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POLITECNICO DI MILANO

SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL AND INFORMATION

ENGINEERING

MANAGEMENT ENGINEERING

Good Practice in Public Administration: an empirical analysis on eight Italian Municipalities

Master thesis of:

Matilde Morelli Caleffi 863860

Eugenia Orzi 852715

Supervisor:

Professor Tommaso Agasisti

Co-supervisors:

Giulia Marchio

Mara Soncin

ACADEMIC YEAR 2016 – 2017

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would first like to thank the thesis supervisor Professor Tommaso Agasisti for following

and supporting us in the thesis drafting and for all the useful tips.

We would also like to especially thank the co-supervisors Mara Soncin and Giulia Marchio for

helping and advising us during the drafting of the work and for having introduced us in the

“Good Practice Public Administration” project.

And a special thought to us, two special friends.

Mati and Jei

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SUMMARY ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................. 11

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ........................................................................................... 13

INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 15

BACKGROUND .......................................................................................................... 17

1.1. Local Government and Performance Management System in Italy .................. 17

1.2. Practice cases about the Performance Cycle and the application of the

Legislative Degree 150/2009 .................................................................................... 29

1.2.1. “Performance Evaluation – Experiences and Leading Practices” .......................................... 30

1.2.2. “Performance Evaluation – Mapping of performance management systems in the Provincial” . 32

1.2.3. “The Performance Management Cycle in the Municipalities of the Regions Convergence Objective

- The Experiences of Improvement, Evaluation of the Performances” ................................................ 34

1.2.4. “Performance Evaluation Indicators- Big Cities” ................................................................... 36

1.3. Recent measures on Performance Management – the Madia’s Reform ........... 38

LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................................................... 40

2.1. Literature review criteria .................................................................................... 40

2.2. Literature Analysis ............................................................................................. 48

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .............................................................................. 73

3.1. Existing Performance Management Models ..................................................... 73

3.2. Our Reference Model ........................................................................................ 78

METHOD AND DATA .............................................................................................. 80

PROJECT RESULTS .................................................................................................. 87

5.1. Social Services .................................................................................................... 87

5.2. Integrated Domiciliary Assistance .................................................................... 92

5.2.1. Efficiency Analysis ........................................................................................................... 96

5.2.2. Effectiveness Analysis ................................................................................................... 105

5.2.3. Efficiency and Effectiveness Trade-off ...................................................................... 107

5.3. School Canteen Service ..................................................................................... 110

5.3.1. Efficiency Analysis ......................................................................................................... 114



5.4. Single Centre for Building ................................................................................ 121

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5.5. School Building ................................................................................................ 129




5.6. Supply of Goods and Services ........................................................................... 143




CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................... 154

BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................... 159

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1-Paper classification .............................................................................................................................. 47

Table 2-Process and Activities Analysed ........................................................................................................ 83

Table 3-Municipalities under analysis ............................................................................................................. 84

Table 4- CCNL ................................................................................................................................................... 86

Table 5-Social Service Typologies ................................................................................................................... 88

Table 6-Social Service Sections ........................................................................................................................ 89

Table 7-Padova Social Service Costs .............................................................................................................. 90

Table 8-Social Service Costs for each municipality ...................................................................................... 91

Table 9-ADI Insourcing vs. Outsourcing ...................................................................................................... 95

Table 10-ADI FTE ............................................................................................................................................ 96

Table 11-ADI Internal vs. External Costs ..................................................................................................... 97

Table 12-ADI Linear Regression ..................................................................................................................... 99

Table 13-- ADI Managed Motions ................................................................................................................ 100

Table 14-ADI Motions / Population ........................................................................................................... 101

Table 15-ADI Costs/Motions ....................................................................................................................... 101

Table 16-ADI Total Costs/Motions ............................................................................................................. 101

Table 17-ADI Motions/ADI Windows ....................................................................................................... 103

Table 18-ADI Internal Costs/ADI Windows ............................................................................................. 104

Table 19-ADI Level of Digitalization ........................................................................................................... 105

Table 20-Opening hours ADI Windows ...................................................................................................... 106

Table 21-ADI Efficiency and Effectiveness Indicators (1) ....................................................................... 107

Table 22-ADI Efficiency and Effectiveness Matrix 1 ................................................................................ 108

Table 23-ADI Efficiency and Effectiveness Indicators (2) ....................................................................... 109

Table 24-ADI Efficiency and Effectiveness Matrix 2 ................................................................................ 109

Table 25-School Canteen Average meal price in school ............................................................................ 112

Table 26-School Canteen Insourcing Vs Outsourcing .............................................................................. 113

Table 27-School Canteen FTE ...................................................................................................................... 114

Table 28-School Canteen Internal Costs ...................................................................................................... 114

Table 29-School Canteen Internal Vs External Costs ................................................................................ 116

Table 30-School Canteen Total Number of children served .................................................................... 117

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Table 31-School Canteen Total Costs/Students ......................................................................................... 117

Table 32-School Canteen Average meal price in public school ................................................................ 119

Table 33-School Canteen Efficiency-Effectiveness Matrix ....................................................................... 120

Table 34- SUE FTE ......................................................................................................................................... 123

Table 35-SUE Internal Costs ......................................................................................................................... 124

Table 36-SUE Procedures/Kmq ................................................................................................................... 124

Table 37-SUE Internal Costs/Procedures ................................................................................................... 125

Table 38-SUE Effectiveness Drivers ............................................................................................................ 126

Table 39-SUE Efficiency and Effectiveness Indicators ............................................................................. 127

Table 40-SUE Efficiency-Effectiveness matrix .......................................................................................... 128

Table 41-School Building School Typologies .............................................................................................. 129

Table 42-School Building FTE Ordinary ..................................................................................................... 132

Table 43-School Building FTE Extraordinary ............................................................................................ 132

Table 44-School Building Ordinary Maintenance costs ............................................................................. 134

Table 45-School Building Extraordinary Maintenance costs .................................................................... 134

Table 46-School Building Number of maintenance costs ......................................................................... 136

Table 47-School Building Works/Square meters ....................................................................................... 137

Table 48-School Building €/Ordinary maintenance work ........................................................................ 137

Table 49-School Building €/Extraordinary maintenance work ................................................................ 138

Table 50-School Building Linear Regression ............................................................................................... 139

Table 51-School Building Effectiveness Drivers ........................................................................................ 140

Table 52-School Building Effectiveness-Efficiency Indicators ................................................................ 141

Table 53-School Building Efficiency-Effectiveness matrix ....................................................................... 142

Table 54-Supply of goods and services FTE ............................................................................................... 145

Table 55-Supply of goods and services Internal costs ............................................................................... 146

Table 56-Supply of goods and services Purchases over threshold ......................................................... 147

Table 57-Supply of goods and services Payments for utilities .................................................................. 147

Table 58-Supply of goods and services Square and Cubic meters ........................................................... 148

Table 59-Supply of goods and services €/Square meter ............................................................................ 148

Table 60-Supply of goods and services €/Cubic meter ............................................................................. 148

Table 61-Supply of goods and services € tot/Square meter ..................................................................... 149

Table 62-Supply of goods and services € tot/Cubic meter ....................................................................... 149

Table 63-Supply of goods and services €/FTE .......................................................................................... 150

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Table 64-Supply of goods and services Effectiveness Driver ................................................................... 151

Table 65-Supply of goods and services Effectiveness-Efficiency Indicators ......................................... 152

Table 66-Supply of goods and services Efficiency-Effectiveness matrix ................................................ 153

Table 67-Dashboard Indicators ..................................................................................................................... 157

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 - Concept of Performance ................................................................................................................ 23

Figure 2 - Performance Cycle ........................................................................................................................... 25

Figure 3 - PDCA Model .................................................................................................................................... 25

Figure 4 - Input Output Framework ............................................................................................................... 54

Figure 5 - CAF Model ....................................................................................................................................... 74

Figure 6 - Performance Pyramid ..................................................................................................................... 75

Figure 7 - Performance Prism .......................................................................................................................... 75

Figure 8 - Public Service Value ........................................................................................................................ 76

Figure 9 - Reference Model .............................................................................................................................. 78

Figure 10-ADI Process' Activities ................................................................................................................... 94

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ABSTRACT

The objective of this thesis is to evaluate the performances achieved by the Municipalities in

Italy. The analysis was carried out using a model developed by us which measures the

performance both in terms of efficiency, linked to internal and external costs, and in terms of

effectiveness, both objective and perceived.

This analysis was carried out on a sample of 8 municipalities: Avellino, La Spezia, Modena,

Monza, Padua, Pescara, Taranto and Viterbo, in the 2016 year.

The model used is based on the "input-output framework" and is developed to evaluate the

services of: Integrated Domiciliary Assistance (ADI), Single Centre for Building (SUE), School

Canteen, School Building (Ordinary and Extraordinary) and Supply of Goods and Services.

The performance of these processes are assessed using pre-established indicators; in general,

were defined an efficiency performance indicator, an effectiveness indicator and a

questionnaire for assessing perceived effectiveness.

The indicators obtained from the application of the model are then benchmarked to identify

which of the municipalities under analysis perform better, and then identify the Good Practices

of the services management.

The results achieved do not show a significant presence of good practices within the analyzed

municipalities; good practices have emerged from Padova in the management of the ADI,

from Viterbo in the SUE service and finally in the Supply of goods and services Pescara has

proved to be an example for the other municipalities.

From the analysis of this real application case it can be concluded that the commitment to

improve the performance of the Italian Municipalities is still great and furthermore, despite

the legislative commitment to promote the performance measurement within the public sector

has been relevant in recent decades, there is still little awareness on the part of Public

Administrations of the actual usefulness and benefits that can be drawn from the

implementation of Performance Management.

Keywords: Public Administration, Performance Measurement, Performance Management, Local

Government, Performance Indicator, Benchmarking, Good Practice.

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L’obiettivo di questa tesi è quello di valutare le performance conseguite dai Comuni in Italia.

L’analisi è stata condotta tramite un modello da noi realizzato il quale misura performance sia

di efficienza, legata ai costi interni ed esterni, sia di efficacia, oggettiva e percepita.

Tale analisi è stata effettuata su un campione di 8 Comuni: Avellino, La Spezia, Modena,

Monza, Padova, Pescara, Taranto e Viterbo, nell’anno solare 2016.

Il modello utilizzato si basa sul “input-output framework” ed è sviluppato per valutare i servizi di:

Assistenza Domiciliare Integrata (ADI), Sportello Unico Edilizia (SUE), Refezione Scolastica,

Edilizia Scolastica (Ordinaria e Straordinaria) e Fornitura di beni e servizi. Le performance di

questi processi sono valutate tramite indicatori prestabiliti; in generale è stato definito un

indicatore di performance di efficienza, uno di efficacia e un questionario per la valutazione

dell’efficacia percepita.

Gli indicatori ricavati dall’applicazione del modello sono poi messi a confronto (benchmarking)

per individuare quale tra i Comuni oggetto di analisi preforma meglio, ed individuare quindi le

buone pratiche di gestione dei servizi stessi.

I risultati ottenuti non evidenziano una significativa presenza di buone pratica all’interno dei

Comuni analizzati; sono emerse delle buone pratiche da parte di Padova nella gestione

dell’ADI, da parte di Viterbo nel SUE e infine nella Fornitura dei beni e servizi Pescara si è

dimostrata essere un esempio per gli altri Comuni.

Dall’analisi di questo caso applicativo reale si può concludere che l’impegno per migliorare le

performance dei Comuni Italiani è ancora grande e inoltre, nonostante l’impegno legislativo

per promuovere la misurazione delle performance all’interno del settore pubblico sia stato negli

ultimi decenni rilevante, vi è ancora poca consapevolezza da parte degli Enti pubblici

dell’effettiva utilità e dei benefici che si ne possono trarre dall’implementazione del Performance

Management.

Parole chiave: Amministrazione Pubblica, Misurazione delle Performance, Performance

Management, Comuni, Indicatori di Performance, Benchmarking, Good Practice.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The objective of the "Good Practice Public Administration" project is to analyse the performance

of eight Italian municipalities in order to bring out any good practices to be proposed and

taken as an example. Before entering into detail in the analytical part of the project, it seemed

interesting to analyse the state of the art as regards the context in which it is inserted and the

existing academic studies concerning this topic.

A general introduction about the performance measurement precedes a chapter in which the

Italian legislative context and background are described. The history of performance

management in Italy begins at a later date compared to the precursors of the Anglo-Saxon

world, but there have been numerous developments. With the 2011 Brunetta Law the apex is

reached regarding the legislative norms supporting performance management; the remaining

government interventions are aimed at favouring both the implementation of these tools and

the development of a “data culture” within the public administration.

After describing the Italian context in terms of performance management and measurement,

the second chapter analyses the existing literature concerning this area. The papers read were

classified according to the author, the year and the topic discussed and for each of them the

research question was reported. In the first part of the chapter, various international

experiences were listed to verify the existence of situations more predisposed to the use of

performance measurement techniques and cases of positive application were reported.

In the third chapter we proceed with the description of the model used for the analysis of the

different performances. At first, other models used to measure performance in the public

sector were reported to understand the context within which the theoretical framework used

by us is inserted. It is an input-output based model, meaning as input the resources (in

economic terms) used for the realization of a certain service that is the output. The types of

measured performance, which are both efficiency and effectiveness objective and perceived,

were described.

The fourth chapter deals with the description of the sample of municipalities used and the

scope of the services being analysed. In the choice of both the municipalities and the processes,

we tried to reach the highest level of heterogeneity in order to cover a wide panorama both in

geographical terms and in analysed processes.

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After describing the theoretical framework and the scope of analysis, we move on to the actual

analytical part. Each process has been described in detail, reporting the activities that make up

each service and describing the related legislative context. The analysis by processes was carried

out both in terms of efficiency and effectiveness and at the end an efficiency-effectiveness

matrix was used to position each municipality and verify the existence or not of good practices

to be replicated. Not all the five processes analysed have shown good practice to be proposed.

The final part of the work concerns the conclusions to be drawn from the “Good Practice

Public Administration” project. The results allowed us to verify the level of development of

the performance measurement in Italy and unfortunately we had to note the presence of a

poor culture of data, process and continuous improvement. The efforts to be put into practice

to encourage development are numerous and important actions by the State is needed to form

a management class characterized by a high level of commitment to performance measurement

projects and the subsequent use of data from the perspective of continuous improvement. It

should however be emphasized that some municipalities have shown a good degree of

availability towards this type of initiative, collaborating and interacting with the research team

in a proactive manner.

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INTRODUCTION

The "Good Practice Public Administration" project is an initiative born from the collaboration

between the Territorial Cohesion Agency and Politecnico di Milano in 2014 within a Program

Agreement for the activation, implementation and dissemination of good innovative practices

in the planning of the 2014 – 2020 Cohesion Policies to promote a sustainable process of

modernization of the Public Administration. With this project we intend to perform a

benchmarking of dedicated resources and quality delivered and perceived with respect to some

procedures in a selected sample of Municipalities. To perform this analysis, we used our

reference model, based mainly on three pillars: input, output and outcome, i.e. the resources

used, the results deriving from the use of resources and the impact they have on the end user.

The idea behind the Good Practice PA project is to import the positive experience developed

in the university context in the world of local authorities, activating an experimental initiative

that intends to be the first step in a virtuous process of operational comparison between

Administrations.

The theme of Performance Measurement in terms efficiency and effectiveness within the public

sector is a topic of primary importance in the recent years. Numerous efforts have been made

by all the world governments to stimulate the creation of a measurement and assessment

system that would guarantee greater service as well as the introduction of the concept of

accountability within the PA. The principles of New Public Management that have spread

mainly since the 90s of the last century have given rise to this reforming wave at first in the

Anglo-Saxon world and then spread throughout the rest of Europe and all-over world. With

the 2008 crisis, the need for public administrations to reduce costs while ensuring a high level

of service, has significantly stimulated the implementation of the reforms regarding

performance assessment. The public administration has always been conceived as a system of

inefficiency and ineffectiveness, far from the real needs of the citizen and a mere provider of

necessary services. Nowadays the culture that is spreading leads to a revision of the concept

of user with a view more closely linked to the private world; the citizen is no longer a user but

is a customer able to choose and evaluate the most advantageous offer also in the public sector

services.

Both Performance Management and Measurement are challenges confronting public service

managers and as a consequence, in the academic field, there are numerous topics concerning

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these themes. Experiences can be found in the application of a system for measuring and

evaluating performance in all parts of the world with very heterogeneous results. The

judgments concerning the application of these systems are discordant and we move from the

exaltation of these to the most scepticism. Some authors underline how this system of

measurement and evaluation can be the fundamental driving force for achieving optimal levels

of efficiency and effectiveness in the PA and they believe that they can be applied as in the

private world, even if with some modifications. On the other hand, the critics say that the

public sector will never be the ideal environment for the application of such systems because

the limitations are excessive.

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Chapter 1 BACKGROUND

1.1. Local Government and Performance Management System

in Italy

The Italian local system is rooted in the ideas of the 1798 French Revolution and, specifically,

in that of “Pouvoir municipal”. In this context, the figure of the “prefect”, with its strong

Napoleonic influence, was pivotal in making the “revolutionary whirlwind” a “regular

mechanism”.

The model was incorporated in the process of administrative decentralization of power, passed

from the Consolidated Acts on Local Government of 1915 and 1934 to the operative

ratification of the 1948 Constitution, which established local autonomy as a fundamental

constitutional principle (art. 51).

In practice, the principle of administrative decentralization began to be implemented in 1970

with the transfer to the regions, with ordinary status, of the administrative functions assigned to

them by virtue of art. 177 and 118 of the Constitution, and of some State’s functions (law n.

281/1970 and d.p.r.2 1, 1972). Subsequently, there was an extension of the regional functions

with the d.p.r. n. 616/1977 (delegation n. 382/1975).

In the 1990, legislative activity come back on matter with law n. 142/1990 - Local Government

Act - (converged into the legislative decree 267/2000) which postulate the new ordinance of

local autonomy and with law n. 81/1993, concerning the direct election of the mayor and the

president of the province.

1 Art. 5 of the Constitution: “the Republic, one and indivisible, recognises and promotes local autonomies, and

implements the fullest measure of administrative decentralisation in those services which depend on the State.

The Republic accords the principles and methods of its legislation to the requirements of autonomy and

decentralisation”.

2 Decree of the president of the Italian Republic

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But it is mainly since 1997, in the context of the public administration’s reform and the

simplification work of administrative activity, which has started a decentralization policy,

through Act. n. 59/1997 (so-called Bassanini law3), which contains the delegation to the

government for the conferral of regions and local authorities for the functions and

administrative tasks, and the following implementing decree (legislative decree 112/1998) of

the above-mentioned delegation.

In 2000, these reforms were consolidated in a new act - the Consolidated Act. This merger was

followed by the amendment of Title V of the Constitution, concerning the organizational

structure of relations between the various subjects of the system. This reform introduced a

multi-polar (Olivetti 2001: 37 et seq.) institutional framework in Italy, in which the various

bodies making up the Republic are on an equal footing.

In the definition of the new territorial administrative arrangement, the art. 114 Cost. states that

the Republic is made up of municipalities, provinces, metropolitan cities, regions and State;

the individual entities making up the Republic are recognised to have "the same institutional

dignity, although the respective competences may differ" (Rolla 2004: 633).

The importance attached to autonomies was enhanced by building up a new institutional

framework. Public authority was re-adjusted in accordance with a bottom-up approach,

starting from the local level, which is closer to citizens, and going up the ladder to reach the

levels of government covering the largest areas. This allowed increasing the visibility of the

bodies that deal with the smallest areas and are closest to citizens: the municipalities. According

to the 2000 Consolidated Act, municipalities “perform the administrative functions for citizens

and the municipal territory, such community services, the general framework for land-use

economic development, and any other responsibilities not assigned to other government

bodies by State or regional law, according to their competences”.

