has characterized the performance of many local authorities.
  • Lots of taxes, but few services 

If the latest available data tell us that in Europe we are in 6th place in the ranking referred to the tax burden, but last for the quality of the services provided to citizens, there is something wrong. Mind you, generalizing is always wrong; also in our country there are peaks of excellence (health, research, school, etc.) that are not found in the rest of the EU. However, if we pay a lot to have little, this PA must be refounded, not reformed. And anyone who thinks it's just a question of the quality of human capital runs the risk of being wrong. What are the proposals of the CGIA to improve the efficiency of our PA? First of all, we need to reduce the rules present in our legal system. Furthermore, it is necessary that these laws are better written, eliminating the overlaps existing between the various levels of government, banning the bureaucracy and imposing, in particular, periodic monitoring of the effects they produce, especially in the economic field. It is also necessary to simplify the procedures and introduce very strict subsequent controls, encouraging the silence-consent mechanism, without forgetting that it is necessary to digitize all public entities, forcing dialogue between their databases to avoid duplication of requests that periodically overwhelm citizens and entrepreneurs every time they interface with a public counter. Finally, the crime of abuse of office must be reformed again. Despite the legislative intervention introduced by the Conte government, recourse to the "defensive bureaucracy" by many public officials is not disappearing, because the legislative measure does not affect the complaints, which, once presented, require investigations to be conducted. This situation continues to provoke the so-called “escape from the signature”, enormously slowing down the disposal of practices in the construction, urban planning and procurement sector. On the other hand, finally, managers / officials who behave correctly and make their work areas efficient must be rewarded: the increase in productivity, even among the public, must be recognized economically.   

  • With a battered PA, we risk the NGEU money

A weak and unprepared PA is a very serious problem for the implementation of the investments envisaged with the Next Generation EU. In relation to a public work, for example, the ability to design, entrust, carry out and finish the work in an acceptable time is a problem that we have been dragging on in Italy since time immemorial. Overflowing legislation, unnerving administrative bureaucracy and, in many cases, with embarrassing levels of efficiency risk compromising the transfer of economic resources provided by the Recovery Fund. The conditionalities that have been "imposed" on us by Brussels are very stringent. Of the 48 reforms that we will be called upon to implement by 2022, 8 concern the "de-bureaucratization" of our PA: all (5 decrees, 2 proxy laws and a bill) must be approved by the end of this year.

  • Efficiency, but also respect for legality

Also according to the Bank of Italy, the lack of growth recorded in the last 20 years can be traced back to the low level of productivity that characterizes our country. To reverse this trend, the first intervention to be implemented should concern the PA, aiming to improve the efficiency, the quality of the services offered and full compliance with the rules. With regard to this latter element, in fact, the researchers of via Nazionale were able to report that in 2014 55 percent of crimes against the public car were committed in the South, with an incidence compared to the resident population 2,3 times more higher than in the rest of the country. And with regard to the timing of construction of the Italian infrastructures, it was recalled that 70 per cent of the unfinished works are located in the South: a geographical division which only accounts for about 30 per cent of the public works in the country.

  • Record economic and employment numbers 

Although punctuality in the payments of its suppliers still remains an unresolved issue, with its 140 billion euros of orders per year, equal to about 8 percent of the national GDP, our PA is the main customer of an important part of Italian companies. In absolute terms, in fact, the companies that work for state bodies are about one million. Not only. The state machinery is also the main employer present in Italy: in fact, there are approximately 3,2 million employees working in the public sector, one third of whom are employed in the school sector. Finally, we recall that for the functioning of the PA the total annual cost is close to 275 billion. This figure includes expenditure on wages (173 billion) and that relating to intermediate consumption (101,5 billion euros).

CGIA: Our last PA in the EU

| Economics, EVIDENCE 1 |