(Finance) – “The pandemic has shown in a dramatic way how much activities of public administrations, starting with those related to health protection and welfare policies, depend crucially on the quality of public employees. Human capital represents the real critical node of the country, from health to environmental protection, from the training system to social services. This reality is confirmed in the implementation of the PNRR which urgently requires targeted technical assistance support to administrations for the more complex operations of implementation of the plan, such as the preparation of calls for tenders for the assignment of the works and services provided for by the various missions, the planning of direct interventions and the management of investments over time. An activity that is all the more delicate when these interventions are implemented with forms of public-private partnership. The need for assistance is particularly evident for small administrations and small municipalities, many of which lack the necessary technical skills “. Tiziano Treu, president of the CNELanticipating the contents of the “2021 Report to Parliament and the Government on the levels and quality of services offered by central and local Public Administrations to businesses and citizens”, edited by Cnel, which will be presented tomorrow, Friday 22 April 2022 (10.00), in Rome, at the headquarters of the CNEL (viale Lubin, 2 – parlamentino room). They will speak at the presentation Renato Brunetta, Minister for Public Administration; Alessandro Geria and Efisio Gonario Espa, Cnel directors; Barbara Fabbrini, Carla Collicelli and Emanuele Padovani, rapporteurs of the document. The presentation of the Cnel project for the creation of a model for the measurement of public servicesintroduced by Mauro Nori, general secretary of Cnel and illustrated by Lucia Biondi, Roma Tre University; Stefano Pozzoli, Parthenope University; Americo Cicchetti, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan.
In detail the Relation photograph the situation of Italian public services and is written with the contribution of 38 institutions and 98 speakers. It is divided into 4 chapters: “Public Administrations, the fight against the pandemic and the economic recovery”; “Central Public Administration Services and implementation of the PNRR”; “Cohesion policies, the exit from the emergency and the development of the country”; “Local Public Administration services and an appendix with the analysis on perceptions relating to the quality of public services conducted by INPS in 2021”.
The main criticalities on local public services – “If Italy has recovered a lot compared to 2019 on health, the environment and the digitalization of national public services, many critical issues remain on local public services. 54% of the municipalities of the regions with ordinary statute remain for example, it has levels of social services below the objectives set by the new measures, many of which are small municipalities (less than 5 thousand inhabitants) and in the southern areas. daycare service continues to be the black shirt of our welfare system: they are provided only by less than half of the municipalities of the regions with ordinary statute, but it is also true that in various regions the private component is particularly and historically present. Therefore, the average coverage rate of the service (users / potential demand) in Italy plus Sicily and Sardinia is equal to 25%, but with significant differences, from a minimum in Campania to 9% to a maximum in Lazio at 38%. The medium-term objective is that of a coverage rate of 28.88%, and 33% in the long-term. The post-pandemic requires a profound rethinking of these services and their better distribution. Local authorities are also struggling on digital services. Despite the efforts to tackle the pandemic by focusing on digitalisation, only 28% of the entities are operating at the highest level. The spread of the SPID system – Public Digital Identity System is around 30% in municipalities, provinces and healthcare companies; PagoPA, that is the digital payment method to the PA, has reached a very high diffusion, over 90% in 2021, with some delays concentrated in the South and islands sector and in the Municipalities with less than 60 thousand inhabitants. A fact that is confirmed byimplementation of the PNRR by local authorities: 54% of municipal administrations are wait-and-see, they have shown little reactivity and readiness to change behavior in a new situation, accumulating resources in a period in which they could more properly (should) have implemented anti-cyclical measures by spending the resources accumulated over time. In 42% of municipalities, the current expenditure induced by PNRR investments could cause difficulties in the structural balance of the budget; half of 42% of the entities with possible difficulties in balancing the current account (19%) also have lower levels of efficiency which nestle above all in small entities “.