3 The Bassanini was aimed at achieving as much decentralization as possible through ordinary law, within the

limits allowed by the Constitution, indicating the principles and criteria to be followed by subsequent

implementing laws. The text is divided into four headings: Chapter I deals with the assignment of functions and

administrative tasks from the State to local regions and autonomies; Chapter II of the reorganization of the state

administration; Chapter III of the simplification of administrative procedures; Chapter IV of autonomy and

reorganization of the educational and training system, and transfer to the regions of administrative functions

relating to thermal and mineral waters. Chapter I provides for regional and local decentralization through the

instrument of conferral.

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The municipalities represent a new center of the administrative system thus able to best

represent the needs of the reference community and to provide better services at lower costs

(art. 3, Cost. 267/2000).

Local governments are “closer” to their constituency and have better quality knowledge about

citizen’s preferences and demand. Therefore, according to the so called preference-matching

argument (Lockwood, 2006), local governments can provide local public services tailored to

local citizen’s need. Finally, since local authorities are ’closer’ to the people not only physically

but also in terms of accountability, also benchmarking (Besley and Case, 1995) between local

governments becomes feasible whereas this is not feasible under a unified central government.

These aspects contribute to enhance efficiency and effectiveness of decentralized public policy.

From the 90s’, the Italian Public Administration started to promote reform initiatives about

the systematic use of assessment tools as staff assessments systems, measuring and evaluating

the efficiency and effectiveness of public administration activities, the efficiency of public

spending and the refinement of punitive / premium systems so that performances is

encouraged, rewarded and required (Holmes and Shand, 1995, p.563).

Based on the assumption that, on the one hand, the quality of public institutions is recognized

as one of the major drivers of socio-economic development, and on the other that there is a

connection between the quality of institutions and organizational well-being, these evaluation

systems and the internal controls represents an opportunity to improve and communicate the

outcomes of the local administrations.

Traditional public administration looked more to the process rather than results; with these

changes local authorities being responsible for the achievement of the results, the organization,

as a consequence, must have some focus on results and their measurement.

Edoardo Ongaro (Ongaro, 2009) distinguishes three cycles of public management reform

starting from the 1990s.

The first public reform cycle (1992-1994), promoted by the Amato (1992) and the Ciampi

(1994) government, took place in a context of public dissatisfaction regarding the efficiency

and the effectiveness of public administration and the conduct of the political class. Decree

Law 29/1993 deals exactly with the efficiency and effectiveness and introduces the

strengthening of public management and, at the same time, the evaluation of the leadership on

the basis of the performance achieved. To support the process of manager assessment, the

Decree also envisaged the creation of evaluating bodies in all the administrations (both central

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and local), with the role of supporting and advocating political bodies in assessing the

performances of public executives.

This reform concerned also the public spending and in particular the definition of the budget.

After the reform the public administration had to review quantitatively and qualitatively public

spending to know and cut waste and base public spending on evidence of real needs.

The second cycle (1996-1999) occurred under Prodi and D’Alema governments (first

government), in a context in which the public agenda was dominated by the need to comply

with all the parameters for adopting the Euro. This second cycle of reform intervene in

different area of interest.

Regarding the administrative simplification, the law n.59 and law n.127 of 1997 introduced

attempts to streamline administrative activities, decision-making and control procedures,

forcing the administrations to create unique production points. Decree Law 112/1998 focuses

on devolution of a series of functions from the central level to the regional and local one.

Legislative Decree 286/1999 starts with the assumption that directing and controlling public

administrations simply on the basis of economic efficiency or formal legality is naive. Indeed,

this decree reaffirms the centrality of the concepts of efficiency and effectiveness in public

management through various types of control and assessment: administrative, accounting,

management and strategic.

The third cycle, which takes place in 2000-2002, focuses more on constitutional reforms rather

than on the continuation modernization reform of public administration. In this period, it is

relevant to mentioned the Legislative Decree 267/2000 which better define the boundaries of

local authorities.

As you can see from these reforms, by the 90’s there was the emergence of a new approach to

management in the public sector, as a direct response to what many had regarded as the

inadequacies of the traditional model of administration.

In 1991, the term “New Public Management (NPM)” was coined (Hood, 1991) to conceptualized

those economistic and managerial changes occurred in the public management. This

administration paradigm is also registered in Italy through the approval of a series of regulatory

reforms aimed at reforming the system of controls from law no. 241/1990 until Legislative

Decree no. 286/1999.

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Hood (1991) declared that the managerial programme, or what he named NPM, comprises

seven main points (pp. 4-5):

• Hands-on professional management in the public sector; “accountability requires clear

assignment of responsibility for action”.

• Explicit standards and measures of performances.

• Greater emphasis in output controls; the “need to stress results rather than procedures”.

• A shift towards disaggregation of units in the public sector; this is justified by the need to

create manageable units and “to gain the efficiency advantages of franchise arrangements

inside as well as outside the public sector”.

• A shift to greater competition in the public sector.

• A stress on private sector styles of management practice.

• A stress on greater discipline and parsimony in resource use.

This managerial reform has been controversial. Critics regard managerialism as simply an

unquestioning adoption of the worst feature of the private management with no regard being

paid to the fundamental differences of the public sector environment.

From this approach emerged the importance of performance management in local

government. In the public sector performance management has often been associated

primarily with ensuring that services provide “value-for-money”. However, it can also be used to

compare the performance of local authorities and to identify best practice.

Osborne and Gaebler (1992), whose work has been a major influence on public sector reform

strategies, argue that effective performance management is a key feature of successful

organizations on both public and private sector because:

What gets measured gets done4

If you don’t measure results, you can’t tell success from failure

If you can’t see success, you can’t reward it

If you can’t reward success, you’re probably rewarding failure

If you can’t see success, you can’t learn from it

If you can’t recognise failure, you can’t correct it

If you can demonstrate results, you can win public support

4 Osborne and Gaebler (2002), Reinventing Government.

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Given the relevance of the reforms introduced since the early 2000s, it is possible to identify a

fourth cycle that follow the Ongaro's (Ongaro, 2009) classification of the public administration

reform cycles in the Italian context.

The fourth cycle (2008-2011) started with Berlusconi government and continued with the

Monti’s one. The years after the 2008 economic crisis were characterized by a deep distrust

towards the institutions and public administrations, considered incapable of dealing with the

citizens’ interests and only willing to reach their own personal benefits. Public administration

was recognized as a source of waste and unable to provide end uses with quality services that

could increase the economic system competitiveness.

In this context the Legislative Decree 150/2009 - the Brunetta Law - was born. This law deals

with the optimization of public work productivity and with the efficiency and transparency of

public administration, particularly concerns the “contracted” public workers (art. 1, 1) and

broadly innovates the rules of public work laid down in Decree n. 165/2001.

The purpose of the Legislative Degree 150/2009 was that of introducing a performance

measurement system within the public administration to ensure maximum transparency and

increase customer satisfaction regard the provision of public services (art. 3). “Ensuring high

qualitative and therefore economic standard” is the objective to be achieved through the

evaluation of structures and employees (art. 2); in public administration economic sustainability

cannot be the parameter to be use to state the quality which is rather expressed by the degree

of satisfaction of the public entity or the citizen. The public sector had therefore to guarantee

the highest quality with the optimal consumption of resources, without waste and inefficiencies

(Nuti, 2010)

Moreover, in art. 2 it is explicitly stated the way in which this aim is pursued, named the esteem

of the results and of the organizational and individual performance; it wants to emphasize the

need to give priority to merit and best practices by highlighting qualitatively all the great work.

Valuing the results of those who are doing a great job is the fundamental mechanism for merit

to become the engine of organizational change and performance improvement.

The main concept introduced by the Brunetta law is “performance” as the “contribution

(outcome and mode of achievement of the result) that a subject (system, organization,

organizational unit, team, single) makes through its action to achieving the goals and objectives

and ultimately the satisfaction of the needs for which the organization has been established”.

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The following model, adapting from “Pollitt C., Bouckaert G., Public Management Reform: a

comparative analysis (op. cit. p.10)”, frames the concept of performance.

Figure 1 - Concept of Performance

All the performances are related to the measures of efficiency and effectiveness; efficiency can

be defined as the relationship between quantity and quality of input and quantity and quality

of outputs while effectiveness can be interpreted on two levels:

• Ratio between planned objectives and goals achieved - Managerial Effectiveness

• Ratio between the changes obtained in the reference needs due to the benefits provided and

the size and characteristics of the needs themselves - Social Effectiveness

The concept of social effectiveness indicates to what extent the body's action is capable of

affecting the external environment, read in terms of public needs to be met.

The performance of the administrations consists of two components: organizational and

individual performance. Those components have to be integrated and coherent.

Organizational performance considers the goals to be achieved by the organization itself and,

therefore, by recalling art. 8 of the decree, the main dimensions of measurement and evaluation

are:

• Implementation of the policies activated on the final satisfaction of the needs of the

community;

• Implementation of plans and programs (measurement of the actual degree of implementation)

in accordance with the expected phases and times, the defined qualitative and quantitative

standards and the expected level of resources’ absorption;

• Recognizing the degree of satisfaction of the activities and services’ recipients;

• Modernization and qualitative improvement of organization and professional skills;

Efficiency

Needs

Goals Inputs Process Outputs

Intermediate outcomes

Final outcomesSOCIO – ECONOMIC

PROBLEMS

Effectiveness

Utility and sustainability

Relevance

24

• Qualitative and quantitative development of relations with citizens, stakeholders, users and

recipients of services;

• Efficiency in resource use, with particular reference to cost reduction and optimization of

administrative procedures;

• Quality and quantity of the services provided;

• Achieving the objectives of promoting equal opportunities.

Regarding the measurement of individual performance, the art. 9 distinguishes between:

supervisor performance and individual performance of the personnel, measured and evaluated

by the supervisors themselves.

These assessments can then be translated into incentive systems. The incentive mechanisms,

however, have to be carefully programmed to avoid opportunistic behaviour by the subjects

being evaluated and thus to avoid that the only objective pursued is to achieve the level

required for the incentive and not the end user satisfaction.

The incentive system to be integrated with the evaluation of results should be suitably defined

in several aspects: in the structure, explicit/formalized or implicit; in the organizational

reference that may be the individual or the organizational unit; in the depth; finally, in the

composition or mix on which the incentive is calculated which can be based on different types

of targets (Nuti, 2010).

The relationship between performance measurement and decision making process has always

been a critical point since, in a few cases, the knowledge generated by performance evaluation

is used effectively in deciding.

The introduction of the so-called “Performance Cycle”, mentioned in Legislative Decree

150/2009, aims to connect management and measurement and evaluation of the public

administration’s performance.

The performance Cycle is structured into the following phases:

1. Programming

2. Planning

3. Monitoring

4. Evaluation and Measurement

and concludes by reporting the results to Public Administration and citizens.

25

Figure 2 - Performance Cycle

Specifically, the objectives are defined on a three-year basis and by the administrative policy

organs, heard the administrations’ heads and the leaders of the individual organizational units

(art. 5). The objectives must be relevant to the community’s needs, the institutional mission,

the political priorities and the management strategies; must be accurate and measurable,

normally referring to an annual period, and comparable to the productivity trend of the

previous three years.

The monitoring (art. 6) is aimed at verifying the pursuit of the objectives assigned with the

possibility of taking corrective action.

According with the so-called PDCA cycle (Plan, Do, Check, Act) the performance

management cycle is intended as a continuous improvement process (W.E. Deming - Lecture to

Japanese Management (1950), concept reward from W.A. Shewhart - Statistical Method from

the Viewpoint of Quality Control (1939) in turn inspired by F. Bacon Novum Organum (1620):

“hypothesis, experiment, hypothesis verification”).

Figure 3 - PDCA Model

ART. 4 PERFORMANCE CYCLE

PROGRAMMING

BUDGETING

ACTION AND MEASURING

VALUATION AND REPORTING

STRATEGIES

Strategy modification

Budget revisioning

PLANObjectives definition, indicators and target.

DO

Objectives realization.

ACTEvaluation and resultsreporting, incentive.

CHECKIntermediate

monitoring, resultsmeasurement.

26

Tension to the improvement and circularity of the process resulting from the fact that the new

targets are defined to pursue the goals of the organization, taking into account the results

achieved previously, according to the feedback pattern.

According to Dlgs 150/2009, it is possible to find a documentary record for each step

(excluding the mere Do step):

• For the Plan phase, the Performance Plan (for more details see page 27)

• For the Check and, in part, Act, the Performance Measurement and Evaluation System (for

more details see page 27)

• For the Act phase, the Performance Report

The performance cycle proves to be a set of elements related to each other (administrative

activities, responsible persons, activity outcomes, and tools to measure and evaluate them)

which in turn is related to an external environment: the subjects of the organization, for which

the measurement and evaluation outcomes are of value.

The performance evaluation has an annual cadence and is carried out by:

• The Independent Performance Evaluation Body (art. 14)

• The Commission for the Evaluation, Transparency and Integrity of Public Administrations

(art. 13)

• The individual executives of the organizational units concerned by the performance cycle (art.

39)

According to the art. 13 and 14 of the Legislative Decree, any administration, either individually

or in association form, have to enhance itself with an Independent Performance Evaluation

Body – Organismo Indipendente di Valutazione (OIV) and with a Commission for the Evaluation,

Transparency and Integrity of Public Administrations.

The OIV has to provide timely communication of the critical issues to the competent internal

bodies and administration ones, as well as the Court of Auditors, the Public Service

Inspectorate and the Independent Performance Evaluation Commission – Commessione

Indipendente per la Valutazione la Trasparenza e l’Integrità (CIVIT). The aforementioned committee

has the task of coordinating, directing and overseeing the performance of the valuation

functions, ensuring the transparency of the adopted systems and the visibility of public

administration performance indices.

27

It should be remembered, therefore, that the measurement and evaluation process does not

only address organization performance but also individual. At this point the concept of

“meritocracy” comes into play and this translates into the use of award-winning systems for those

who have reached certain levels of performance - target.

Transparency is another cornerstone of Legislative Decree 150/2009 and for this reason, the

last phase of the performance cycle is the reporting to the political-administrative bodies, the

top of the administrations, as well as the competent external bodies, the citizens, interested

parties and recipients of services.

With the Legislative Decree 150/2009 art. 10, the public administration is obliged to edit two

documents, non-existing previously, namely Performance Plan and Performance Report.

The Performance Plan is an annual programming document, to be drawn up by each

administration by 31 January. It has a three-year perspective identifying the operational and

strategic target and defining the indicators for performance measuring as well as the objectives

assigned to the managerial staff.

One of the fundamental difficulties encountered in measuring performance in public

administrations is the definition of the objectives. As mentioned above, the fundamental goal to

be achieved is the end-user satisfaction but the economy and therefore the use of resources

must not be left out. Pursuing public utilities does not mean giving up the goals of proper use

of resources or quality of service, because this inevitably leads to pay less attention to the

satisfaction of the public’s expectations (Simon, 1950).

Art. 5 and 8 of the Legislative Degree 150/2009 deal with the theme of the objectives and the

relative measurement indicators. In particularity, art.5 defines the three-year term as a

programmed time span considered for the objectives,while public administrations are left with

freedom of action in terms of decision-making and negotiation of objectives.

Even though much freedom is left in the objectives’ choice, art. 5 puts some limitations on the

nature of these. The objectives must in fact be:

• Relevant and pertinent to the needs of the community, the institutional mission, the political

priorities and the management strategies;

• Specific and measurable in concrete and clear terms;

• Certain to result in a significant improvement in the quality of the services provided;

• Relate to a specified time span, normally corresponding to one year;

• Comparable with the productivity trends of the administration.

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From the last point emerges the concept of Relative Performance Evaluation (RPE), which is

more commonly known as performance benchmarking (Bogan and English, 1994; Elnathan et

al., 1996; Siverbo and Johansson, 2006); the set of comparison measures both within the same

administration ("comparable with the productivity trends of the administration") and with

other public administrations ("with homologous administrations").

In the Legislative Degree under examination there is no specific reference to the types of

indicators that the administrations should use and therefore to the measurement and

evaluation system to be applied. Art. 7 specifies the actors involved in the function (OIV,

CIVIT and the managers of each administration), while art. 8 lists the areas to be covered by

the measurement and evaluation of the performance both organizational and individual.

Although not having punctual indications on the indicators to use, you can find in the literature

the definitions of the essential requirements; According to G. Vecchi (2005), professor of the

Politecnico di Milano, the essential characteristics of the indicators are as follows: validity,

controllability, comprehensibility, uniqueness, timeliness, comparability and inexpensiveness.

The novelties introduced by the Brunetta’s Reform are not intended as substitutes for the tools

already held by the municipal authorities but as complementary. Beforehand the Legislative

degree 150/2009, public administrations already used tools for measuring and evaluating

performance; one of these is undoubtedly the CAF - Common Assessment Framework. The CAF

is a total quality management tool inspired by the Excellence Model of the European

Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) and the model of the German University of

Administrative Sciences in Speyer. It is based on the premise that excellent results in

organisational performance, citizens/customers, people and society are achieved through

leadership driving strategy and planning, people, partnerships and resources and processes. It

looks at the organisation from different angles at the same time, the holistic approach of

organisation performance analysis.

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1.2. Practice cases about the Performance Cycle and the

application of the Legislative Degree 150/2009

To get a feedback about both the actual implementation of the performance cycle and the

effect brought by the Brunetta’s Reform in the public administration landscape, we analyse

four experiences supported by the Department for Public Service and by FormezPA an

association recognized with private legal personality and subjected to control, supervision and

inspection powers of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers – Department for Public

Service.

The first experience we would like to describe is “Performance Evaluation - Experiences and Leading

Practices” and it is focused on the theme of measuring and evaluating organizational

performance. In this initiative, the performance cycle is considered in its entirety, starting from

the definition of enabling conditions and therefore a context analysis, in order to move on to

the definition of the architecture of the measurement and evaluation system and to the

description of the system’s brick that are the KPIs.

The second initiative is the project “Performance Evaluation - Mapping of Performance Management

Systems in the Provincial Capitals” and it is about the identification of factors and conditions that

can enhance decision-making and related measurement system and organizational

performance assessment, as well as highlighting good reference practices.

In the third experience, “The Performance Management Cycle in the Municipalities of the Regions

Convergence Objective - The experiences of Improvement, Evaluation of the Performances”, the objective is

to identify and qualify the skills required to ensure the effective implementation of the

Performance Management cycle using appropriate measurement and evaluation systems in

order to improve the quality of services.

The last initiative we would like to describe is “"Performance evaluation - big cities" analyse the

performances of city-managed services and it is also about the implementation and evaluation

of the strategy and performance governance of participating companies; it is focused on the

definition phase of the KPIs and on the comparison between different kind of them.

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1.2.1. “Performance Evaluation – Experiences and Leading Practices”

The initiative “Leading practice” is part of the project PON (Programma Operatvio Nazionale)

“Evaluation of the performance” Obiettivo 1 – Convergenza, Asse E – Capacità istituzionale and in line

with the recent reform of public administration and in particular with Legislative Decree

150/2009, to strengthen the capacity of Italian public administrations to put in place more

effective policies and better public services through the implementation of the Performance

Management Cycle.

The objective of the experience is to identify useful elements to inspire local governments in

the design and implementation of the reform process outlined in Legislative Decree 150/2009.

It can be identified two different lines in the project:

• Line 1 of the project aims at highlighting experiences that can be taken as a reference for the

design and development of a system for measuring and evaluating organizational performance

for the local authority. A selection of 8 administrations equally distributed in the Italian

territory took part in this initiative (7 municipalities: Bergamo, Novara, Verona, Reggio Emilia,

Arezzo, Nola and Casarano and a union of municipalities: Union of the municipalities of

Lower Romagna) in the first four months of 2011.

