Among all the euro area entrepreneurs interviewed by the European Union, the Italians are those who have reported more vehemently than others the complexity of the administrative procedures to which they are subjected. Out of ten respondents, nine said they found themselves in serious difficulty whenever they had to apply the provisions required by our public offices.
Between forms to be filled in, certificates to be produced and fulfilments to be completed, our Public Administration (PA) continues to feed the malaburocracy which in our country has now reached a size that is no longer acceptable. The coordinator of the CGIA Studies Office Paolo Zabeo declares:
“The estimate of the cost that falls on our production system for managing relations with the PA amounts to 57,2 billion euros. If we add to these also the non-payments by the central state and the local self-government towards its suppliers - which despite the 12 billion made available with the relaunch decree should lower the stock of commercial debt to around 42 billion - the malfunction of our public sector weighs on the Italian production system for almost 100 billion euros per year ".
These figures confirm that our companies are increasingly crushed by a blind and obtuse bureaucracy and by a bad functioning of the PA that does not seem to be able to redeem itself. Although we can also count on peaks of excellence from our Public Administration that are envied throughout Europe, in this phase of COVID things unfortunately got worse. CGIA Secretary Renato Mason points out:
“The Cura Italia, Liquidity and Relaunch decrees have so far not triggered the positive effects that everyone hoped for. On the contrary, they have generated confusion, disorientation and much irritation on the part of workers and companies towards public institutions. There are many critical points, especially of a bureaucratic nature. Measures that were impossible to manage and comply with have been approved because they are poorly written and difficult to decipher. Certainly they will have been designed with the best of intentions, but whoever thinks of keeping them alive out of this world ”.
Many observers hoped that with the advent of smart working the situation could improve. It seems, however, that things have gone differently. With the advent of COVID, in fact, many civil servants have started working from home. According to a recent survey conducted by the Promo PA Foundation, very worrying results emerged on a sample of 50 top managers in the public sector. Due to cybersecurity problems due to the use of personal PCs and internet connection problems, respondents reported an average decrease in productivity of these workers of 30 percent. If we take into account that before the advent of the coronavirus the average productivity level of our PA was not particularly high, the experience gained in these three months does not seem to have given particularly encouraging results.
Returning to the economic effects of the bad functioning of our public machine, at a territorial level the most penalized production realities are those located in Milan, Rome and Turin.
The CGIA Studies Office has tried to estimate the amount of bureaucracy on companies by province of residence, calculating the impact of value added on the 57,2 billion euro of annual cost estimated by the Ambrosetti Institute. In this simulation, of course, those territorial realities where the concentration of economic activities that produce wealth are greater are penalized.
The province where the annual cost incurred by businesses for managing relations with the Public Administration is higher than all the others is Milan with 5,77 billion euros. Followed by Rome with 5,37, Turin with 2,43, Naples with 1,97, Brescia with 1,39 and Bologna with 1,35 billion euros. The entrepreneurial realities least suffocated by the bureaucracy are those of Enna (87 million euros), Vibo Valentia (82 million) and Isernia (56 million euros).
What are the CGIA's proposals to improve the efficiency of our PA? First of all, we must decrease the rules present in our system. In recent decades they have increased dramatically, as the national legislator has exceeded the approval of legislative decrees which require the subsequent approval of implementing measures to be operational.
Also, it is necessary that these laws are better written, canceling the overlaps existing between the various levels of government, banishing the bureaucrat and imposing periodic monitoring on the effects they produce, especially in the economic field.
It is also necessary to simplify the procedures and introduce very strict subsequent checks, encouraging the mechanism of silence-consent, without forgetting that all public subjects must be digitized, facilitating the dialogue between their databases to avoid duplication of requests that periodically overwhelm citizens and entrepreneurs whenever they interface with a public office.
Finally, the crime of abuse of office must be "decriminalized" which, unfortunately, "dissuades" many public executives to sign, greatly slowing down the disposal of paperwork in construction, urban planning and the procurement sector. On the other hand, managers / officials who behave correctly and make their areas of influence efficient must be rewarded: the increase in productivity, also in the public, must be recognized economically.