Pilot project to examine the availability of quantitative and qualitative indicators on the administrative capacity of the Member States of the European Union
Fondazione Etica has been commissioned by the European Commission - DG Regio, through a call for tender, to conduct a pilot project to test a sample of some Member States
– whether and to what extent quantitative and qualitative data on transparency, integrity and efficiency are collected, published and updated by the Public Administrations of European countries;
– if those data can be used to measure and improve the quality and performance of public institutions involved in the implementation of Cohesion policy at European level.
Indeed, good public governance is the essential prerequisite for the economic and social development of a country, as demonstrated by growing scientific and empirical evidence.
The European Commission is aware of this, to the point of having distributed the approximately 350 billion for the 2014-2020 Cohesion policies with the commitment of the member countries on the administrative strengthening of their respective public institutions. In fact, money is not enough to invest in a targeted and effective way: transparent and performing Public Administrations are also needed. Hence the importance of measuring transparency and efficiency.
The European Commission knows that existing methodologies (OECD, Eurostat, ERC, World Bank) are mainly focused on the analysis of policies rather than on the administrative machine that those policies produce and implement. He also knows that many of the evaluations today are based on interviews, and therefore on the perception of the functioning of the PAs
For this reason, it recognizes the value of the most recent initiatives for measuring the quality and performance of public governance based on objective data - and not on perception - such as, for example, the Public Rating of the Public Administrations of Fondazione Etica.