• Line 2 of the project, which aims instead to enhance lessons learned from line 1 through a self-

candidacy process by the municipalities. The municipalities that have decided to join this

initiative have begun a path aimed at implementing the performance management cycle in line

with what the Legislative Decree 150/2009.

According to the objective of our paper, we decided to focus more on line 1.

The first step that was taken during the project was the diagnosis or analysis of the measuring

system and evaluation of the adherent municipalities in order to understand what was the

starting point and to identify possible improvement actions.

The instrument used for the analysis phase was a checklist consisting of three themes of analysis:

• Enabling conditions

• Measurement system

• Indicators

For each of the themes, factors that represent components useful to the definition of the

measurement system have been chosen; each factor in turn has been articulated into criteria

or elementary analysis units.

31

Enabling conditions refer to factors that may affect the design and effective implementation

of the rating system. The factors identified in this topic are: the role and behaviour of the

leader of the organization, the presence of a programming and control system, and therefore

of an information system supporting the presence of the OIV, the presence of a systematic

reference framework for staff management.

As for the theme of the measurement system, the factors that make up the system and the

model of representation of the activities carried out and of the organization's results are

referred to. Specifically, the factors are: measurement and evaluation areas, measurement and

evaluation methodologies, process, subject and system responsibilities, system components,

system level of computerization, system transparency level.

The last issue within the check list is that of the indicators and aims to understand which

indicators are used by pilot administrations. The factors considered are the following:

extension of measurement, register, context and factors of complexity, impacts, municipal

services offered and the state of health of the municipal body.

The phase of completing the checklist is considered a review aimed at analysing the experiences

of administrations that have already begun an innovation path. It also highlighted the strengths

of pilot administrations and identify leading practices that identify tools, practices or design

patterns and performance cycle management. Last but not least, it has provided

recommendations and instructions in terms of principles and criteria for developing the

performance cycle.

After more than a year from the beginning of the project, the experts involved in the pilot

analysis and support experience of the pilot administrations reactivated a path of analysis aimed

at understanding how Municipalities had undertaken and managed the evaluation process

within the performance management. The second phase of line 1 of the project concerned

only 5 administrations of the 8 previously analysed (Arezzo, Bergamo, Union of Municipalities

of Lower Romagna, Reggio Emilia and Verona) and are those that at the end of the first phase

had completed the drafting of the Performance Plan 2011-2013.

At the end of the project, two types of leading learned can be found:

• The steps taken by the administrations in the direction of creating a system for measuring

and evaluating the organizational performance and therefore the tools, methodologies and

competences.

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• The analysis process carried out and the indications that can be drawn from the design of

improvement actions.

The analysis also shows that the Performance Plan is crucial for the presence of a good system

of measurement and performance evaluation. The drafting of a Good Performance Plan

presupposes that the administration has defined and / or strengthened the Performance

Management Cycle according to the plan through both the measurement and evaluations

system and indicators.

The analysed experiences show that reform has given a substantial impetus to doing things

that administrations would otherwise not do and to reinforce some ongoing projects. In

addition, the route initiated by some of the pilot local governments highlights how it is possible

for a local authority to make a path of change, inspired by the principles contained in

Legislative Decree n. 150 of 2009, and aimed at strengthening the measurement system and,

more generally, the performance management cycle.

1.2.2. “Performance Evaluation – Mapping of performance management

systems in the Provincial”

This experience born in the field of the project PON (Programma Operativo Nazionale)

“Evaluation of the performance” of the Department for Public Service and it is proposed to develop

and support performance management capabilities of municipal administrations localized in

the Obiettivo Convergenza Regions. These Regions have a gross domestic power pro-capite

(GDP/inhabitant), calculated on the basis of data for the last three years prior to the adoption

of the Structural Funds Regulation, less than 75% of the enlarged EU average. In Italy these

regions are: Campania, Puglia, Calabria and Sicilia to which it is added Basilicata, allowed to

benefit from this goal on a transitional basis.

In this project some significant municipalities’ experiences about the application of the

Legislative Degree 150/2009 have been identified and analysed with the aim of systematically

identifying factors and conditions that can enhance decision-making and related measurement

systems and organizational performance assessment, as well as highlighting good reference

practices.

The initiative, conducted in 2011, would like to identify good practices in the performance

management through the analysis of performance measurement system evolution in all the

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Italian Provincial Capital municipalities, excluding those that have been chosen for the

previous pilot project and those belonging to the Obiettivo Convergenza Regions; totally

municipalities analysed are 99. The ultimate goal is to assess whether the Performance Plan is

an actual work and management document or, on the contrary, a mere fulfilment or

undifferentiated junk mail or policy announcement.

The mapping of performance systems has taken place in two steps: the first aimed at analysing

the performance (realized or programmed) transparency level (System Document,

Consolidated Balance Sheet, Performance Plan, Performance Report) through the analysis of

the website while the second focused on the analysis of the essential organizational

performance documentation presented on the website of each body.

According to the completeness level and accessibility to the website it has been created a

classification into three groups (significant, semi-significant and not significant website).

Among the 99 municipalities under consideration it has been chosen 10 of them emerging for

the accessibility, completeness and updating of the performance management communication

according to the administrative order 150/2009.

The ten municipalities have been further analysed and a depth reading of the Performance

Plan has been conducted; additionally, the General Direction has been interviewed to deepen

the results gained by the administration and investigate the decision process at the basis of

performance management. Each municipality presented its own performance tree with its

performance measurement and evaluation system; it was verified whether the PDP was the

result of either a technical operation or administrators intervene in this phase.

At the end of the project, an assessment was made of the consistency between knowledge

(regarding the functioning of the performance management cycle and the measurement system

and performance evaluation) and decisions made (with respect to the design of the

performance management cycle of the evaluation system). Knowledge is interpreted as a way

to deal with and make available context data while decisions are intended as a way to quickly

identify solutions to collective problems.

From the analysis of the 10 municipalities emerge as the decision-making process is unlikely

to be linked to the exploitation of knowledge. The administrations create the performance

system but scarcely use it to make decisions and improve performance.

Municipalities are more attentive to the regulatory and procedural aspects than to the use of

the tools provided by law to trigger genuine administrative modernization processes and

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improve their performance. In most municipalities, PDP is considered a “mere fulfilment” and

does not have a decisive impact on improving the quality of the administration's action. The

performance management agenda is dictated by the times and content provided by the rules

and only in very few cases anticipates the legislation and is based on the needs of the

municipality.

In the light of the results of this project, we can conclude that the Legislative Degree 150/2009

has not achieved the desired effects or at least requires long time to find full implementation

in the realities of public administrations. Constant commitment by the government is therefore

required to promote the use of a system of measurement and performance evaluation not so

much to the fulfilment of a norm but to the improvement of the entire decision-making

process and consequently to an improved service.

1.2.3. “The Performance Management Cycle in the Municipalities of the

Regions Convergence Objective - The Experiences of Improvement,

Evaluation of the Performances”

The initiative born within the field of the PON “Governance e Azioni di Sistema Obiettivo 1 –

Convergenza, Asse E – Capacità istituzionale” promoted by the Department for Public Service and

operatively supported by FormezPA; municipalities with a population of between 20,000 and

250,000 inhabitants belonging to the Convergence Objective Regions can participate to this

project.

The ultimate goal of the initiative is to improve the quality of services by identifying and

qualifying the skills required to ensure the effective implementation of the Performance

Management Cycle using appropriate measurement and evaluation systems.

Previously, a pilot project – Line 1 – has been conducted and 10 administrations not belonging

to the Obiettivo Convergenza Regions participated; the first analysis allowed to highlight some

of the leading practices deriving from the implementation of Legislative Decree 150/2009.

Starting from the experience gained with the pilot administrations, it was decided to lead the

next Line 2 of the project, starting from September 2011, to which 93 municipal

administrations belonging to the Convergence Objective Regions had joined, but 79 completed

the route. The activities proposed to municipal administrations concern the development of

35

skills for implementing the Performance Cycle and on-site support to follow the development

of the Performance Measurement and Evaluation System and the definition of the

Performance Plan 2012/2014.

At first, the territorial experts involved in the affiliate process analysed the documentation of

each administration in order to understand what the starting situation was. A checklist consists

of two fields allowed to evaluate the measurement and evaluation system; on the one hand,

enabling conditions or elements of the Performance Management Cycle that may affect the

characteristics of the measurement and evaluation system (governance and organization,

programming and control system, personnel management) and on the other the measurement

system components (metrics and methodologies of measurement and evaluation, process,

subject and system responsibilities, level of system computerization, level of system

transparency, measurement extension). In addition, for each municipal administration a list of

elements present in the Performance Management Cycle has been drawn up (the level of

political commitment, the measurement system and performance evaluation documents, the

content of programming documents, the depth of programming, the programming and control

expertise in the administration, the level of computerization, the characteristics of the

Independent Evaluation Body, the level of participation of the Project by the Administrative

Summit).

The results of this preliminary analysis, conducted in September 2011, outline a very varied

picture in terms of the evolution of the performance measurement and performance

characteristics of the Performance Management Cycle. The emerging issues concern the

programming and control system and involvement in the Performance Management Cycle of

Citizens and Other Stakeholders. Other weak points emerged are the lack of a clear definition

of strategic goals, the lack of information on the actual level of achievement of objectives by

both political decision-makers and citizens, over-emphasis on the economic and financial

dimension and a role of subordinate office management functions compared to other

administrative organizational units. Another critical point in the performance measurement

and evaluation system is the lack of methodologies for measuring organizational performance,

concept introduced in Art.8 of Legislative Decree 150/2009.

From this analysis emerges that the principles set forth by the Brunetta’s Reform, almost two

years after its publication, are scarcely widespread in public administrations; the scenario that

is presented stands out for systems that are poor and functioning more on the basis of practices

than a system of rules, roles and responsibilities. Following the support activities and

36

development activities provided by the project under analysis, a comprehensive improvement

of the adhering administrations was possible. On average, as measured by the measurement

carried out in March 2012, the administrations that participated have improved along the 8

dimensions considered that we remember to be:

• Political commitment

• Measuring system

• Planning and programming system

• Depth of programming

• Programming and measuring skills

• Levels of computerization

• Independent assessment body

• The will of the administrative summit

It should be stressed that public administrations have differently reacted during the project.

Some administrative realities have succeeded and fully grasp the opportunity offered by the

project by improving its Performance Management Cycle. There have been cases of

municipalities that, after an initial phase of enthusiasm, have diminished commitment and

commitment. Some small administrations have been able to use larger reality experiences to

grow and improve, while realities already having a good starting point have succeeded in

bringing little improvements to their situation.

The lesson to learn at the end of this project is quite obvious: the implementation of the tools

proposed by Legislative Decree 150/2009 in municipal administrations must be side-by-side

and supported on-site with the intervention of specific managers in order to achieve positive

results. Municipal administrations must be involved and should be explained to them that by

developing a system of measurement and evaluation of ad hoc performance, significant

improvements can be made. Only in this way it can be prevented that performance

measurement is being seen only as a mere fulfilment of standards.

1.2.4. “Performance Evaluation Indicators- Big Cities”

The initiative “Big Cities" is part of the "Performance Evaluation” project of the Public

Administration Department funded by the European Social Fund PON “Governance and

37

System Actions”, Programming 2007/2013, Axis E - Institutional Capacity and it is realized

with the FormezPA's collaboration.

This initiative finds a legal foundation within Legislative Decree 150/2009 and offers a

structured time of comparison aimed at enhancing the best experiences, as well as sharing

possible development lines of planning, measurement, control and evaluation systems. The

job, in addition to the performance of city-managed services, will address the issues of defining

implementation and evaluation of the strategy and performance governance of participating

companies. The aim of this initiative is to identify and define the tools to improve performance

management systems in major cities, taking into account the prospect that will lead to the role

of metropolitan cities.

The Key Performance Indicator (KPI) comparison and sharing work has enabled, through the

benchmarking methodology, to identify and define a set of pilot indicators for measuring and

evaluating the performance of services provided by administrations in 5 areas of intervention:

• Nurseries

• Home care and residential services

• Routine maintenance of roads

• Tax services (ICI-IMU, TARSU-TARES)

• Road safety services.

At first, a pilot investigation was conducted on indicators for measuring and evaluating the

performance of services in use in 12 Italian cities: Bari, Bologna, Cagliari, Florence, Genoa,

Milan, Naples, Palermo, Rome, Turin, Trieste and Venice; the administrations made this

journey between November 2013 and May 2014.

The benchmarking proposal is divided into several steps; first, data on the indicators used in

cities for selected services was collected and analysed. Subsequently, common indicators for

measurement and evaluation were considered transversely relevant. Through a time of sharing

with the common members, KPI sets were selected and then checked for their relevance and

sensitivity. At the end of the process a common declaratory was drawn up for the exact

identification of the reference quantities.

From a first analysis of the results obtained, it is obvious that benchmarking opportunities, if

fully exploited, can have huge benefits for municipal administrations. This process can create

learning opportunities and can lead to a path of organizational change. The tools used within

38

the administrations are reviewed critically in the light of different experiences. In addition,

performance evaluation is based on objective and self-defined criteria.

Undoubtedly there are also some criticalities in the use of benchmarking since the

implementation of this project requires a change within municipal administrations in terms of

how to collect internal data and, more importantly, a change of mind set from the personnel.

This project is aimed at the creation of an online platform in which each public administration

can access to the benchmarking data on measurement systems and service performance levels

considered relevant by major Italian cities. The concept of benchmarking has been proposed

within the Legislative Decree 150/2009 and we have seen in this initiative how its proper and

assisted implementation can lead to important results for public administrations. The

commitment of all actors involved is undoubtedly the most influential enabler for an effective

success of the initiative.

Later, during the development of the thesis, we will develop a project that in many respects

resembles the project just described; the experience learned from "Valutazione delle performance

– Grandi città" will undoubtedly serve to guide our analysis.

1.3. Recent measures on Performance Management – the

Madia’s Reform

Following the issuance of Legislative Decree 150/2009 and the consequent implementation

of the proposed principles, some changes were made in an attempt to remedy some

misunderstandings in the original text. A significant change to what was proposed in 2009

occurs with Law 124 of the 2015; the purpose of the measure is, on the one hand, the reduction

of the burden on administrations and, on the other, the introduction of differentiated schemes

for the measurement and evaluation of performance by type and size of administrations. Some

guidelines for the simplification of procedural and documentary aspects of the Performance

Cycle have been launched and interventions have been proposed at administrations to allow

for a gradual strengthening of the administrative capacity and skills needed to develop

performance appraisal to support experimentation and the comparison of good practices.

39

With the so-called Madia’s Reform, the Department of Public Function (DFP) plays a central

role and has the task of promoting and coordinating evaluation and measurement activities of

administrative performance. The main functions that DFP has to play is the integration of the

Performance Cycle with economic and financial planning and all internal controls, the

establishment of a list of OIV evaluators who had previously had to work in a state of total

anarchy seeking to follow the guidelines proposed by CIVIT, and to promote evaluation

activities through the dissemination of “guidelines” and good practices.

The central concept introduced is the integration between different analytical-valuation tools

in order to streamline spending and improve productivity. Management control systems and

quality accreditation and certification systems should be made complementary.

It is required to systematically question the utility of performance evaluation and measurement

systems to verify their compatibility and adaptability to the changing needs of organizational

and socio-economic contexts (Marra, 2015).

Compared to the past, the novelties are the abrogation of certain parts of Legislative Decree

150/2009 concerning the measurement system, organizational and individual performance, the

obligation to transmit documents, the transfer of competences to the Department of the

Function Post at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. The Madia’s Reform also

envisages the introduction of a Technical Performance Committee, with advisory functions

for the management of administrative activities and directives that will be headed by the

Department. This will be composed of 5 members nominated by the Minister and will have

the task of maintaining relations with the various departments in the decentralized sectors in

order to establish a National System for the Evaluation of Public Administration. An

“Operational Structure” of 25 employees will be established in Rome to support the Technical

Commission.

The new law aims to improve the productivity of the public sector in order to ensure the

efficiency and transparency of public administrations. In addition to evaluating the

administration as a whole, organizational units or areas of responsibility with individual

employees or groups of employees are evaluated. It introduces the category of general

objectives that outline priorities in terms of public administration activities in line with national

policies. For the first time, an active role of citizens in the evaluation of organizational

performance is recognized by defining user satisfaction surveys on the quality of services

rendered.

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Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1. Literature Review Criteria

Performance management is one of the key tenets of the New Public Management (Christensen

and Toshimi, 2001), it covers a wide range of topics and in recent decades has risen not only

in the private sector but also in the public one. A crucial element of a performance

management system is performance measurement. Measuring and evaluating public

administration performance is a topic that has for years been at the centre of the international

debate. The examples and studies that the literature proposes provide a heterogeneous picture

of experiences, not always successful, from which you can learn important lessons.

To have a complete picture of the existing literature, we decided to analyse papers with

heterogeneous features, covering a broad perimeter of analysis. The only constraint we set is

on the year of papers’ writing; only those papers written after the ‘90s have been taken into

account. This decision was made considering that the principles guiding the development of

the New Public Management have spread all over the world since the last decade of the

twentieth century; starting from the ‘90s, the theme of measuring and evaluating performance

has become the subject of distinct reform efforts. Therefore, the choice of this temporal

horizon appears consistent with the subject of performance’s measurement and evaluation,

observing how this concept has been studied and discussed right from the moment when, on

a theoretical level, it was placed among the references of managerial science applied to the

public sector.

All the academic studies considered in our literature (38 papers read) are taken from specialized

journals in public management or by conferences specializing in the same field.

In terms of geographical positioning of the analysed experiences, there are papers coming from

the Anglo-Saxon world as well as from the countries of Northern Europe, Mediterranean

Europe, but also from the United States and Asia.

Although the ultimate goal of our project is related to local government, it has been decided

to broaden the spectrum of investigations and to consider literary studies focusing on different

levels of governance to which the content refers, from central governments to local ones.

41

Always not to limit the scope of analysis, we have also considered those papers not only

referring to the municipalities, but also referring to other public contexts as, for example, the

public hospital and schools.

The first differentiation that can be made between the studies considered is about the

methodological approaches been used; two methodological approaches were identified in the

analysed contributions. The first one is the theoretical approach based on systematization of

reference literature or presentation of framework and general approaches (12 theoretical

papers read). The second one is about empirical researches; we decide to differentiate

empirical qualitative articles (e.g. case study) from the quantitative empirical ones (e.g. surveys).

The two classifications are not exclusive and there are papers that fall into both (26 empirical

papers read). Through the analysis of the empirical researches we tried to gain knowledge

interesting inputs by means of direct and indirect observation or actual experiences. All the

papers are characterized by a specific research question to be answered; for this we decide to

report in the classification table, for the empirical researches, the corresponding research

questions.

The first section of the literature is devoted to a review to frame the evolution of performance

management at international level; the aim is to have a broad view on the subject being

investigated. The Anglo-Saxon world has been analysed in a particular way as it has been the

forerunner of so many New Public Management initiatives and especially in the public sector

it has gained relevant results. Then it is examined the proposed literature on performance

management and measurement of other states (Greece, USA, Italy and Asia) in order to cover

a wide spectrum of contexts.

After having discuss the evolution of the New Public Management, we have focused on the

general aspects characterising the performance management. We study not only positive results

generated by these changes, but attention has also been paid to the critical and risky aspects of

this theme.

