The announced public employment recruitment plan is presented in the media as the key to modernizing the Italian public administration. Following the release of turnover, new hires in PA personnel, notoriously "elderly" in age and service, are an indispensable condition for the reform that the European Union asks of us as a pre-condition for accessing the funds of the  Next Generation EU . But we must be very careful not to mistake the chronological order of the steps to be taken.

Hiring cannot be the first step, if not preceded, or at least accompanied by, an action to improve the administrative and financial capacity of the Administrations receiving the winners of the next competitions. Otherwise, the risk is that future new hires end up being under-used, and, over time, unmotivated.

It is therefore necessary to know first of all who to hire, with which profiles and for which roles. In other words, a mapping of public personnel is needed to understand how to hire. Fondazione Etica with Luiss-Icedd is making it available here for the Regions and, shortly, for the Municipalities.

Personnel management is one of the areas in which the source from which to draw information is clear: Legislative Decree 33/2013, in fact, not only provides for the publication of data on personnel within a specific "personal" item in the Transparent Administration section of the institutional websites, but specifies that those data must be published according to a standard format, which allows the homogeneity of information that is the prerequisite for a comparative assessment of the PA.

The rule is clear, as is the instrument to be used -  the annual account  -  but  even today there are administrations that do not publish it or that publish it partially.

The benchmark region is Liguria, with a score of 80 ( Very Good ), followed in the lower rating class by Lombardy, with a score of 69 ( Good ) and, in the same class, by Marche, Veneto and Emilia Romagna.

On the opposite side of the ranking, Molise is not only the last positioned, but, with a score equal to 2, it falls into the  Fallible rating class , where it is in the company of five other Regions, of which four are Northern Regions with Special Statute (SS): in ascending order of rating, Valle d'Aosta (score 8), Calabria (12), Friuli (13) and the two Autonomous Provinces of Trento and Bolzano (respectively with scores 17 and 18).

In general, no Southern Region obtains a sufficient Public Rating for the area, apart from Puglia, which is very close to it (score 49 out of 100). More in detail, we see the results on the individual indicators used by the Public Rating methodology of Fondazione Etica and Luiss-Icedd.

 

Staff Price

The prevailing public opinion, in Italy, believes that public employees cost too much, especially in the administrations of the South, but  the numbers recorded do not say exactly this.

If we look at the cost of regional public personnel that every citizen has to bear,  the highest belongs to a Region of the North, and not of the South , such as the Valle d'Aosta: over 1,800 euros per capita (On the one hand, the Valle d'Aosta d'Aosta was able to hire more thanks to its statutory autonomy; on the other hand, it is a very small body which, however, cannot proportionally have the same employees of Lombardy and Veneto who, on the other hand, can exploit economies of scale). Three other Northern Regions follow: the two Autonomous Provinces of Bolzano and Trento (respectively with a per capita cost of 237 and 181 euros) and Friuli Venezia Giulia (155 euros).

Since the fifth Region with the highest per capita cost of regional personnel is Sicily, in the South, the variable that seems to affect the indicator is not the North / South one, but the Ordinary / Special Statute.

Sardinia is the only Region with a Special Statute to contain the cost of personnel below 100 euros per capita.

On the opposite side of the ranking, the citizens of Lombardy are called to bear the lowest expenditure for regional public personnel, with 16 euros per capita, followed by the Venetians, with 26 euros per pc.

Among the Southern Regions, the one that makes the cost of personnel weigh less on its citizens is Puglia: with less than 39 euro pc it ranks fourth in the ranking.

The geographical location also only partially affects the indicator that measures  the incidence of  personnel expenses on total current expenses. On the one hand, in fact, it is a Northern Region such as Lombardy that has an incidence below 1%, followed by another Northern Region such as Veneto (1.2%). On the other hand, also on the opposite side of the ranking there is a Northern Region: the Valle d'Aosta has a staff expenditure that affects the total current by more than 20%, placing itself in last place.

The Southern Regions are distributed along the entire axis of the ranking: Sardinia, Puglia and Campania in the first eight positions; Basilicata, Sicily and Molise in the last four; Abruzzo and Calabria in the central positions.

It should be noted that Tuscany, the benchmark region, occupies a substantially intermediate position in the ranking of both indicators, confirming the fact that a performing region is not necessarily the one that spends the least on personnel.

Consultancy and temporary staff

Two other indicators also affect personnel expenditure: consultancy and fixed-term hiring.

The numbers revealed by the analysis seem to dispel the cliché according to which the Regions spend a lot on consultancy: their average cost in relation to the total expenditure for personnel is 0.6%. Another significant result is that performing bodies such as Tuscany (1.3%) and the Public Administration of Bolzano (4.8%) spend the most for consultants.
This allows us to state that spending on consultancy is not automatically synonymous with waste of public money: on the contrary, for some specific, highly qualified skills, it may be more convenient for a Region to find them outside, limited to the time necessary, rather than supporting the fixed cost of a permanent contract.