Digital Revolution – “Digitization represents – underlines the CNEL – the greatest challenge, together with the environmental transition, for the central and above all local PA. The necessary innovation does not only concern the application and use of digital tools, but their implications and repercussions on the organization of offices and work; still upstream it postulates a change in the culture and in the languages of public operators, as well as of citizens.Pact for the innovation of public work and social cohesion ‘ it represented a particularly significant step, confirming the desire to recognize the role of catalyst for the development of the country to the Public Administration and staff involved. Connectivity has increased both the level of coverage and the spread of networks; but important investments are still required in the sector. Good performances come from SMEs, which have reached a level of digital intensity above the European average. But delays still remain to be made up with respect to European standards in the various applications of digital technologies, starting with the interoperability and management of databases and information systems, up to the overcoming of the digital gap by public operators as in Italian society itself. If the construction of the Italian PNRR has been conceived in a largely centralized way, its implementation can only be decentralized; it will have to involve the responsibility and direct intervention of all the energies of the country, starting with the public administrations which are invested with essential roles in the implementation of all the main projects of the Plan. According to Cnel, the node no longer resides in the mere availability of IT resources by the administrations, be they hardware or software, but in the insufficient integration in the IT procedures used to offer on-line, for example in terms of connection with PagoPA system “.
Delays in simplifications – “Among the most difficult challenges that our public system is facing in implementing the PNRR – highlights the CNEL – is the simplification of complex legislation and the myriad of administrative procedures necessary for the implementation of programs and interventions. That of legislative and procedural simplification is a question as old as it is still largely unresolved. The interventions repeated recently with various government decrees have addressed the issue in an innovative way and have brought elements of simplification in many critical procedures also for the implementation of the PNRR (in terms of tenders, authorizations for the execution of public and private works ). But the task of simplifying and speeding up without affecting the rules necessary to guarantee legality and safety is difficult and is not yet completed. Procedural and in some cases regulatory obstacles still persist which hinder the implementation of important works and services “.
Health and wellness – “The anti-Covid-19 choices have continued to affect the entire articulation of health policies. 2021 confirmed both the good quality level of Italian healthcare compared to the international panorama in terms of life span and conditions of the elderly with chronic diseases, management efficiency and investments in prevention, and by now historic criticalities of weak public funding, below the European average, the significant and growing weight of private out-of-pocket spending on citizens, and the incomplete compliance with the objectives of equity and universalism, such as the shortcomings of territorial and extra-hospital medicine, the weak socio-health integration and the delays in telemedicine. Even in the case of healthcare, the consequences of the long-term lack of recruitment clearly emerge; as a consequence of this, hospitalization rates and bed places per inhabitant, as well as the availability of nurses, are lower than those of many European countries. As is well known, significant differences remain on a territorial level – continues the CNEL. The negative effects of the protracted pandemic have reverberated on various dimensions of the population’s well-being: health, education-training, work, social relations. This has created a particular pressure on social policies, not only in terms of intensity, but also in terms of the complexity of the conditions to be faced, which call the Public Administrations interested in: more integrated responses starting from the social and health sector; interventions consisting not only of monetary transfers, but increasingly the provision of welfare services; strategies based on collaboration between all institutional actors and economic and social partnerships (eg the new co-programming and co-planning institutes envisaged by the Third Sector Code). The greatest criticalities persist in the assistance to fragile and non self-sufficient subjects. It can be said – underlines the CNEL – that 2021 has changed nothing of what is described in the 2020 Report regarding the condition of individuals, families, residences, care workers, territorial imbalances. It continues to surprise us that phenomena such as caregiving and caring remain out of all the speeches, documents and measures. Both caregivers and carers are predominantly women. The latter are mostly immigrants “.
Separate collection in clear improvement – “They improve indicators relating to separate collection which – CNEL informs – stands at 70.8% in the North, 59.2% in the Center and 53.6% in the South, with peaks of excellence in Veneto, Sardinia, Lombardy and, as regards the large urban centers, Parma, Venice and Milan. On the one hand, in 2020, waste production decreased, albeit to a less than proportional extent with respect to the reduction in GDP, -3.6% (compared to -9% of real GDP), reaching 28.9 million. tons, about 488 kg per capita. The differences at the territorial level are significant. The highest percentage of separate waste collection is achieved, similarly to 2019. Liguria stands at 53.4% (stable compared to 2019), Lazio at 52.5% and Calabria, with a growth of 4.3 points, to 52.2%. Below 50% is only Sicily (42.3%) which, however, recorded an increase of 3.7 points compared to the percentage of separate waste collection in 2019 (38.5%). In this region, in particular, in the five-year period 2016-2020, the percentage of separate waste collection has almost tripled. 54.1%. For Molise and Puglia, percentage increases of 7 and 5.1 points were recorded, respectively “.