In order to ensure a certain degree of actions’ consistency and therefore be clearer, we chose

to expose the content of the literature on performance management application following the

order of the performance cycle (see in background, chapter 1). After setting out the enabling

conditions for the adoption of the performance measurement, it was analysed the definition

of the objectives to be pursued and then the setting of the indicators to measure those

objectives. Subsequently, it was exposed the actual measurement and how this performance

information is used. Particular relevance was giving to the benchmarking tool due to the

42

ultimate goal of our project: “Good Practice Public Administration” (see chapter 4). For this reason,

we have decided to emphasize for each papers to be analysed whether there is any reference

to benchmarking cases.

Authors Title Year Methodological Approach Research Question Government

level

Brignal, Model

An institutional perspective on performance

measurement and management in the new public sector

2000 Theoretical

What are the implications of

institutional theory for the successful implementation of multidimensional

performance measurement and

management in the public sector?

Central

Askim

The demand side of performance

measurement: Explaining councilors’

utilization of performance

information in policy making

2008 Qualitative Empirical

What are the factors that condition the extent to which

councilors search for performance

information when faced with decision

dilemmas?

Local

Boyne, James, John,

Petrovsky

Does public service performance affect top management turnover?

2007 Quantitative Empirical

Is the turnover of chief executives and other members of top management

teams influenced by the performance of their organizations?

Local

Padovani, Scorsone

Comparing local governments' performance

internationally: a mission impossible?


What are the variables researcher

should consider when comparing the

adoption characteristics and process of PMSs

across countries at the local level?

Local

Martin, Smith

Multiple public sector performance

performance indicators: toward an integrated statistical approach


Does exist a model through which is it possible to measure

organization’s performance

simultaneously?

Public Hospital

43

Antony, Fryer, Ogden

Performance management in the

public sector 2009 Theoretical

What is the state of performance

management within the public sector?

Central and Local

Boyle Performance

measurement in local government

2000 Theoretical

Which is the role that performance measurement can

play at three levels: county/city overall, service programs, team/individual performance?

Local

Afonso, Schuknecht,

Tanzi

Public sector efficiency: evidence from new EU

member states and emerging markets


Which is the level of efficiency in the new

member states of the European Union compared to that in emerging markets?

Central

Afonso, Schuknecht,

Tanzi

Public sector efficiency: an international

comparison 2003 Quantitative

Empirical

Which is the level of public sector

performance and efficiency in 23 industrialized

countries?

Central

Leeuw, Van Thiel

The performance paradox in the public

sector 2002 Theoretical

Which are the characteristics of the

public sector that can be

counterproductive to developing and using performance

indicators?

Central

Moynihan, Pandey

The big question for performance

management: why do managers use performance information


Why do managers use performance

information? Local

De Lancer Julnes, Holzer

Promoting the utilization of

performance measures in public

organizations: an empirical study of

factor affecting adoption and

implementation


Which are the factors that affect the utilization of

performance measurement?

Central and Local

44

Grossi, Mussari

Effect of outsourcing on performance

measurement and reporting: the

experience of Italian local government

2008 Theoretical

Which are the causes and the effects of the

ministrative reform process that

interested Italian LGs?

Local

Lo Storto

Evaluating technical efficiency of Italian

major municipalities: a DEA model


What is the expenditure

efficiency of 103 Italian major

municipalities?

Local

Borgogni, Petitta

Goal setting and performance

management in the public sector

2011 Theoretical

What is the importance of context to goal

setting and performance

management in the United States and

Italy?

Central and Local

De Carolis, Losurdo, Nisio

L'introduzione del performance

measurement, management e improvement:

l'esperienza di alcune amministrazioni locali

italiane


What is the process of the “Cycle of Performance” in four Italian cities?

What are the conditions that

have facilitated the development and the problems that

emerged?

Local

Caperchione

Local government accounting system reform in Italy: a critical analysis


Which are the problems that

emerged with regard to both

communicational efficacy and fair

presentation?

Local

Cais, Martini

Controllo di gestione e valutazione delle

politiche: un ennesimo ma non ultimo

tentativo di sistemazione concettuale

X Theoretical

What information does the public

administration need to work better?

Public Sector

Bouckaert, Corvo,

Demeulenaure, Meneguzzo

Measuring performance based

budgeting in Flemish and Italian

municipalities


To what extent is performance

information used in decisions regarding

allocation or reallocation of

resources?

Local

45

Lo Storto

The trade-off between cost efficiency and

public service quality: a non-parametric analysis of Italian

major municipalities


Which is the cost efficiency of 108

Italian major municipalities?

Local

De Carolis, Losurdo, Nisio

Use of performance information in Italian

municipalities 2014 Qualitative

Empirical

What goals the internal actors do

really utilize performance

information in decision-making

processes?

Local

Ammons

Benchmarking as a performance

management tool: experiences among municipalities in North Carolina


Which are the forms of benchmarking and how are they

applied?

Local

Gerrish, Spreen

Does benchmarking encourage improvement

or convergence? Evaluating North Carolina's fiscal

benchmarking tool


Does benchmarking encourage

improvement or convergence?

Local

Kroll

Explaining the use of performance

information by public managers: a planned behaviour approach


Which is the use of performance

information by public managers?

Local

Johnsson, Siverbo

Explaining the utilization of RPE in the local government: a multi-theoretical study

using data from Sweden


Which is the utilization of RPE in

Swedish local government?

Local

Dolezova, Holatova,

Rehor

Knowledge and use of quality management in Czech municipalities


How to manage the development of

municipalities? The strategic

management of the municipality has to

use the tools of quality management.

Local

46

Model

Performance measurement and

institutional process: a study of managerial responses to public

sector reform


How the properties of institutional

processes associated with recent reforms in the Norwegian health care sector impinge on the

extent of pro-active choice exercised by senior management in the development of multidimensional

PM?

Health care sector

De Lancer Julnes

Performance measurement an effective tool for

government accountability? The

debate goes on


Which are the effect of accountability

promotion in performance

measurement?

Central and Local

Fahlevi

The application of benchmarking in

public sector: lesson from Germany


Which are the problems/challenges

and potential improvements of the application of benchmarking in German public

sectors?

Local

Stan Brignall and Sven Modell

An institutional perspective on performance

measurement and management in the ‘new public sector’

2000 Theoretical

Are the performance information relevant for management and

which are the stakeholders that

influence the performance?

Central

Francesca Manes Rossi and Natalia Aversano

Advancing performance measurement Italian local

government vis-a ̀-vis the

IPSASB project


What are the effect of the

implementation of performance

measurement tools by medium-to-large

size Italian Local Governments?

Local

Michela Arnaboldi, Giovanni Azzone

Constructing performance

measurement in the public sector


What is the impact of translating Performance Measurement

Systems (PMSs) into operational use?

Central

47

John Isaac Mwita

Performance management model A systems-based

approach to public service quality

2000 Theoretical

What are the use of PM as a systems-based model for cultivating "the

achievement culture'' within

PSOs (Public Sector Organizations)

Central and Local

John Stewara & Kieron

Walsh

Change in the management of public

services 1992 Theoretical

What are the main benefits and issues

bring by the changes in public sector management ?

Central and Local

Michela Arnaboldi,

Irvine Lapsley and Ileana Steccolini

Performance Management in the Public Sector: The Ultimate Challenge

2015 Theoretical

Which are the critical dimensions of effectiveness in

performance management

systems?

Central

George A. Boyne

Sources of Public Service Improvement:

A Critical Review and Research Agenda


Which are the variables that most

consistent influences on performance?

Central

Fabio Monteduro

Performance-based accountability ed

efficacia della p.a.: prime evidenze

empiriche di una comparazione internazionale


Is there a correlation between the degree

of evolution of accountability systems in a

performance-based logic and the level of effectiveness of the

Public Administration

Central

Propper, Wilson

The use and usefulness of performance

measures in the public sector

2003 Theoretical

Which are the empirical evidence

on the use and usefulness of performance

measures in the public sector?

Education and Health care sector

Table 1-Paper classification

48

2.2. Literature Analysis

Starting from the ‘80s, in many countries, there were quite dramatic changes in how the public

sector operates; indeed, it has been argued that the end of the twentieth century saw “a

revolution in the public administration that is every bit as profound as that which occurred at

the turn of the nineteenth century, when Weberian bureaucratic principles began to influence

many governments around the world” (Kmarck, 2000, p.251). These changes can be

characterized as the transition from traditional public administration, based on bureaucracy, to

public management, based on results.

This process of transition, may have started following the severe economic problems in the

United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, but a lot of other countries followed. All those

countries introduced new managerial approach, as results-based management, trying to be

more efficiency in the use of resources.

There were also other interrelated imperatives that brought to the public sector reforms, as the

very weight of the public sectors in society, the impact of changes in the private sector and

finally the huge changes in technologies.

These managerial reforms were prevalent applied and boosted in the Anglo-Saxon contexts,

with a particular focus on the United Kingdom. John Stewart and Kieron Walsh (1992)

identified the themes in changes in UK public sector management and recognized the

objectives of the implemented reforms.

They argued that “the changes are a response by the government to wider social and economic

changes and an expression of developing ideas and ideologies”.

Most of the UK public sector has been subject to organizational or management changes,

other parts have been privatized. Madsen Pirie, Director of the Adam Smith Institute, assessed

that, through the privatization, “there is scope for directing attention to those services which

governments have preferred to keep within the public sector, and to asking if ways can be

found to make these services in turn direct their output to the satisfaction of the wants and

needs of their customers, that is, to the recipients of the services (Pirie 1989, p. 4).”

In 1983 the National Audit Office (NAO) was born through a law called the National Audit Act;

from this moment onwards, NAO will represent one of the leading performance evaluation

bodies in UK. This body exercise at managerial level, while the Audit Commission (AC)

operates at local level.

49

Among the changes have been carried out into practice, some of them proved difficult to

implement. These difficulties were mainly attributed to the adoption of models based on

private sector – often over-simplified private sectors models – without regards to the

distinctive purposes, conditions and tasks of the public sector.

According with Arnaboldi, Lapsley and Steccolini (2015), the “underlying dimension which

makes performance management so difficult is the sheer complexity of, and the often over-

simplistic approach to performance management in the public sector”. The public sector is

widely recognized as a complex setting for study and has been described by Lapsley and

Skærbæk (2012) as an area of inherent complexity, stemming from the location of managerial

culture in a sector which experiences many political influences.

The application in UK of the organizational and managerial reforms was not limited to the

central level of the public sector, but was spotted also among local governments. Through

Local Government Planning and Local Act 1980 and Local Government Act 1988 it was

required to local authorities to put out to tender a specific range of services; many other areas

of local government, as education (Education Reform Act 1988) and community care (the

Children Act 1990 and the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990), have been

subject to changes based upon the introduction of market mechanisms in the management

processes.

Another relevant viewpoint introduced by the UK government was the ones brought in the

White Paper on the Citizens Charter which is stated by the Prime Minister: “giving more power

to the citizen” (Citizen's Charter 1991). Although the emphasis is less on the public as citizens

than as customers.

Also freedom of information was a central part of the UK government’s modernisation

programme; a White Paper called "Your Right to Know" was opened to discussion in the

beginning of 1998. It commits the public sector at each level to provide access to official

information and records, and to publish more information at no charge. Sensitive information

can be exempted for purposes of personal privacy, commercial confidentiality, national

security and law enforcement. An independent Information Commissioner will oversee the

implementation of these measures and handle appeals.

50

This wave of reform (OECD5, 1997; GASB6, 2002; IFAC7, 2008) continued in the ‘90s and in

the 2000, and performance management and measurement has long been considered one of

the key drivers of modernization in public administrations. However, the empirical researches

developed among this period, was widely differentiated through countries.

In UK, performance measurement had continued widespread in all public sectors for a long

time (Kloot and Martin, 2000).

In Australia and New Zealand performance reporting was widely used (Walker, 2002; Lee,

2008). Nevertheless, in accordance with Lee (2008), non-financial information, as output and

outcome measures, appeared to be underdeveloped and were perceived as less useful for

disclosure in the annual reports than financial information. Regarding the performance

reporting, the main difference with the performance management is that reporting looks back

while management looks forward.

In the Canadian context, Pollanen (2005) made known that local governments adopted mainly

efficiency measures rather than effectiveness ones.

In USA, the “National Performance Review” (1993) was the Clinton-Gore Administration's

initiative to reform the way the federal government worked. Its aim was to create a government

that "works better and costs less." The better way to achieve this goal was that on focusing on

the results adopting a performance management approach; as stated in the 1993 report “from

Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government that Works Better and Costs Less”: “unlike many past

efforts to change the government, the National Performance Review will not end with the

publication of a report. We have identified what we must do to make government work better

5 The Public Management Committee (PUMA) of the OECD developed a set of principles for managing ethics

in the public service. They were discussed at a symposium held in November 1997. The “efficient regulation

principles” are: transparency and openness of decision-making, non-discrimination, avoidance of unnecessary

trade restrictiveness, use of internationally harmonised measures, recognition of equivalence of regulatory

measures taken by other countries, and application of competition principles.6 The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB). 7 The International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) released in 2008 its annual report highlighting initiatives to help

restore global financial stability and, in addition, describing how some of IFAC's core work-developing

international standards and guidance became even more relevant in the current economic environment. "As a

result of the crisis, some of the ideas IFAC has been communicating for decades are resonating with greater

force," said Ian Ball, Chief Executive Officer. "Chief among these is the need for convergence to global

standards."

51

and cost less: We must serve our customers, cut red tape, empower employees to get results,

and cut back to basics. Now, we will take action.”

European countries shown wide differences, depending on the country. According to ter Bogt

(2008), many Dutch entities included performance information in their annual reports, but the

use of such data was not completely clear. In contrast, looking at experiences already reported

from Nordic countries, performance reporting was considered helpful in supporting decision

processes and allowed benchmarking (Askim et al., 2008; Johansson and Siverbo, 2009).

Germany had been considered a later adopter (Greiling, 2005) with respect to performance

measurement. The full potential performance measurement may offer, in the opinion Greiling,

was not realised. The front runners of performance measurement were local governments.

Voluntary inter-administrative comparison circles were the most frequently used instrument,

followed, to a much lesser extent, by quality management initiatives and performance-

indicator-based contracting.

In Mediterranean countries, the situation diverged significantly from experiences reported in

other European countries: in Greece, Spain and Italy, and there were very low requirements

for performance reporting and management, and local governments do not appear to pay

enough attention to these tools (Ongaro and Valotti, 2008; Montesinos and Brusca, 2009).

Greece was more focus on changing its administrative structure. Through decentralisation,

regions had become administrative units with their own budgets while, at local government

level, municipalities and communities are being merged. This structure was focus on flexibility,

adaptability and quality, moreover, it was developed to avoid duplication and enhance co-

ordination.

At this time, Italy has launched an initiative with Spain to promote close collaboration among

the public administrations of European Union member States, with a view to achieving

uniformly high levels of efficiency and productivity.

In Italy those reforms have been introduced through a normative process; since 1990, a large

number of laws have been issued changing accounting techniques, financial reporting, and

management evaluations, all considered the “technical lifeblood” of New Public Management

(Olson et al., 1998, p. 18). Several reforms have been passed, involving, with different deadlines

and levels of intensity, all levels of government: state, regional, and local governments. With

regard to this process of change, Italian local governments were the forerunners. The first law

52

regarding the public sector transition was about the ordinance of local autonomies (the law n.

142/1990) and required the adoption by local governments of all useful tools and managerial

approaches to ensure efficiency and effectiveness. Since then, a large number of decrees have

changed the existing systems for the evaluation of human resources, with a focus on managers,

(the first was the D. Lgs. 29/93) to introduce a different reporting and budgetary system (D.

Lgs. 77/95), and to adopt and to publish a set of performance indicators that can be in part

mandatory and in part voluntary (D. Lgs. 194/96).

In addition, a sort of management budget, called the “Executive Management Plan” was

introduced in 1995, employed in order to assign objectives and resources to each responsibility

centre (Anessi Pessina and Steccolini, 2005). Each year the Ministry of the Interior publishes

a report containing data for three years for all Italian local governments. The aim of the plan

is to establish comparisons and benchmarks within local governments and to increase

transparency and accountability.

As we can see from the previous considerations, the deep reform process of the last two

decades, has led to a drastic change in the size and patterns of the public system at international

level. At the core of these transformations there is another fundamental notion: the

accountability. This concept has become the subject of interest not only in the political debate

but also in the management and public administration studies (Farneti, 2004).

R. Mulgan (2000) stated “that accountability is a complex and chameleon-like term and is now

a commonplace of the public administration literature”. This concept can be subject to several

interpretations, one sense of “accountability” on which all are agreed, is that associated with

the process of being called “to account” to some authority from one’s actions (Jones 1992,

p.73). Accountability, however, remains a "relative" concept since the "function of the account"

differs differently depending on the historical and geographical context in which it is used, the

cultural and disciplinary matrix of the person who speaks as well as of the object and tools

with which it is realized (Monteduro, 2006, pp. 32-46).

Some authors have proposed linking the concept of accountability to the process of

transformation affecting the public administration internationally; this concept assumes

different meanings and roles depending on the evolutionary stage of the public administration.

There are two interpretations of accountability (OECD, 1997):

The first one is the compliance-based accountability; it has as its main object the legitimacy, the

appropriateness of the use of financial resources and, in general, the action’s compliance with

53

regulatory requirements. This interpretation is link with the traditional public administration,

in turn characterized by the Wilsonian, Tayloristic and Weberian view of the administration.

Thanks to this approach the public administration should have ensured the impartiality and

good conduct of public action by overcoming the problem of corruption; this form of

accountability relied on the formal links provided through the hierarchical structure.

The second interpretation is the consequence of a reform agenda that, since the ‘80s, has

started to be incisively characterized by managerial logics and tools. Through this

interpretation, performance-based accountability, the emphasis is no longer only on the legitimacy

and appropriateness of the process but above all on the performance achieved in terms of

efficiency and effectiveness. As you can see, a fundamental change of this form of

accountability is related to improve the relationship with the citizens. In the compliance-based

accountability, the only avenue of accountability was through the political leadership, while

with the performance-based accountability there are more direct links to the citizenry. The role

of citizens is seen increasingly as analogous to the role customers play in the private sector.

Thanks to an intense research and evaluation carried out by the OCES8 in 2007, it is now

possible to empirically find that many countries have changed their accountability processes in

a performance-based logic. Improving accountability led to a need for measurable result and

responsiveness to citizens.

The processes in which performance-based accountability is realized are those of the

measurement of results and its use for allocation of resources, external reporting and audit

results which translate into performance management. Indeed, public management allows, and even

requires, interaction with the outside. And aims for more direct accountability as a result.

It can be state that performance management covers all aspects of business.

In their citation review, Marr and Schiuma (2003) found contributors from a wide variety of

subject areas including management, operations management, marketing, finance, accounting,

economics, human resource management, organisational behaviour and public sector

management.

8 Organizzazione per la Cooperazione e lo Sviluppo Economico

54

A comprehensive performance management system should include five main type of measures

which can be represented in terms of simplified value chain, as follow:

Figure 4 - Input Output Framework

First of all, the objectives represent the targets, quantitative or qualitative, toward which

strategies are aimed. The inputs are the resources used to reach those target services; the

activities are the process, systems, cultures and procedures required to design and deliver the

service. The output are the units of service delivers to the users, while the outcomes represent

the effects that the service has both directly on the users and indirectly on the wider

community.

The literature identifies the key features of a successful performance management system as

being:

• Alignment of the performance management system and existing systems and strategies of the

organisation

• Leadership commitment

• A culture in which it is see as a way of improving and identifying good performance and not a

burden that is used to chastise poor performers

• Stakeholder involvement and

• Continuous monitoring feedback, dissemination and learning from result.

However, some authors, such as Bititci et al. (2006), also feel it is essential that the performance

management system is not static but matures as the management style and organizational

culture evolves.

Indeed, there can be a number of common problems with performance management regimes.

