COMMON TO VOTE:
CAN THEY ADMINISTER?
STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES
in the comparative measurement
of the efficiency, anti-corruption and transparency of the local administrative machine
ADMINISTRATIVE CAPACITY AS A PREMISE FOR GOOD POLICIES IN MUNICIPALITIES
Generally a municipal administration is analyzed for its public policies and not for its administrative capacity. As if good politics could be achieved without an efficient administrative machine.
For this reason, the first concern of a council and a local government should be to report to citizens on the ability of the municipal administrative structure to function.
Does the latter allow you to administer a city well?
What is the state of health of the administrative machinery at the end of the legislature?
And what do the mayoral candidates intend to do to administer better?
In fact, only if the administrative machinery works well can the policy phase be seriously launched: from housing to health, from the master plan to economic development.
It is no coincidence that in recent years the European Union has also reserved funding for strengthening the administrative capacity of the various institutional and territorial levels of its member countries. Capabilities that still today, unfortunately, many citizens continue to ignore, as if the quality of the services they receive did not depend on it.
Fondazione Etica has mapped the efficiency and transparency of the provincial capitals, making use of the support of a synthetic index, the Public Rating, to collect, order and process the information published on the municipal websites, so as to summarize them, make them comparable and, therefore, easily usable even for non-experts.
The Public Rating uses the methodology of the ESG sustainability indexes, used for some time on the financial markets, and makes use of a grid of indicators constructed on the basis of the publication obligations introduced by the so-called "transparency" decree (legislative decree 33/2013) and by the law n. 190 of 2012 for all PAs. It is a qualitative methodology that can now also be applied to other European countries, thanks to the pilot project conducted by the same Fondazione Etica for the European Commission.
The results of the analysis are collected in the book "The Municipalities and the challenge of sustainability", Ed. Rubbettino (author Paola Caporossi), to be released on 13 September next with the preface by Fabrizio Barca, and offer:
– a cognitive tool of the local administrative machinery designed for citizens and, in particular, for those called to the polls on 3 October, who can thus vote also on the basis of the efficiency and transparency of their Municipality;
– an orientation compass designed for the Government, for technical support interventions based on the evidence of the numbers. Before the arrival of European funds, not after.
Below is an excerpt from the aforementioned book, with a focus on the 20 provincial capitals called to the polls. The indicators analyzed are particularly important now that the first tranche of funds from the Next Generation EU has arrived and the Municipalities will be among the main institutions called upon to invest them.