On the opposite side of the ranking, the lower expenditure for consultancy belongs to a Northern Region such as Liguria and a Southern Region such as Sicily, both with an incidence of 0.1% on the total expenditure for personnel.

The second indicator mentioned in the title of the paragraph measures the percentage of fixed-term employees over those with permanent contracts. The results of the analysis reveal an average percentage just over 2%, with peaks exceeding 4% both for a poorly performing Region such as Sicily (4.5%), and for a performing Region such as Emilia Romagna (4, 4%).
 

The lowest percentage of fixed-term hires belongs to Liguria, Lombardy and Umbria. For Campania and Piedmont, the annual personnel accounts do not include temporary employees. (Consequently, the value is zero and the score assigned is the maximum).

Middle age

The average age of regional employees is 54 years old. Therefore, a high average age, which reaches almost 57 years in Basilicata  and stands at 51 in Piedmont. It should be noted that for one third of the sample the data is not available.

 

Absences  due to illness

Another commonplace about public employees concerns the high rate of absenteeism, especially in the South: in this case the results of the analysis seem to confirm this.

The indicator, in fact, notes that the highest number of average sick days in the year belongs, with more than 10 days, to two Southern Regions: Sicily and Campania, with 12.3 and 11.4 days respectively. Conversely, the Regions with the lowest number are two in the North: Liguria (For Liguria, the data on sick leave appears to be very low compared to that of the other Regions, even efficient ones such as Veneto or Lombardy. The value is also confirmed over the years It should be considered, however, that other paid absences are on average high such as paid leave pursuant to art. 42, c. 5, legislative decree 151/2001 and leave of Law 104); (2.6 days ) and Veneto (5.7).

It should be noted that a performing Region such as Emilia Romagna exceeds the average of 7.9 days of illness, (with 8.4 days on average) compared to a poorly performing Region such as Basilicata which manages to stay below it (with 7.5 average days).

Also in this indicator for one third of the sample the evaluation was not possible due to the lack of publication of the data. (The annual account is not available. The data published on absences in the AT section of the institutions' websites is monthly and often expressed as a percentage).

Senior executives

Yet another cliché: there are too many managers, especially in the less efficient Regions, and therefore in the South.
The numbers of the analysis seem to say more in this case too. If it is true, in fact, that the highest percentage of managers on employees belongs to a low-performing Southern Region such as Sicily (8.8%), it is also true that the second highest percentage belongs to a Northern performing Region such as Lombardy (6.5%).

Likewise on the opposite side of the ranking, it is true that the PA of Trento has the lowest percentage of executives (2.1%), but it is also true that Puglia, in third place, does not differ much (3.1%). ).

On the basis of the data found in the analysis, it can be said that a high percentage of managers out of the total staff of a Region is not, in itself, a sign of waste and inefficiencies.

Awards

Article 20 of Legislative Decree 33/2013 provides that information relating to the amount of bonuses linked to individual performance is published in the appropriate item in the Transparent Administration section on institutional websites, differentiating those allocated and those actually distributed in the year, separately for executives and non-executive employees.

This regulatory obligation has been disregarded by eight Regions, which publish incomplete and / or outdated data on the bonuses to executives, subject of the survey. These are not very virtuous Regions of the South, such as Calabria and Campania, but also virtuous Regions of the North, such as Tuscany and Friuli  Venezia Giulia. A borderline case is, once again, that of  Molise, which appears to have never published the data. (Although at the end of 2020 the entry dedicated to prizes in the AT section of the Molise website finally becomes populated, it is only partially populated, not including, for example, the data relating to the amount of prizes distributed to executives from 2017 onwards. ).

Among the remaining thirteen Regions, only for three the percentage of premiums paid in paychecks stops below 90% of the allocated amounts. This means that the bonuses, conceived as a tool to incentivize deserving employees, in the majority of cases have been transformed into a sort of additional remuneration, only formally conditioned to the achievement of the objectives set for the year. And this, of course, is even more unjustifiable for executives.

In Emilia Romagna, Marche and Sardinia, all bonuses allocated to executives are paid.

The Region in which the distance between disbursed and allocated sums is greatest is, unexpectedly, Sicily, with 78.9% of bonuses paid to executives.

An even more significant indicator regarding prizes is the degree of differentiation in their distribution: an Administration, in fact, can legitimately decide to distribute all the prizes allocated, but without renouncing the differentiation in their distribution. At least that's what citizens have a right to hope for: since it is public money, it should be used to reward executives who work best.

Moreover, the aforementioned article 20 of legislative decree no. 33 of 2013 is very clear in this regard: the Administrations must account for the "level of selectivity" used, as well as the degree of differentiation. Nevertheless, as can be seen in the following table, the selectivity level is low. Even in Lombardy and Piedmont.

Tuscany is the benchmark region in this indicator, with a degree of differentiation in the distribution of bonuses to executives that clearly separates it from all the others. Also for this indicator one third of the Regions do not publish the data necessary for the evaluation.