There is the risk that performance measure distorts the behaviour of managers and patterns of

service delivery, performance management can lead to perverse incentives and moreover the

outcomes are influenced by a range of factors not all of which are within the control of service

providers.

Regarding the main critical dimensions of effectiveness in performance management systems,

Arnaboldi, Lapsley and Steccolini (2015) state that “the single largest pitfall for performance

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55

management systems in public service organisations is a negative side-effect which undermines

the motivation, morale and behaviour of human resources”. Also Diefenbach (2009, p.905)

made the following observation: “NPM’s impact on employees and corporate culture of public

sector organisations comprises a whole range of negative psycho-sociological and

organisational effects”.

There is a body of literature which supports this critique of NPM impacts on employees. As

early as 1998 there were warnings of perverse behaviour, difficulties of interpretation and

simplistic measures when governments first suggested performance assessment within the

National Health Service (McKee and Sheldon, 1998). Example of deviant or unwanted

behaviours include cancelling follow-up appointments to ensure all initial appointments are

within the set time.

Deviant behaviour includes different kind of activities such as:

• Setting undemanding targets and working to only just achieve them;

• Performance clustering around the target either through deliberately underperforming or

manipulating the data;

• Concentrating on meeting targets at the expense of other (unmeasured) factors; and

• Choosing indicators and targets to influence the results/manipulating the measures.

Today there are still employees who view performance measurement and management as a

violation. Hood (2006) feels that the lack of resources spent on checking performance data,

taking the results at face value and the lack of an “antigaming strategy” has allowed this deviant

behaviour.

Despite at theoretical level performance management within the public sector is widely treated,

it has not been the predicted success in the actual implementation. Around the world there are

common issues arising in performance management systems from conflicts between different

interest groups, between politicians and professional, internal politics between factions and

coalitions, pressures from special interest groups, conflict between central agencies wanting

control and departments/local bodies and professional all wanting autonomy (Radin, 2003).

In performance management it could arise three kind of problems:

• Technical: related to the indictors and the data, their collection, interpretation and analysis.

• Systems: referred to “bigger picture” issues such as integrating performance systems with the

existing systems.

• Involvement: related to “soft” variable such as people issues and their involvement in the

performance management system.

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The absence of strong leadership or coalitions supporting a result orientation, measures that

constrain flexibility and are not well linked to goals or consequences, mutual distrust between

agencies and legislators about gaming of measures and employees concern that their

responsibility is not commensurate with their authority are some impediments to

administrative reform through outcome-based performance measurement (Mintzberg, 1996).

Public administrations find difficult to measure the performance of cross-organizational

processes. There is still a widespread measurement of the performance of staff and

productivity of a single office, but it is very rare to find reports on processes involving a larger

number of sub-funds. This critical point of performance measurement is justified by a lack of

communication and collaboration between the various parts of the organization; each sector

deals exclusively with its own activities and the part of the process being carried out internally.

So there is a search for a local optimum rather than a great global one; this trend is negatively

reflected in the quality of the service offered to the citizen.

As emerges from the literature’s analysis, the underline dimension which makes performance

management so difficult is the sheer complexity of, and the often over-simplistic approach to

performance management in the public sector (Arnaboldi, Lapsley and Steccolini, 2015).

Here emerges a crucial element of a performance management system: the performance

measurement – monitoring that shows where change is required and which will in turn produce

the desired behaviour that will produce improved performance (Lemieux-Charles et al., 2003).

Performance management and performance measurement are often used as interchangeable

terms but they are different entities. Performance measurement is about the past while

performance management extrapolates the data to provide information about the future

(Lebas, 1995).

Radnor and Barnes (2007) differentiate the terms as: measurement is quantifying, either

quantitatively or qualitatively, the input, output or level of activity of an event or process.

Performance management is action, based on performance measures and reporting, which results

in improvements in behaviour, motivation and promotes innovation.

To conclude, the primary function of performance measurement is to specify broad and

abstract goals and mission to enable evaluation (Wang and Berman, 2001) and a performance

measurement system needs to be purposeful, unified, integrated and fluid.

A general consensus is that performance measurement improves the quality of management

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by helping public administration make better decisions and use resources more effectively.

Quantifying performance allows managers to monitor changes, identify potential problems,

and take timely corrective action. Data that describe performance in terms of where the agency

has been, where it is today, and how it compares with other similar agencies allows managers

to direct resources to activities that are successful. Performance measures, as we have seen

before, also influence employee behaviour negatively or positively because when employees

know the basis on which they will be assessed they are more likely to perform. For the

government as a whole, it can be argued, performance recognition builds trust and enhances

credibility with taxpayers.

In accepting the need for performance measurement, it is important not to underestimate the

problems in its implementation.

The four aspects of performance measurement implementation are:

• Deciding what to measure

• How to measure it

• Interpreting the data and

• Communicating the results.

All these activities are part of the performance management and they need to be properly

handled by managers.

First of all, it has to be decided what to measure and through which indicators the

administration would like to investigate performance. The use and quality of performance

indicators has been evolving (Johnson, 2005) as organisation and stakeholders have become

more used to the concepts of performance management. At the beginning it principally used

financial indicators but nowadays also other measures such as quality indicators were gradually

introduced. A large number of indicators does not coincide with an improvement in the quality

of the indicators themselves (Lemieux-Charles et al 2003).

It can be found four types of indicators:

• Output (how much is being produced)

• Welfare (the value to the final users)

• Performance (how the services are being produced)

• Composite indicators that combine the other three

To give a broad picture of an organisation’s activity through its measures, different authors

have proposed frameworks. For the managers there are significant problems in the selection

of management tools to mobilise in the name of performance management. The quality of

available techniques is a particular problem for public sector.

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The classic Anglo-American NPM approach of seeking appropriate private sector models has

led to the introduction of Benchmarking, KPIs, Balanced Scorecard (Kaplan and Norton, 1996),

performance prism (Neely et al, 2001) and Lean Management into many public services, with mixed

results.

The introduction of NPM philosophy stress the focus on outcomes rather than outputs

(Guthrie and English, 1997). Output information does not tell you anything about the actual

results achieved or the consequences of the products and services delivered and it is important

to show the scope or size of what the inputs and activities produce. An outcome is not what

the program actually produced itself (the output), but the consequences of those products,

services, or assistance.

After having defined what to measure, it is fundamental to define how and when to carry out

that. To have an effective indicator it is required to define the assumptions regarding it and the

rationale for measuring it. Precision and accuracy of any measurements are essential but also

congruence, indeed many indicators are proxies so it is essential that the indicators changes in

lune with the actual behaviour.

Indicators must be smart (Doran, 1981) which means that each indicator must be specific,

measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Despite this, many times occurs the

problems that the decision to identify KPIs for performance assessment focuses on what can

be measured rather than necessarily capturing key dimensions of organisational performance

(Bevan and Hood, 2006).

Once collected all the data about performance the administration would like to control, one

relevant problem arises: how to turn data into information to use as the basis for management

decision making? Interpretation of the results is the most important but also the most difficult

activities to be done in performance management. One of the main problems is the lack of

statistical rigour and testing carried out on performance indicator data (Brown, 2005). Despite

the use of scorecards and a range of types of indicators, organisation rarely look at the

interactions and trade-offs between the indicators (Pollitt, 2005).

The final step is to communicate results achieved through performance measurement to

organization; this is another critical point in performance management. Indeed, tables of

performance indicators are traditionally published as part of annual report with little

explanation or comparative data leaving stakeholders to interpret the results for themselves.

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Concluding, despite the best intentions of governments to improve the quality of services

through benchmarking, measurement and quality systems, there are still unwanted side effects.

After presenting the main features of performance management, actual cases found in the

literature are presented trying to extrapolate relevant experiences of implementation.

As mentioned before, the search for efficiency in the use of resources represents one of the

main reasons why public administration has decided to implement performance measurement.

The birth of the European Union (Maastricht Treaty – 1993) strongly influenced the adoption

by Member States of performance measurement systems; in fact, states that join the EU are

bound to fiscal discipline through the Stability and Growth Pact.

The theme of achieving efficiency by the new member states of the European Union (EU) is

tackled by Afonso, Schuknecht and Tanzi (2006). Conceptual and methodological issues

related to the measurement and analysis of public sector efficiency as well as the development

of public sector performance and efficiency composite indicators for the ten new member

states that adhered to the EU on 1 May 2004 compared to emerging markets are discussed.

The key theme of achieving efficiency in public administrations is the efficient use of scarce

resources. Efficiency has to do with the comparison between input and output or between

costs and benefits. The authors state that efficiency, or more often inefficiency, is easier to

recognize than to define objectively and precisely.

To perform efficiency measurement, three activities are required:

• An estimation of costs

• An estimation of output

• The comparison between the two

Public expenditure is efficient when, given the amount spent, it produces the largest possible

benefit for the country’s population. Efficiency measurement is not an easy task for public

administrations since the indicators must take into account different dimensions even external

to the administration, as quality offered to end users. The article’s authors distinguish two types

of composite indicators to assess the efficiency of public administrations:

• Macro measurement indicators that aim at estimating the efficiency of total public spending

• Micro measurement indicators that aim at measuring the efficiency of particular categories of

public spending

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At the end of the efficiency scores’ analysis of both European and emerging states emerge that

expenditure efficiency across new EU member states is rather diverse, especially compared to

the group of top performing emerging markets in Asia.

By addressing the theme of efficiency, one cannot fail to consider the existing correlation with

the quality of services offered to the end user. In literature, the trade-off between expenditure

efficiency and effectiveness, that is the quality of public service, is the very often considered.

An interesting case of verification of the existence of this kind of trade-off is offered by

Corrado Lo Storto's work on the analysis of 108 Italian Municipalities carried out through a

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The purpose of this work is to answer two main

questions: the first one is to what extent the Italian major municipalities are performing

efficiently in terms of annual expenditure and financial resource management necessary to

provide public services to citizens while the second one is whether municipalities that are

efficient with respect to expenditure are also effective in terms of quality of services offered to

people living in the municipal territory. To answer the first question, a conventional input-

oriented Data Envelopment Analysis model using 6 cost item inputs and 2 outputs was

implemented to calculate municipality efficiency. To answer the second question, a truncated

regression analysis was run adopting the bootstrapped efficiency estimate as the dependent

variable and a set of indicators of the quality of public services offered in the municipal territory

as the independent variables.

DEA is a widely accepted and used method by scholars for it strengths. DEA has indeed a

number of advantages such as (Shang & Sueyoshi, 1995; Russell, 1985):

• It models the efficiency evaluation in a way that is consistent with the definition of a

production function;

• The efficiency analysis is focused and provides detailed information relative to the individual

unit;

• It does not require a prior definition of a production function;

• It does not require any statistical assumption regarding data distribution such as normality and

absence of heteroscedasticity;

• Uncontrollable input variables can be included in the efficiency model as non-discretionary

inputs.

This method takes into account simultaneously all inputs and outputs to assess the unit

efficiency. Moreover, DEA methodology provides a valid starting point for specifying

performance benchmarks, because it focuses on observed operating practice, and it

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circumvents specifying the complete functional form of the production function underlying

the production process.

DEA is used to measure the efficiency of different units, called “Decision Making Units”

(DMUs). In this study, the units are individual municipalities which can be viewed as the

production functions that generate different outputs through the combination of a set of

inputs. For instance, municipalities provide urban waste collection and street cleaning, road

pavement maintenance, public lightening services that are financed by taxes paid by residents

and funds transferred from the central government. Financial resources used to fund these

processes are input variables of the production process. Municipalities that consume a lower

amount of inputs and produce a greater quantity of outputs are considered more efficient than

those that utilize more inputs and produce fewer outputs. There is a second stage in the DEA

model aimed at analysing the efficiency-effectiveness relationship and identify major indicators

of public service quality indicators of the municipality context factors that are for the most

part associated to municipality efficiency.

The utilization of cost related observations as inputs is present in different study in literature.

The beneficiaries of services provided by the municipalities, e.g. the total population and the

geographical territory, have been introduced in the benchmarking model as comprehensive

outputs. Even though these ones are not direct outputs of the municipality production

function, they provide an important indication of the effort necessary to deliver the portfolio

of municipal services. Having a measurement of efficiency of this kind may help in generating

comprehensive standard costs of municipalities for the portfolio of services included in the

benchmarking analysis.

Variables chosen by the author as inputs and outputs for the DEA methodology was selected

following the criteria of relevance and data availability. In particular, six inputs and two outputs

have been selected. Inputs: annual expenditures relative to the provision of a number of basic

services by municipalities (welfare, territory and environment management, transport and

roads, public education, culture, local police). Outputs: size of the municipality geographical

area and resident population. Municipality area and population were considered as two

nondiscretionary (uncontrollable) variables.

In this study were also considered some context variables used as proxies to assess the public

services effectiveness that are: ratio of the number of inhabitants to surface area of the

municipality, value added per inhabitant, amount of micro-crimes per inhabitants, percentage

of differentiated collection of urban waste, ratio of available seat-kilometres to the number of

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inhabitants, index of social infrastructure development, index of public education

infrastructure development, index of cultural and sport infrastructure development.

The results gain from the analysis are divided according to the two stage of the DEA

methodology. Results reveal that municipalities in Southern Italy score higher than those

located in Northern Italy in terms of expenditure efficiency. Moreover, emerge that

inefficiencies are typical of both larger and smaller municipalities. the study suggests that a

trade-off between expenditure efficiency and effectiveness or quality of public services is likely

to exist in the case of the Italian major municipalities. That happens for services related to

public transportation and offer of cultural, recreational and sport facilities and events.

Finally, findings show that the social and economic characteristics of the municipality context

have relevance. Higher efficiency scores are associated to less developed contexts characterized

by a higher level of urban micro-criminality and a reduced capability of the territory to produce

economic value added-

In order to measure the effectiveness of public administrations on a timely basis and have

accurate information on performance, a performance measurement system must be properly

implemented. The term performance measurement is defined by Richard Boyle (2000) as "the

systematic monitoring of performance over time, using both quantitative and qualitative data".

The same author proposes an overview of national and international developments in

performance measurement in local government and recommends a framework that

emphasizes the need to develop performance metrics for different levels of local authority

performance and for different perspectives on performance. This framework provides a

common language and focus for measurement initiatives; the most important concepts defined

by Boyle in his framework are:

• Process/Activities concerns how services are delivered: the manner in which resources are

arranged to meet demand for services.

• Outputs are the goods or services immediately produced by an organisation.

• Outcomes reflect the impacts a service has on recipients and the wider community.

The author also defines the different dimensions of performance that indicators have to

evaluate:

• Economy indicators are primarily concerned with the inputs, and show the cost of acquiring

services such as staff or premises. In comparative terms, if one unit seems to be purchasing

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resources more economically than others, questions need to be asked as to why this is

happening.

• Efficiency indicators concern the relationship between outputs and inputs, for example the

cost of road miles maintained, by road category.

• Effectiveness indicators are primarily focused on showing the outcome of the service. An

example here would be the percentage of total waste recycled.

After outlining the framework to be used for performance measurement system

implementation, it is compelling to analyse the context in which this system will be adopted.

At the theoretical and regulatory level, in most cases, there is a gap between what has been

planned and what is then actually realized. Nisio, De Carolis, Losurdo (2013) argue that in

order to prevent this from occurring, it is essential that maximum attention be paid to the

starting conditions and the implementation process. The three authors in a 2013 study present

the process of launching the so-called "Performance Cycle" in four Italian municipalities, analysing

whether and what conditions exist that have contributed to PMS development as well as the

criticalities emerged.

The reigning culture in Italian public administrations leads to conforming to the rules and

procedures established by norms, interpretations, directives, judgments in a conservative

manner (Halachmi 1992; Dunleavy e Hood 1994; Pollitt e Bouckaert 2004; Torres 2004;

Borgonovi 2005; Guthrie et al. 2005). The quality of public action is assessed only in terms of

compliance with standards, forgetting that the purpose of public action is to satisfy the needs

of citizens (Borgonovi 2005). Starting from Legislative Decree 150/2009 (Brunetta law), as

already explained in the "Background" section, the aim was to establish a new culture within the

Italian public administration that is most outcome and result oriented following the NPM

approach.

The creation of this new legislative system in Italy does not guarantee the real realization of

change. However, there are innumerable reasons for the public sector for adopt a performance

measurement system.

Moreover, there are many studies in the literature that highlight the conditions for adopting a

performance measurement system as the importance of political and administrative

commitment (Dull 2008), the stakeholder engagement (Bouckaert 1993; Taylor 1996), the

presence of a planning, programming and control system and the budgetary system (Farneti

1995; Olson et al.), the internal control system (Mussari 2011) and finally, the adoption of

Public Management (Bouckaert 1993; Lemieux-Charles et al. 2003; Fryer et al. 2009;)

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Nisio, De Carolis, Losurdo (2013) develop a multiple-case study, focused on four Italian cities9,

with the aim of verifying the introduction of the performance measurement system and its

enabling conditions, highlighting the critical success factors of the experiences and the

emerging criticalities, albeit in the diversity of approaches, in order to identify some lessons

learned. The paper examines the boot process of the “Cycle of Performance” in some Italian

cities and analyses if any, and what are the conditions that have facilitated the development

and the problems that emerged. The performance cycle consists of several steps that

correspond to several actions to be carried out by the public administration as already

mentioned in the introductory phase of the work. The authors emphasize how the use of the

performance cycle can stimulate focus on quality, efficient and effective use of resources,

impact of policies, programs and services. There is also a better allocation of resources to

specific objectives and last but not least the creation of useful information for decision-making

of the various actors as well as the development of social control.

In the development of this study the three authors used different kind of sources, as suggested

by Yin (1994), and are:

• Public documents, drawn from the institutional sites, required by administrations or

spontaneously submitted to them.

• Semi-structured interviews with qualified witnesses in order to integrate reading of documents

with an analysis of the decision-making process, conditions and circumstances that

accompanied the introduction of the performance cycle.

At the end of the analysis emerged how the introduction of the Performance measurement

system and in particular the quality of the Performance Plan and the Measurement and

Evaluation System10 are closely linked to the existence of certain enabling conditions in the

body; the management's commitment and managerial skills strongly affect the performance of

the performance measurement system implementation as well as the presence of a medium to

long-term view of the goals to be achieved. Involvement of external stakeholders is not so

widespread within the four public administrations. Predisposition to the search for

improvement is an important factor influencing the adoption of a performance measurement

9The four cities are selected according to the population – between 20,000 and 250,000 inhabitants – and

willingness to participate in the interview with the research group.10 Introduced with the Legislative Decree 150/2009, art. 10 and art. 7

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system while it seems to be disconnected from the pre-existence of an adequate internal control

system.

Behn (2003) provides the following list of eight reasons why public sector managers should

measure performance: evaluate, control, budget, motivate, promote, celebrate, learn and

improve.

After discussing the enabling conditions for the adoption of performance management within

public administrations, a theme that is the zero time of the process leading to the measurement

and evaluation of performance is the definition of the goals to be achieved. The Harvard

University Executive Session on Public Sector Performance Management (2001) describes an

effective performance management system as one that includes strategic prioritized goals that

are challenging yet not overwhelming, and are measurable, means fact-based on using up-to-

date performance data.

The importance of the goal setting phase is reported by many academic studies, among which

the definition of goal setting theory emerges from Locke and Latham (1990).

The theory states that a specific high goal (e.g. immunize 100% of students in grades 1–12 in

Italy by December 30th) leads to higher performance than an easy goal (e.g., immunize only

20%), a general goal such as ‘‘make children healthy’’ or an exhortation to ‘‘do one’s best,’’ or

no goal setting.

Given ability as well as commitment, the higher the goal, the higher a person’s performance.

Variables such as participation in decision making, feedback, including praise, competition,

monetary incentives only affect a person’s behaviour to the extent that they lead to the setting

of and commitment to a specific high goal (Locke e Latham 1990a, 2002, 2007).

Always Latham and Locke, starting from the definition of goal setting theory, come to define

the development of the so-called “high performance cycle”. This model states that specific difficult

goals, plus high self-efficacy for attaining them, are the impetus for high performance. High

goals and high self-efficacy energize people to search for strategies that will lead to goal

fulfilment.

Once defined the goals to be achieved and reasoned on the importance of defining them

correctly, it is important to concentrate on the actual use of data generated by performance

measurement and factors that influence whether or not they are used.

Several studies have been conducted in the literature to identify the factors influencing the use

of performance measurement systems. In particular, some academic studies have focused on

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the characteristics of public administration personnel that favour or not the adoption of

performance measurement.

In time terms, there are two authors who have, at first, investigated the factors influencing the

use of performance measures in public organization, Patricia De Lancer Julnes and Marc

Holzer (2001). Thanks to the results of a national survey of state and local government

officials, those authors have been able to define the most impacting factors on performance

measurement information use. The survey queried government officials about the existence of

performance measures in their organization, their use of measures, their attitudes and

perceptions about performance measurement, and the contextual factors that affect their use.

Authors consider the utilization of performance measurement information as consisting of

two stages: adoption and implementation. Adoption represents the development of measures of

outputs, outcomes and efficiency while implementation refers to the actual use of performance

measures for strategic planning, resource allocation, program management, monitoring,

evaluation and reporting to internal management, elected officials and citizens or the media.

This distinction is of fundamental importance as the two types of factors: rational/technocratic

and political/cultural. From a rational/technocratic point of view, the adoption and

implementation of performance measures are purely technical issues; factors to be considered

rational/technical are resources present in the public organizations, information, goal

orientation within the organization and external requirements to measure and report

performance. The rational/technical and political/cultural factors provide some insight into

“the differences between how performance measures are intended to be used and the manner

and extent to which they are actually used” (McDavid and Hawthorn, 2006).

Since organizations operate within a social context, it is crucial to consider the factors that

characterize it; internal interest groups, external interest groups and unions as well as risk taking

and attitudes fall into the so-called political/cultural factors.

In the spring of 1997, 934 questionnaires were sent to state and local government employees.

At the end of the survey from the data analysis emerge as the most distinctive effects on the

two stages of utilization are goal orientation and requirements; goal orientation was important

for adoption but not for implementation. There is a lack of influence of internal and external

requirements on implementation. Moreover, participation of internal stakeholders in internal

political activities aimed at promoting performance measures eases the organization into the

performance-measures process, thus the positive influence on adoption. Another empirical

finding support the view that continued success of performance measurement depends on the

continued support of elected officials. To conclude, the two authors argue that policy adoption

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is driven more heavily by factors from rational and technocratic theory, whereas actual

implementation is influenced by factors addressed by political and cultural considerations.

In 2008, Jostein Askim conducted another engaging survey based on survey data from

Norwegian local government to identify the factors that condition the extent to which

councillors search for performance information when faced with decision dilemmas. The

author's goal is to define whether some councillors make more use of performance

information than others and how can these differences be explained. In particular, the analysis

is conducted by differentiating two types of roles within the public administration that are:

frontbenchers, who are mayor and members of the executive committee, and backbenchers,

who are councillors not holding the above-mentioned positions. It can be assumed that

frontbenchers and in-power councillors – those situated closest to the apex – have access to a

larger information base than backbenchers (Goldsmith and Larsen, 2004). According to

Askim, factors influencing the use of performance information are the polity rank (i.e. the role

played by the administration), education (i.e. the type of training received by the employee)

and the political experience.

The results emerged from the analysis show how backbenchers use performance information

less than frontbenchers. The relationship between rank and search behaviour is not linear,

however; executive committee members, except for mayors, search performance information

significantly more than rank-and-file councillors do, while mayors – the top ranking councillors

– do not search performance information any more or less than rank-and-file councillors do.

Moreover, the data show that councillors’ search for performance information decreases with

the number of years they have spent in office. The analysis of the impact of education is similar

to the analysis of the impact of experience: education matters, but in the opposite direction

from what was hypothesized.

Based on the results obtained from this analysis, it could be created a profile of the perfect

user of the performance measurement system but since all those working in public

administration do not match that profile, heterogeneous use of available information is

expected.

Moyhan and Pandey also focus on identifying the factors that influence the adoption of

performance measurement. In an academic study of 2010, the authors examine the antecedents

of self-reported performance information use from a survey of local government managers.

They conceptualize performance information use as a form of organizational behaviour.

According to the authors, municipal employees can choose whether and how to use

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performance measurement but are influenced by the social context and the formal system they

work on. In the study are considered and tested different kind of variables’ categories

consistent with this conceptualization of social context, incorporating individual beliefs, job

attributes, organizational factors, and environmental influences are tested. The data for the

study were collected in the fourth phase of the National Administrative Studies Project

(NASP-IV)11, whose theoretical population was comprised of senior manager in US local

government jurisdictions with populations over 50,000. After investigating how regularly the

performance information was used and having carried out a statistical analysis of the

correlation between certain factors (individual belief, jo attributes, organizational factors,

external factors) and the actual use, the authors could have a vision of the influencing factors.

The article shows that use of performance information is more likely to be driven by altruism

rather than self-interest among government officials. Moreover, it has been found that

leadership/political support for performance management matters, goal-oriented cultures

matter, and that citizen support for and involvement in performance management processes

matters.

The most relevant issue in the literature is undoubtedly the actual use of performance

measurement within local governments. The goals they can pursue through the proper

implementation of a measurement and evaluation system are multiple and addressed by

different authors, exploiting various analytical perspectives. Information derived from

performance measurement can be used in several processes by public administrations:

budgeting, decision-making, benchmarking, improvement of efficiency and in literature we can

find various application examples.

The use of performance information in the budgeting phase is the ambitions of the financial

and accounting dimension of the New Public Management (Hood, 1991). The use of

performance information in budget practices refers to the influence of this inclusion on the

budgeting procedure especially on resource allocation; treating this topic it has to be

undoubtedly remembered the academic study of Demeulenaore, Corvo, Bouckaert,

Meneguzzo (2013). The authors use two empirical examples (Italy and Flanders) to deal with

the theme of performance based or output based budgeting. These two countries have seen

the introduction of new regulations that are for Italy the Decree on productivity, efficiency

11NASP (Network for the Advancement of Social and Political Studies) is a research-based training network

that aims at enhancing training and research in social and political studies in Italy.

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and transparency in the public sector, issued in 2009, and the New Budget Regulation, issued

in 2011, and for the Flanders the Order regarding the implementation of the Policy and

Management Cycle issued in 2010. To understand the implementation of performance based

budgeting in these local governments and to simultaneously take into account the diversified

concept this could represent, a diversified measurement instrument is necessary. To this end,

an adapted version of the OECD Performance Budgeting Survey (OECD, 2011) is utilized.

Examining Flemish and Italian municipalities based on the OECD Performance Budgeting

Survey should result in a broad and detailed picture of the practice of performance budgeting.

At the end of the analysis it emerges that the actual use of performance information in the

budgeting process is not high despite the legislative effort of governments.

The importance of performance measurement information in the decision-making process is

emphasized by Hatry (1999), who argues that the best indicator is the level of use of

performance information in decision-making process itself.

For the sake of the project, the most interesting aspect to deal with is performance information

use for benchmarking. Once the performance data has been collected and analysed, the

municipal administration can compare them with others and draw the right conclusions. In

2000, the American scholar Ammons conducted a study on three North Carolina cities to see

if benchmarking could actually be an improvement technique to be used in the public sector.

Ammons explains the mean of benchmarking saying that it is a term borrowed from surveyors,

for whom a benchmark is a point of known location from which other measurements can be

made; in a similar sense, the management technique called benchmarking identifies the gap

between current conditions or performance and the desired benchmark, measures it, and

focuses attention on closing this gap. In a broad sense, benchmarking is a label that may be

claimed by anyone who compares current conditions or performance to a meaningful point of

reference and uses that comparison to inspire improvement, to guide the design of changes in

operations, or to evaluate performance. Benchmarking can be of three distinct typologies each

with a different target. The three types of benchmarking are as follows:

• Corporate-style benchmarking: is generally consistent with the predominant model applied in the

private sector. This form, more than the other two, is clearly a search for “best practices” and

it is focused on a single key process rather than an entire department or multiple functions.

Through the analysis of best practices, it produces recommendations for process

improvement, which typically are adaptations of the best practices.

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• Target as benchmarks: it is the most publicized o the three forms. Current state wide or

community conditions are contrasted to a vision of a better future in which more favourable

conditions, expresses in the form of benchmarks, will be achieved.

• Comparison of performance statistics as benchmarks: it is the most common form of benchmarking

in the public sector. By comparing the performance expectations and results of one’s own

operations with reputable performance standards, performance norms, or the targets or results

achieved by respected counterparts, public officials may do two things.

This benchmarking project was started in 1995 and since 1996, 35 cities and counties have

signed; it is a clear example of the third form of benchmarking-comparison of performance

statistics. The project takes into consideration three services for the cities: police, solid waste

and street maintenance, while for counties are: jails, emergency medical services, child

protection services and inspections. The commitment required to participants is rather costly

in terms of time and effort but despite this, each of the large city participants declared the

project beneficial and each announced their city's resolve to continue. Steering committee

members were the chief liaisons with the participating governments and they usually directed

a finance department or budget office. After having collected all the data required, the

performance statistics were compared among the cities or counties adherents to the project.

At the end of the project there are numerous lessons that emerge: merely suspecting that a

service needs to be improved does not spur action like hard evidence (provided by

benchmarking) does, true benchmarking is not a beauty contest indeed benchmarking is not a

contest to see how a city or county ranks among its peers. However, benchmarking is a learning

experience and those who succeed at it learn a great deal; the brightest ones’ stars use what

they learn to improve operations.

Another very important aspect of benchmarking in literature is the comparability of local

performance among public administrations across nations. Padovani and Scorsone (2009)

propose a framework that allows researchers to understand the variables to be considered

when comparing the performance systems of different local governments around the world.

The authors believe that there are three critical dimensions in a performance measurement

context: the level of performance regime, the nature of intergovernmental relationships, and

the focus of internal performance measurement; these three dimensions are then presented in

an empirical example concerning Italy and Michigan (US). The first dimension is the level of

performance regime and is the structure and influence of national and regional standard-setting

bodies, laws and governmental agency rules that affect performance measurement systems at

the local government level. Nature of intergovernmental relationships means the degree of

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involvement of the administration in the provision of services while the last dimension, internal

performance measurement, the type and scope of performance measures used by an

organization.

After highlighting the differences between the Italian case and the US case, the authors

conclude by saying that if nations differ in the three dimensions mentioned above, they can be

compared but are necessary adjustments and considerations for these differences.

The use of benchmarking also encounters considerable criticism that are being recited in the

literature; in addition to encouraging the spread of best practices and improving the

performance of administrations, benchmarking can lead to isomorphic pressures that foster

local governments to adopt policies that converge performance or financial indicators towards

the group mean. There are two possible ways of thinking about benchmarking in the literature.

The first, whose representatives are Rivenbark, Roenigk and Ammons (2011) argues that

benchmarking provides valuable performance information that facilitates better policy

decisions. On the other hand, there are authors such as Di Maggio and Powell (1983) who

stated that benchmarking actually does not lead to performance improvements but to

isomorphism; “race to the middle” declare Di Maggio and Powell, since isomorphism is a

decrease in the variance between the performance of the administrations to which an increase

of the performances mean does not follow.

The effectiveness of benchmarking utilization is dealt in a study conducted by Gerrish and

Spreen (2016), and concerns in particular the benchmarking of financial indicators in North

Carolina. The financial positions of North Carolina county and municipal governments are

analysed from fiscal year 2008 to 2014, taking into account that since 2010 the fiscal

benchmarking tool has been introduced which allows a continuous comparison of the financial

performance of the states. At the end of the study it is found that following the introduction

of the benchmarking tool, North Carolina’s local governments tended more closely toward

isomorphism rather than improvement as they converged toward the group mean across

several indicators. Whether this trend towards the average is beneficial or detrimental to local

governments is an open question. The financial positions of the best performing municipalities

declined, by some measures, following the introduction of the tool while some others improve.

As explained shortly before, benchmarking as improvement technique does not always

guarantee performance improvement. Even the fact of using output measurement in the public

sector can lead to several unintended consequences that may not only invalidate conclusions

on public sector performance, but may also negatively affect that performance; this topic is

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covered by Van Thiel and Leeuw in a 2002 academic study. The so-called "Performance Paradox"

(Meyer & Gupta, 1994) refers to a weak correlation between performance indicators and

performance itself and it is reported in the paper. This phenomenon is caused by the tendency

of performance indicators to run down over time; they lose their value as measurements of

performance and can no longer discriminate between good and bad performers. The authors

emphasize that the paradox does not concern performance itself but concerns the reports on

performance; the indicators do not give an accurate performance report. Moreover, the public

sector has certain features that make it more vulnerable to "Performance Paradox". The

discrepancy between the policy goals set by politicians and the goal of executive agents, as

reported by Smith (1995), could facilitate birth of the paradox.

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Chapter 3 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

3.1. Existing Performance Management Models

Today, performance measurement in the public sector is a necessity; it has been introduced in

many public organizations in order to ensure transparency of public decisions and the use of

public funds and to boost performance.

The importance of performance measurement in the public sector organizations was enhanced

even more by New Public Management that has a purpose to adjust the performance

measurement tools applied in private sector for the public so that the performance could be

organized more effectively and so that the users’ needs could be satisfied better.

The performance measurement of private sector organizations is directed to the increase of

profit and the satisfaction of owners’ needs, while the public sector is engaged in providing

public services and, in some case goods. For this, the performance management in public

organizations has to be directed to the implementation of such objectives.

The theory and practice of performance measurement manifest that it is a complex process

and that the application of performance measurement systems in public sector is specific

because all the functions of public sector organizations are focused on the satisfaction of public

interests, i.e. it is more difficult to apply the performance measurement methods for

measurement of public sector organizations, because such organizations are more process- and

not result-oriented. Measuring the public sector’s performance has lately become an

increasingly important topic but there are many issues related to that. A challenge, still present,

is to identify the most suitable methods for monitoring and measuring performances.

It can be identified two different categories of performance management tools: one-

dimensional models and multidimensional ones.

The one-dimensional models measure performance through indicators of financial nature. Such

models involve calculating certain financial indicators based on the information in the financial

statements. These models manage to capture only aspects of financial performance; the public

organization's objectives are not only economic, but also of social priority. Therefore,

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measuring the performance of a public organization based only on indicators of financial

nature can become a dangerous practice that could harm obtaining the actual performance in

accordance with the mission of the public organization concerned. Public managers will

develop speculative behaviors and will guide their decisions by financial indicators that must

be reported, to the detriment of the public value.

Regarding the multidimensional models, they come in addition to those previously described by

introducing non-financial indicators along with the financial ones. These models are an

undeniable improvement in the performance measurement practices because they limit the

opportunities for speculation and try to ensure measuring the performance based on the

objectives of the public organization. These have a major importance in the public

organizations that have limited financial resources, but must be completed and correlated with

the non-financial indicators in order to catch all the dimensions of the performance.

Even though using one-dimensional models within the public sector could be risky and could

emerge some speculative approaches, they are still used in public organizations and the most

famous are the Net Surplus of the period, the financial cost of benefit indicators and the Net

Economic Present Value.

Multi-dimensional models are the most widespread within public administration and different

kinds exist:

• Total Quality Management (TQM): it aims to achieve two objectives that are improving public

services and increasing the performance through efficiency and effectiveness. The most known

instrument of the TMQ in the public sector is the Common Assessment Framework (CAF)

which is based on a wide range of indicator and allows public organization to auto-evaluate

their performances. It is based on the premise that excellent results in organizational

performance, citizens/customers, people and society are achieved through leadership driving

strategy and planning, people, partnerships, resources and processes (European Institute of

Public Administration).

Figure 5 - CAF Model

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• Performance Pyramid: it was introduced by Lunch and Cross in early ‘90s. This model recognizes

the importance of the influential internal and external factors of the performance and allows

the construction of a performance monitoring system in cascade, starting with the Corporate

vision to the operations, using both financial and non-financial indicators.

Figure 6 - Performance Pyramid

• Balance Scorecard: it was developed by Kaplan and Norton in the 90s and it is oriented towards

obtaining and measuring the performance of the organization. It is based on four core

perspectives:

1. Financial objectives; How will we look like to our employees?

2. Perspective of users; How do we look like to our customers?

3. Internal processes; Which internal processes do we have to improve?

4. Learning and growth; How can the organization learn and improve?

It turns the organization’s mission and strategy into the comprehensive set of performance

tools and creates the strategic measurement system. In fact, the data of single perspective are

not sufficient for such a measurement, all four types of data are necessary.

• Performance Prism: it was developed by Neely, Adams and Kennerley in the year 2000. It takes

into consideration a wide range of stakeholders of the organization and it treats differently the

stakeholder’s satisfaction and contribution in the organization. Moreover, it allows a

performance analysis from an internal and external perspective. Dimensions considered in the

measuring systems are stakeholder satisfaction, strategies, processes, capabilities and

stakeholder contribution.

Figure 7 - Performance Prism

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• Public Service Value (PSV): it analyses the process of creating value in the public sector in terms

of two categories of indicators that are outcomes and costs-effectiveness indicators. By

increasing one or the other, governments can be understood to be creating value. An agency

creates unambiguous value for its citizens when both outcomes and cost effectiveness increase

at the same time. This model provides a baseline for comparing performance of a particular

government agency over time and/or compared to other agencies.

Figure 8 - Public Service Value

• Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award (MBNQA): it is a two-level quality management model

and it has a maximal number of 1000 scores. Each public organization can evaluate itself

according to seven fundamental criteria: leadership, strategic planning, customer and market

focus, information and analysis, human resource focus, process management, and results. This

model mainly focuses on the customer’s satisfaction and does not analyze the interaction of

the organization’s internal processes.

• European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM): is that it was created on the basis of two

fundamental measurement systems of quality management: Malcolm Baldrige National Award

(USA) and Deming Award (Japan). It is a diagnostic tool meant to measure the organization’s

performance and through self-measurement the organization may coordinate the priorities of

its activity, to distribute the resources, and to prepare the business plans better. As the

MBNQA, also EFQM is a tool to improve the organization’s performance, but it cannot help

to eliminate daily problems as the organization’s success depends on the performance results,

organizational structure and not on the applied performance measurement methods.

After having investigate the existing tools used in Public Administration nowadays, we want

to expose our reference performance measurement model.

The model’s aim is to judge whether a local authority perform efficiently and effectively in a

specific processes compared to others. It can be classified as a multidimensional model since

it includes financial and non-financial indicators. In turn, these indicators are divided into

efficiency measures, designed to define the with which processes are performed, and into

effectiveness ones.

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This reference model is bases on the processes’ analysis each of which is made up of several

activities. The process approach is not easy because uses shared resources, the process is

transversal to the organization and, therefore, is more difficult to manage. This way of

analysing is opposed to the culture that prevails public organizations. To date, in fact, it is rare

that cross-sectoral processes are analysed by administrations focusing more on processes and

activities carried out exclusively by a single office. There is a clear complexity in this type of

analysis as a high level of collaboration and communication between different sectors of the

institutions is required.

The aim is to introduce a transversal view of the processes, already consolidated practice when

considering the private sector, thus delivering an objective assessment of the effectiveness and

efficiency of each type of process and not for the single activity. This "process reading"

involves analysis and design of the organization which does not focus on classical concepts of

activities, tasks and functions hierarchically linked, but it is based on a set of homogeneous

activities, from the point of view of output, and correlated to each other beyond functional

boundaries, governed by coordination mechanisms that transcend the purely hierarchic-

structural aspect.

Particularly, a process is a sequence of logically related activities that employ resources (people,

machines, materials) to deliver a specific end result. This sequence is characterized by:

• Measurable input;

• Activities with added value;

• Measurable output;

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3.2. Our Reference Model

The chart below represents our reference model; it provides a clear view of the pattern structure

that clearly refers to input, output, outcome scheme.

Figure 9 - Reference Model

As can be seen from the drawing, the three main components of the model are the inputs,

outputs, and impact (outcome). Inputs represent the resources that are used within the

administrative; these resources can be both physical and human. Outputs, on the other hand,

are the service’s performance that local authorities carry out. Finally, impacts refer to the effects

that these performances create on the end users that are the citizens.

Going more in depth, resources that are used in administrative processes relate essentially to

staff costs for service delivery; both internal and external staff are considered, i.e. human

resources used by the contracting corporate or by the local companies. Resources are typically

expressed in financial (costs) and economic (costs) terms or in physical ones (usually the most

relevant resource, such as the number of personnel employed). In the definition of input

indicators, it is necessary to bear in mind the various types of costs that affect production

processes and public goods and services to ensure that all relevant elements are included.

Outputs can measure both quantity and quality of goods and services produced in a given time

span. In the model output is divided in two types: efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency

information indicates whether the activities of an administration were effectively deployed in

the most convenient way. Efficiency can mean minimizing the resources used to achieve a

certain result: efficiency decreases as the indicator grows.

On the other hand, effectiveness is split in objective and perceived; objective refers to the qualitative

characteristics of the services in analysis and it relies on some data obtained directly by the

Administrative services

Output volume(EFFICIENCY)

Output characteristics(EFFECTIVENESS)

Objective Effectiveness

Perceived Effectiveness

Times

Accessibility

…

Citizens

Companies

…

OUTCOMEINPUT

Management and service level

chosen Benchmark

STANDARD

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municipal administrations. The perceived effectiveness refers to the degree of satisfaction of

the users (citizens, companies) who benefit from those public services and for this reason are

considered some customer satisfaction queries. To assess those type of effectiveness we have

to conduct questionnaires to these stakeholders.

Analysing the perception that citizens have regarding the quality of services offered by public

administrations is a tool that has now steadily entered the administrations of Western

countries. This instrument of government is also of great importance in the context of

European integration; in the XIII meeting of the Ministers for Public Administration of the

EU Member States of 2007, it was hoped that a common framework for citizens' satisfaction

analysis would be created with respect to the performance of public administration. Customer

satisfaction is one of the tools to know the user's expectations, a key tool for measuring

external efficacy. By using a business language, the user today needs to become the most

important asset of the PA: the relationship with the user is the highest return investment that

can generate the true turnaround of the PA. (Baldassarri, Ugolini).

However, it is still necessary to raise awareness among the operators, decision-makers and the

public to carry out the "good investigations" continuously, to go through a systematic

evaluation culture. It is also important to be aware that it is necessary to ensure compliance

with national and European standards for nomenclatures and methodologies, and to reason

with the system for the necessary coordination function (Baldassarri, Ugolini). Although the

recognition of the importance of this tool is wide, its use is not, however, yet generalized. It

does not always take place in strictly methodological ways and not necessarily its potential to

assess the impact of public administration interventions is fully exploited.

Our model is distinguished by the fact that it is based on a participatory approach by the

municipalities involved and it also based on a benchmarking between them. By benchmarking

the performance of efficiency and effectiveness for a group of municipalities over a shared

task of administrative services, it is possible to identify the best practices.

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Chapter 4 METHOD AND DATA

“Good Practice Public Administration” project is part of the collaboration agreement signed in

2014 between the Agency for Territorial Cohesion and the Politecnico di Milano in order to

promote the activation, implementation and dissemination of good innovative practices within

the programming of Cohesion Policies 2014-2020 to foster a sustainable process of

modernization of the Public Administration.

The project was preceded by the launch of a pilot project in the spring of 2017 involving three

municipalities (Monza, Padova and Seregno), and three different types of process were taken

into account: school construction (ordinary and extraordinary maintenance), educational

complementary services as well as good procurement. This preliminary phase of the Good

Practice Public Administration project has allowed us to become aware of the culture that

permeates the public sector and to test the commitment of the administrative staff as well as

to collect relevant results in terms of benchmarking between the three municipalities. As a

result of the elaboration of the results, it was thought to extend both the number of participants

and the processes being analysed.

The goal of the project is to build, through a participatory approach, a model of performance

comparison of administrative services based on three different categories of indicators:

• Efficiency: total and unit cost of activities related to the services provided

• Perceived effectiveness: customer satisfaction analysis of the services provided by involving relevant

macro categories of users

• Objective effectiveness: quality measurement of some services through the collection of objective

data (such as time of proceedings)

The expected output from this project can be identified in two macro areas: on the one hand

performance benchmarking of efficiency and effectiveness for a group of participating

municipalities over a tiny set of identified administrative services that will be successively listed

and identification of best practices in managing administrative services.

The benefits of this project for the municipalities that have joined are numerous; local

authorities will have the opportunity to compare their performance with those of similar

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municipalities and draw on internal improvement guidelines and then re-adapt the best

practices identified in the project to the reality in the context of continuous improvement.

Municipalities will also be able to monitor the evolution of service performance over time in

case the project is replicated.

As we mention before, in “Good Practice Project” we extend the analysed services; particularity,

the services objects of analysis are the following:

• School Canteen

• School Building (ordinary and extraordinary)

• Supply of Goods and Services

• Integrated Domiciliary Assistance (ADI)

• Single Centre for Building (Sportello Unico per l’Edilizia – SUE)

These services were chosen with three macro-dimensions to make the analysis as

heterogeneous as possible. The various services covered by the analysis stand out to be more

focused on efficiency or effectiveness. Considering school canteen and ADI services, it can no

doubt be asserted that the goal is to ensure a good level of service to the citizens by keeping

the costs of delivery under control; the goal is therefore to reduce the resources used with the

constraint of maintaining a certain level of service. As regards procurement, school building,

and SUE, local governments are aiming at achieving efficiency and thus reducing resource

utilization by ensuring a certain level of service; the goal is to maximize the level of service

given the constraint on the resources used.

Each of this service is also characterized by the type of customer to which is addressed. As

regards procurement there is an internal customer in the municipal administration because

they are the same operators that benefit from the output of this process, while for the other

services the client is looking for is external and it is the citizen. This aspect is important because

the parameters for assessing the satisfaction of an internal or external customers vary and

consequently also the actions to be completed to ensure a given level of service.

The last dimension that has been considered is the level of routinely activities; services such

as school refection, supply of goods and services but also the activities of the Single Building

Window and integrated home care are characterized by a high frequency of action while the

school building has a lower repetition of action. In the subsequent analysis phase, it will emerge

how the different processes under analysis are characterized by a different economic impact

of the activities that compose them. The processes of ADI, school canteen and school

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buildings are characterized by a high level of operation and in fact the higher costs incurred

are related to the operational execution of the service. With regard to the Single Centre for

Building and the supply of goods and services, most of the costs are devoted to administrative

and bureaucratic management as no operational intervention is required.

Each of these areas of inquiry is understood as a process and therefore decomposed into various

activities in each of which several actors are involved. In the chart below there is a complete

view of the activities belonging to each process.

School Building Ordinary

School Building Extraordinary

School Canteen ADI Procurement SUE

Collecting and reporting

management

Approval of tenders

Menu setup / diet

Reporting and

evaluating the need for assistance

Analysis of the purchasing

needs of the entity for the

supply of goods and services

Verify building compatibility

(including environmental

one)

Periodic inspections and improvement of

buildings

Transfer of funding from

regions

Collect registration questions

Definition and planning of the service

Purchasing programming

Document control

presented at the door

Control of passive security

systems

Preliminary design

Check ISEE position

Delivery of the service

Specific definition and functionality

Forwarding the documentation to the entities concerned and interacting with

the same

Coordination of the

implementation of the

interventions

Public notices Production of payment

requests

Monitoring and reporting

Choice of custody

procedure

Procedures management

Perform maintenance

work Definitive design Service

delivery

Searching for suppliers and

checking requirements

Management of archives and

databases

Database update "Regional

Registry" Executive design

Reconciliation of

payments

Definition of tender

specifications

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Realization

Quality service

monitoring

Race phase

management

Construction supervision

Perform technical checks

Analysis of the performance of

the purchase process

Check work and

tests

Payment service to the

dispensing person

Administrative / accounting of

the contract

Table 2-Process and Activities Analysed

In particular, the supply of goods and services is a process that takes place transversely within

the municipal administration because are considered both central purchases (generally from

the supervisory body) and decentralized purchases, which are the prerogative of various offices

of the body. The data collected for the various processes under analysis are all referred to the

year 2016 with the exception of school meals where the school year 2015/2016 is considered

as a period of time. Above all as regards the contracts in place in 2016 provided by the

municipalities, cost allocation work was necessary to ensure that the costs considered were

exclusively for the year 2016.

The overall sample of cities that in the preliminary phase had joined the project was wider than

the one that then went to delineate. Fifteen municipalities equally distributed both in terms of

geographical location and the number of inhabitants were chosen. Once the project has come

alive, however, the number of local societies members has decreased; at the end, the

municipalities adhering to the project are eight and equally distributed along the Italian

peninsula with a population between 50.000 and 220.000 inhabitants. It was decided to choose

municipalities belonging to each geographical area of Italy (North, Centre, South and Islands)

in order to have a complete view of the peninsular landscape. The selected cities were then

ranked according to the number of inhabitants: from 50.000 to 90.000 inhabitants small, from

90.000 to 180.000 medium and from 180.000 to 200.000 large. The decision to exclude

municipalities with a lower and higher population is due to the fact that too little reality can

have organizational systems that are not too developed because they have to handle a limited

number of procedures while larger realities reach a level of complexity too high for be able to

conduct a benchmarking analysis.

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In the table below you have a brief overview of the project’s adherents with their geographical

positioning and the number of inhabitants as well as the territorial extension.

Municipalities Region Country Population [Inhabitants] Group

Territorial extension

[kmq] Avellino South and Islands Campania 54.515 Small 30.6 La Spezia North Liguria 93.515 Medium 51.4 Modena North Emilia Romagna 184.826 Large 183.2 Monza North Lombardia 122.723 Medium 33.0 Padova North Veneto 210.465 Large 92.9 Pescara Centre Abruzzo 120.286 Medium 33.6 Taranto South and Islands Puglia 199.051 Large 209.6 Viterbo Centre Lazio 67.488 Small 406.2

Table 3-Municipalities under analysis

The data needed for the research has been collected thanks to the direct collaboration with the

personnel of the local entities involved in the project. Internal staffing has proven to be an

essential driver for project success; without the cooperation between the research team and

the local authorities, no output would have been achieved.

The project was presented to municipalities at a launch meeting held on March 20 defining

clearly what the perimeter of analysis and the commitment required for each municipality.

Then Skype conferences and telephone interviews were held that made it possible to clarify

any doubts on the part of the administrations. Local authorities provided the data by compiling

a file prepared by the team and, once all the data was collected, the search team sent the

municipalities a statement of all the information received in order to have a last validation.

Afterwards, the research team focused on interpreting the results keeping in touch with the

local government staff in order to have an overview of the conclusions drawn from the

analysis. It is important to emphasize that not all adherent municipalities have decided to

provide data for all 5 processes that are being analysed. The municipality of La Spezia, already

in the initial phase of defining the perimeter of analysis, has decided to limit the field to school

building, refectory and integrated home care. The municipality of Padova provided personnel

data relating exclusively to integrated home care and for this reason it was difficult to carry out

a comprehensive analysis of the efficiency. During the data collection, Taranto has decided not

to provide data on the supply of goods and services because it is difficult to find them due to

the difficulty of communication between sectors. Monza was in the middle of the change of

administration during the data collection period and for this reason it was not possible to find

all the data. The Municipality of Viterbo provided all the data except the personnel for the

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supply of goods and services demonstrating that information on this type of service,

transversal to the whole administration, is difficult to find. As far as the municipalities of

Modena and Pescara are concerned, we have all the required data. The municipality of

Avellino, on the other hand, stated that the integrated home care services and the refuse were

totally outsourced and for these it was not possible to find only some information.

As previously mentioned, the performance of municipalities was evaluated in terms of

efficiency, objective efficacy and perceived effectiveness. As regards the efficiency assessment,

and therefore the way in which resources are used to create a certain output, it has been

considered two types of costs: internal costs and external costs.

For the internal cost estimate, we asked the organizations to provide a list of the staff of each

service with the total weekly hours worked by the employee (understood as a percentage of 36

h/week expected for the public sector), the percentage of working time dedicated to each of

the underlying processes and the salary category of the employee's membership. Thus, we

calculated for each municipality and for each service the so-called Full Time Equivalent (FTE).

Later, in order to enhance the FTE, we used salary tables for local entities defined by the

National Collective Labour Agreement (CCNL - http://www.ilccnl.it/). Choosing to use the

CCNL tables is due to the fact that only a few local authorities have provided the annual salary

(Modena and Padova) for each employee and therefore, in order to make the results

comparable, it was decided to use a unique data for each wage category. Estimation of external

costs was done by considering the outsourcing contracts in place in 2016 provided by the

various municipalities. The amounts in the contracts do not represent the actual cost of

outsourcing because they also include ancillary costs not related to the delivery of the service

but are still a good proxy of the costs incurred by the municipalities for conducting activities

related to the processes being analyzed. If administrations do not provide us with the contracts,

we have been entrusted with the tender dossiers on the municipal websites; tender dossiers, in

fact, contain the municipalities’ intentions of expenditure by defining the scope of service

provision. In order to verify that the contracts actually reflected tenders, it has been compared

the contracts received with the relative tenders and the result was that the contract amounts

were the same or possibly lowered than the contract documents. Certain types of costs were

found on web portal such as SIOPE12 and the municipalities validate the value.

12The SIOPE (Information System on Public Transactions) is a system of telematic recording of receipts and

payments made by the treasurers of all public administrations, arising from the collaboration between the General

Accounting Office of the State, the Bank of Italy and the Bank of Italy, ISTAT.

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CCNL CCNL Wage Category Annual Salary (€) Wage Category Annual Salary (€)

D6 28.342,72 B7 19.878,40 D5 26.510,86 B6 19.143,58 D4 25.377,76 B5 18.808,79 D3 24.338,14 B4 18.496,61 D2 22.203,89 B3 18.229,92 D1 21.166,71 B2 17.531,61 C5 21.901,32 B1 17.244,71 C4 21.120,11 A5 17.539,65 C3 20.472,62 A4 17.184,06 C2 19.917,86 A3 16.884,36 C1 19.454,15 A2 16.533,95

A1 16.314,57 Table 4- CCNL

Concerning the assessment of the objective effectiveness we used information obtained

directly from the local authorities. For each analytical service, were required data for the timing

of performance, digitization and computerization of procedures as well as the opening hours

of the dedicated windows. Measurement of perceived effectiveness was instead a critical point

in the analysis since virtually no local authorities has been made available to providing

satisfaction queries to its users. The only information we collected is customer satisfaction

questionnaires already carried out at local authorities. During the preliminary phase of the

project, the municipalities have shown a lot of interest and willingness to administer customer

satisfaction questionnaires both internally to their staff and to the final users in order to

evaluate the perceived level of service. We proposed two different ways for filling out the

questionnaires: sending a file that would then be given to users on paper or online. The

municipalities have shown interest in the second type with regard to the questionnaires referred

to internal staff of the municipality and for this reason we proceeded with the creation of

online questionnaires on the Survey Monkey platform which were then sent links to local

authorities. Unfortunately, this initiative was not successful and no municipality proceeded

with the completion of the questionnaire.

At the end of the collection and analysis of data for each municipality, it has been created a

dashboard of indicators that allowed us to compare the different local authorities. The creation

of these synthetic indicators has highlighted which are the best performing municipalities and

therefore can be an example to follow for all other municipalities.

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Chapter 5 PROJECT RESULTS

5.1. Social Services

The Framework Law for the implementation of the integrated system of social interventions

and services n. 328/2000 provides for art. 1 that “The Republic provides an integrated system

of social interventions and social services for people and families, promotes measures to ensure the

quality of life, equal opportunities, non-discrimination and citizenship rights, prevents,

eliminates or reduces the conditions of disability, individual and family need and discomfort

resulting from inadequacy of income, social difficulties and non-autonomy conditions, in line

with Articles 2, 3 and 38 of the Constitution. It also stipulates that the programming and

organization of the integrated system of interventions and social services compete with local

authorities, regions and state in accordance with the principles of subsidiarity, cooperation,

efficiency, efficiency and economy, homogeneity, financial and capital cover, and the

uniqueness of administration, organizational and regulatory autonomy of local authorities”.

In their regional laws, the regions must ensure at least the provision of the following benefits:

• Professional social service and social secretariat for information and advice to single and family

households;

• Emergency social assistance service for personal and family emergency situations;

• Home care (Integrated Domiciliary Assistance);

• Residential and semi-residential facilities for people with social vulnerabilities;

• Residential or day care centers of a community character.

Social services result to be a fundamental part of the region system due to its high relevance

for citizens. The social service is the most complex public area for its extremely wide and

heterogeneous scope of applications. For this reason, it seemed appropriate to analyze in detail

this area and then try to delimit it so that it makes also this service comparable between the

different municipalities.

First of all, we try to identify all the social services typologies, specifying for all the users, the

service’s accountability and the purpose of providing such service.

88

Typology Users Accountability Finality

Family Relief Minors Social Services of the Municipality and Judge Protect

Provide a suitable family environment for a minor at risk

Nursery School Early childhood (3 months - 3 years) Municipality Educational and social service

House assistance Seniors, Non-Dependable People, Minors at Risk, Families

Municipality

Support for the autonomy of people who are not self-sufficient or at risk of marginalization

Economic Assistance Singles, Families Municipality Economic support to meet the

basic needs Socio-Educational

Assistance Singles, Families, Groups

Region, Municipality, Asl

Educational services in support of parents

Emergency and emergency assistance Singles, Couples Municipality, Asl

Support for responsible procreation, parenthood and the health of the unborn child

Information and Social Secretary Citizens Municipality, Asl

Information and guidance on existing services and interventions in the territory

Job placement Disabled, Mental, Addicts, Former detainees

Municipality, Asl Support for entry into the labor market of people at risk of emigration

School Integration Disabled Region, City Support for school integration

Social Promotion Collectivity Municipality Supporting awareness and involvement

Welcome Center Immigrants Municipality Reception, information and support services for immigrants

Violence Center Women and their children Region, City

Social-welfare services aimed at supporting women and their children mistreatment

Youth Aggregation Center Young people Municipality Support structure for

socialization

Meeting center Minors, Seniors Municipality Social meeting venues and provide social, cultural, and leisure activities

Community accommodation

Minors, Seniors, Disabled Region, City Creation of familiar nuclei

Reception and therapeutic community

People with addiction problems

Municipality, Private

Structures for the realization of the therapeutic and socio-rehabilitative program

Educational community Minor at risk Municipality,

Private Residential family replacement facility

Apartment Group Psychic Disabilities, Sick patients

Municipality, Private

Residential services for a very limited number of adults (e.g. 6)

Table 5-Social Service Typologies

89

Since we have too many possible types of social services we have tried to group them together.

To do this we were based on the Legislative Decree 118/2011 that provides for local

authorities to adopt common financial, economic and equity statements and common

consolidated financial statements.

According with the legislative degree the financial accounts of the municipalities have to be

divided into five sections:

1. Nursery and kindergartens services for children and minors

2. Prevention and rehabilitation services

3. Residential and retirement facilities for the elderly

4. Assistance, public charity and different services to the person

5. Necroscopic and cemetery service

Description

1. Nursery and kindergartens services for children and minors

Charges for the operation of municipal nurseries and conventions with private nurseries, child care (admissions, custodies and subsidies), supplementary school services, summer centers, recreation centers, juvenile pool poles


Assistance interventions in favor of disabled people (residences and communities, day centers, economic assistance, social welfare support, job placement services and work grants)


Expenses for managing homes for rest and day care centers for the elderly


Expenditure on the management of management offices, promotion and social protection, poverty alleviation and discomfort (a fund for possible autonomy, economic assistance in support of rental costs), reception services for adults in discomfort (resident and refugees), women's anti-violence centers, home-aid services, daytime care centers, local territorial operative management and municipal social service charges, daily bathing expenses

5. Necroscopic and cemetary service

Cemetary services take care of burial, exhumation, burial, bargaining, and information on votive lighting within the cemeteries structure

Table 6-Social Service Sections

For understanding what of these groups is the relevant one, we analyze the 2015 financial

account of the fifteen municipalities that in the preliminary phase joined the project in order

to assess which among the five above-mentioned groups is the one where the municipalities

devote more economic resources. The sample of fifteen municipalities includes: Padova,

Parma, Perugia, Prato, Taranto, Monza, Udine, Ancona, Pescara, Catanzaro, Seregno, Biella,

Viterbo, Avellino and Modica.

90

For each of the municipalities previously listed we have analysed the costs of social services.

The table shows the example of the municipality of Padova which will then be part of the final

sample on which the project is focused. The cost items for each of the subgroups previously

outlined refer to the cost of personnel, the purchase of goods and consumables, the provision

of services, as well as transfers, interest and taxes. As can be seen from the table, the most

cost-effective item is staffing as one could easily expect given the specificity of social services.

PADOVA

2015

TOTAL

(€)

Personnel

(€)

Purchase of

consumer goods and

raw materials

(€)

Services Provided

(€)

Use of third party assets

(€)

Transfers

(€)

Interest expense

and other financial charges

(€)

Taxes

(€)

1. Nursery and kindergartens services

10.516.204 7.221.032 169.272 2.089.526 2.300,0 1.303.308,5 0,0 3.766


19.086.989 2.410.450 30.755 9.875.405 65.956 6.601.413,5 0,0 103.011


0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00


22.899.809 2.467.757 5.936 15.006.305 177.718 5.060.148,9 0,00 181.944

5.Necroscopic and cemetary service

5.061.3601 1.320.605 234.913 3.214.590 1.300 51.420,0 1.073.535 104.178

Table 7-Padova Social Service Costs

91

Hereafter, is reported the whole sample with the respective total costs of each sections (1-5).

Table 8-Social Service Costs for each municipality

After seeing the results of the analysis, it was decided to choose the group for “Assistance, public

charity and different services to the person” being the one that affects most of the total costs. In ten

out of fifteen municipalities, in fact, most of the costs are represented by this service. In

addition, considering the aggregate data of the 15 municipalities, it is noticed that the fourth

group covers more than 50% of the total costs.

Padova Parma Perugia Prato

1 10.516.204 € 25.514.594 € 10.194.528 € 10.085.008 €2 19.086.989 € 0 € 2.137.357 € 1.154.374 €3 0 € 7.248.164 € 1.849.913 € 2.778.618 €4 22.899.809 € 56.270.290 € 3.131.437 € 8.384.253 €5 5.061.361 € 34.230 € 2.105.968 € 1.574.137 €

Taranto Monza Udine Ancona

1 10.063.191 € 8.629.753 € 4.149.523 € 10.229.147 €2 1.910.734 € 8.454.463 € 0 € 263.499 €3 1.722.277 € 4.783.626 € 0 € 3.320.147 €4 5.378.640 € 4.730.750 € 34.230.255 € 14.795.626 €5 1.801.784 € 1.446.475 € 1.374.855 € 225.055 €

Pescara Catanzaro Seregno Biella

1 4.568.842 € 2.688.036 € 3.324.685 € 2.016.659 €2 398.271 € 0 € 2.870.315 € 28.782 €3 418.875 € 0 € 0 € 129.768 €4 5.438.634 € 11.483.069 € 4.129.443 € 3.021.173 €5 22.676 € 2.240.179 € 298.679 € 267.811 €

Viterbo Avellino Modica

1 2.242.113 € 1.982.033 € 249.657 €2 792.093 € 0 € 0 €3 2.267.677 € 0 € 31.589 €4 1.521.437 € 14.011.275 € 9.410.640 €5 549.363 € 19.059 € 0 €

TOTAL

1 106.453.973 €2 37.096.876 €3 24.550.654 €4 198.836.732 €5 17.021.631 €

92

5.2. Integrated Domiciliary Assistance

During the presentation of the project’s launch, which was held on 20th March 2017, it had

been proposed to the adherent municipalities to analyze the social services “Assistance, public

charity and different services to the person” as one of the five services object of analysis.

Subsequently, thanks to a first comparison with the municipalities, we realized that the

perimeter of social services analysis was too broad and diversified and therefore did not allow

an efficient collection of data for the municipalities, and on our part it was of difficult

comparability. Some municipalities (Modena and Viterbo) have proposed limiting the scope

of analysis to the Integrated Domiciliary Assistance alone as it is a linear and homogeneous service

for almost all municipalities.

We have, in fact, communicated this proposal to the members, precisely defining the activities

that composed this service.

Integrated Domiciliary Assistance (ADI) is a service organized by the ASL in collaboration with

the Municipalities, which allows citizens who need to be assisted at home with personalized

programs, avoiding hospitalization, hospital or home care, for as long as necessary.

The domiciliary assistance, a component of regional and local welfare, includes various types

of assistance that are divided into different levels, diversified on the basis of their greater or

lesser assistance intensity, the number and specific professional competence of the involved

actors, the profile the person they are addressing, the way workers work, and finally the

territorial and integrated operating levels involved.

The Domiciliary Service Assistance (SAD) helps to sustain the person in the daily activities by

lifting the family from the care cargo (eg hygiene in the rooms, preparing meals, personal

hygiene, commissioning, etc.). This can allow the person to stay in his home and family

environment.

Differences between ADI and SAD:

Domiciliary Service Assistance (SAD) is a social-welfare service provided by the municipalities

and delivered directly to the home user through home helpers and has the function of

removing and overcoming the situations of need and difficulties that the human person

93

encounters in the course of his life. The home assistants of the Municipality are trained and

qualified operators. Otherwise, in the Integrated Domiciliary Service (ADI), in addition to the

Municipality’s home assistants, there are health figures as nurses of the socio-sanitary district

or general medical practitioner.

To activate both SAD and ADI services you have to contact the social welfare officer in order

to fill out an appropriate application form.

A lot of municipalities do not recognize any difference between the two services. For simplicity

in comparison, we considered the two services as overlapping. From this moment one, we

refer to ADI even if some municipalities’ data correspond with SAD.

The municipalities take a look of the activities which compose the ADI services in order to

better understand the perimeter of analysis.

The standard activities that compose the ADI services are the following:

1. Reporting and evaluating the need for assistance

2. Definition and planning of the service

3. Delivery of the service

4. Monitoring and reporting

This process begins with a request of an end user of the ADI service; the family doctor (general

practitioner) releases the ADI activation request formulated on the Regional Recipe specifying

the need for ADI. In addition, the patient or family member may have the option of choosing

the managing authority among those accredited by the region.

As a result of this steps, the reference municipality has to assess the effective need for

assistance (1st standard activity), in fact integrated domiciliary assistance can only be activated if

certain requirements are met. Particularly ADI is only intended for people:

• They are not self-sufficient either totally or partially, for certain time span more or less long

• They cannot walk or be transported to outpatient health care centers

• They are helped daily by a caregiver

If one or more of these conditions are satisfied, the municipality attests the real need to provide

the service to the requesting user.

After having evaluating the need for assistance, activity exclusively carried out by the

municipality, it is necessary to define the planning of the service (2nd standard activity). This

94

activity can be directly taken over by the municipality or it can be relayed to the service

provider.

The first case (internalized of 2nd activity) occurs when the general practitioner, in the request

formulated on the Regional Recipe, makes the diagnosis of the patient's situation. In this case,

the social assistant of the municipality examines the doctor's analysis and plan the interventions

required for the user and then submits this request to the body providing the final service.

In the second case (outsourced of 2nd activity), the municipality sends the request directly to the

third authority, which will then define a schedule of care to be administered to the patient. In

most cases, as demonstrated by the analysis of the eight municipalities under examination, the

planning phase is carried out directly by internal staff of the municipality.

The third standard activities which composed the ADI process is the delivery of the service

and it is generally outsourced to third entities that deal specifically with this labor.

Finally, the monitoring and reporting (4th standard activity) is usually carried out by the entity

who provides the actual care; if the service delivering is carry out internally by the municipality,

also the monitoring and reporting activity will be done by the municipality itself, while if this

activity is outsourced also the service monitoring will be outsourced.

Below, for simplicity, we do a scheme of the process previous mentioned.

I: internalized; it is the municipalities to take charge of the specific activity internally

O: outsourced; the specific activity is charged to third parties

Figure 10-ADI Process' Activities

ADI requestNeed for assistance

evaluation (I)

Service Planning (I)

Service Planning (O)

Service Delivery (I)

Service Delivery (O)

Service Monitoring and Reporting (I)

Service Monitoring and Reporting (O)

MANAGING BODY SUPPLYING BODY

95

Hereafter, for each municipality, is reported which of the previous activities are internalized

and which are not.

Reporting and evaluating

the need for assistance Definition and

planning of the service Delivery of the

service Monitoring and

reporting

Avellino I I O O La Spezia I I O O Modena I I O/I O/I Monza I I O O Padova I I O O Pescara I I O O Taranto I I O O

Viterbo I I O O Table 9-ADI Insourcing vs. Outsourcing

As you can see form the table, all the participating municipalities internalize the first activity:

reporting and evaluating the need for assistance. Therefore, there are internal employees that

receive the assistance requests from end users, usually through a paper form, and their function

is to process the requests, verifying the actual need for assistance.

Instead, the definition and planning of the service’s activity is internalized or outsourced

depending on the municipalities.

The municipalities of La Spezia, Modena, Padova, Pescara and Viterbo directly provided the

contracts in the year 2016, while for the other three we used the specifications found on the

websites. Regarding the delivery of the service and the monitoring and reporting activities are

generally externalized to third parties even if this does not happen in Modena. Modena’s

municipality is composed by four districts; each of them, in part, deals with the ADI service.

Particularly, one of these four districts has internal staff dedicated to the activities of service

delivery and monitoring and reporting, while the other three outsource these activities.

As we already state, the objective of “Good Practice Public Administration” project is to build,

through a participatory approach, a performance comparison model of administrative services

based on three categories of indicators:

1. Efficiency; total and unit cost of activities related to the services provided

2. Objective Effectiveness; measuring the quality of some services through the collection of objective

data

96

3. Perceived Effectiveness13; Customer Satisfaction (CS) analysis of the services provided by involving

relevant macro categories of users.

To be linear with the above-mentioned objectives, we decided to use the same structure to

develop the analysis of the data provided by the municipalities.

5.2.1. Efficiency Analysis

In order to analyze and compare the efficiency reach by each municipality, we start with

identifying the Full Time Equivalent (FTE).

The Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) a unit that indicates the workload of an employed person in a

way that makes workloads or class loads comparable across various contexts. In our case, the

FTE is used to measure a worker's involvement in a specific service. The municipalities of

Monza and Avellino did not provide data concerning the internal staff to the integrated home

care service and therefore it was not possible to analyze these two realities.

Hereafter is retorted the values of the FTE corresponding to ADI:

Table 10-ADI FTE

Modena, as seen from the chart, is the municipality with the highest FTE, far above the

average; it has 32 people, most of them employed full-time, dedicated to the ADI service. This

high number is justified, as seen in the table with internalized and outsourced activities, by

having 4 districts one of which has totally internalized this service. Padova has 39 employees

who works for ADI, not full-time. It has this quite high FTE due to the fact that internalized

13 Regarding the ADI service we do not have data to elaborate the perceive effectiveness’ section.

0,69

28,4

15,43

1 1,2 1,25 7,995

0

10

20

30

LA SPEZIA MODENA PADOVA PESCARA TARANTO VITERBO

FTE

FTE Mean

97

the first two activities14. Regarding the other municipalities, they have on average a FTE equal

to 1. La Spezia has only 3 people engaged in ADI not full-time. This so low level of staffing is

mainly due to the high level of digitalization of the service which has allowed a low level of

internal staffing. This service is entirely computerized except for the time of submission of the

application, which is through a paper form submission compiled by the user at the beginning

of the procedure. Pescara has 3 workers employed only partially (33%) to the ADI service

while Taranto has 8 employees who spend part of their time, low percentage on the total

(15%), at ADI. Finally, Viterbo has 5 employees, two of whom spend half of their working

time to this service, while the other three deal with ADI for a low percentage of their time

(8%). To be significant the FTE have to be related to the level of service’s outsourcing. First

of all, it is necessary to value the FTE to internal personnel costs and then, thanks to the

analysis of the contracts provided by the municipalities, we obtained the annual cost of ADI’s

outsourcing.

Table 11-ADI Internal vs. External Costs

14 In the contract they provide us, the “definition and planning of the service’s” activity is not mentioned and

there are no other contracts for outsourcing this one; we therefore reasonably support that this activity is

internalized.

16.996,71 €

€791.424,19

386.353,24 €

27.640,64 € 33.679,19 € 35.012,28 €

€1.402.418,60

€1.181.131,30

€1.211.389,52

€875.014,52

€593.601,38 €736.320,00

- €

200.000,00 €

400.000,00 €

600.000,00 €

800.000,00 €

1.000.000,00 €

1.200.000,00 €

1.400.000,00 €

1.600.000,00 €

1.800.000,00 €

2.000.000,00 €

La Spezia Modena Padova Pescara Taranto Viterbo

Internal Costs External Costs

98

As you can see from the graph, most of the costs are external costs; in fact, the ADI service is

mostly managed by third parties.

Framework Law 328/2000 provides that regions, on the basis of an act of government and

coordination of the government, shall adopt specific guidelines for regulating the relations

between local and third sector, with particular reference to the systems for the provision of

personal services. The decree provides guidelines for regulating relations between

municipalities and their associative forms with third sector subjects for the purpose of

providing services to the person, as well as for enhancing their role in the programming and

design of the integrated system of interventions and social services.

The measure stipulates that the Regions shall adopt specific guidelines for:

• Promoting the improvement of the quality of services and interventions, including through

the definition of specific quality requirements;

• To foster the plurality of services in compliance with the principles of transparency and

administrative simplification;

• To encourage the use of forms of award or negotiation that allow the full expression of the

design and organizational capacity of the subjects of the third sector;

• To promote forms of co-design promoted by the relevant public administrations, which

actively involve third sector stakeholders in identifying experimental and innovative projects

in order to address specific social issues;

• To define appropriate consultation processes with third sector stakeholders and their

representative bodies recognized as a social part.

Reliance on the supply of services related to Integrated Domiciliary Assistance, in

municipalities objects of analysis, is granted to social cooperatives. These are distinguished

from traditional companies for a mutualistic rather than a lucrative purpose; more precisely,

the cooperative society provides members with goods and services and opportunities to work

on more favorable terms. In this case, social cooperatives aim at responding to the needs of

the community, especially the weakest and most beneficial citizens. Social cooperatives can be

type A or B; the first manages socio-sanitary and educational services, such as social centers,

housing, rehabilitation centers, and healthcare facilities, while type B careers deal with job

placement in the agricultural, industrial and commercial fields, handicrafts, of disadvantaged

subjects.

99

After having define both internal and external costs, it is interesting to check whether there is

a correlation between them.

Thanks to the linear regression model between internal and external costs, we can state that

there is no correlation between them (R2=0,172). This means that having low internal costs

does not correspond of having high external costs and vice versa.

Table 12-ADI Linear Regression

The low level of linear correlation is evident from the graph because the municipalities of La

Spezia, Pescara, Viterbo and Taranto, while supporting similar internal costs, have a very

different level of external costs with the Northern municipality that almost duplicates the

amount of the others. The municipality of Modena stands out for the high level of both internal

and external costs, while Padova supports internal costs similar to Modena but halves internal

ones. It can therefore be concluded that there is no relation between internal costs and external

costs and that the differences between them depend on factors that are consistent with the

individual reality.

Through these data it is not possible to express the efficiency because depend on other factors

that can be largely differ from each municipality. To make these data comparable and so, to

assess the efficiency of municipalities in the ADI management, we have to create two

indicators:

• 1st indicator: costs15 / # motions (€/motion)

15 For the costs we consider both the internal and the total ones.

LA SPEZIA

MODENAPADOVA

PESCARA

TARANTOVITERBO

R² = 0,17207

0 €

200.000 €

400.000 €

600.000 €

800.000 €

1.000.000 €

1.200.000 €

1.400.000 €

1.600.000 €

- € 200.000 € 400.000 € 600.000 € 800.000 € 1.000.000 €

Ext

erna

l Cos

ts

Internal Costs

Linear Regression

100

• 2nd indicator: costs/ # ADI windows (€/window)

These two indicators relied on two different drivers: the managed motions and the ADI windows

located in each municipality.

Managed motions indicate the work volume the municipalities have and it depends more on

the amount of population. Regarding the ADI windows, we assume that there is one

municipality’s employee from each single windows.

As you can see from the chart below, the average number of managed instances, regarding the

municipalities under analysis, is equal to 708.

Table 13-- ADI Managed Motions

Padova stands out because it runs a number of instances double compared to the average while

Viterbo manages very few motions. The municipalities of Modena and Taranto manage a

number of instances that settles around the average while Viterbo deviates far below this.

Initially the municipality of Pescara had provided a much higher value than the average, but

after the comparison with the data received from the other members it found an error in the

analysis perimeter considered and revised downward the number of motions related to the

ADI service.

In order to assess the reliability of these data, we take into account municipality’s population

since it represent a suitable driver of the managed instances; the greater the population, the

greater the number of instances to handle and vice versa.

Thus making the ratio between the number of instances handled by a municipality and the

population of the municipality itself, we expect to obtain comparable values in terms of size.

544840

1510

408

800

145707,83

0

500

1000

1500

2000


Managed Motions

Managed Motions Mean

101

Below we have the quantitative data obtained.


Motions 544 840 1510 408 800 145

Population 93515 184826 210465 120286 199051 67488

Motions/Population 0,58% 0,45% 0,72% 0,34% 0,40% 0,21% Table 14-ADI Motions / Population

All the data are in line since are between 0,21% and 0,72%, values near to each other. The

obtained results prove that the data provided are comparable and therefore we can affirm the

reliability of the them. After verifying the comparability of the data, it is possible to settle the

first efficiency indicator for the ADI service.

As we have previously seen, the indicator is defined as the ratio between the total costs (internal

plus external costs) sustained by the municipality and the total number of instances handles by it.

Table 15-ADI Costs/Motions

La Spezia Modena Padova Pescara Taranto Viterbo Total Costs/Motions 2609,2 2348,3 1058,1 2212,4 784,1 5319,5

Table 16-ADI Total Costs/Motions

€31

€942

€256 €68 €42 €241

€2.578

€1.406

€802

€2.145

€742

€5.078

€2.388,61

€-

€500

€1.000

€1.500

€2.000

€2.500

€3.000

€3.500

€4.000

€4.500

€5.000


1st Indicator: Total Costs/Motions [€/Motion]

Internal Cost / Motions External Costs / Motions Mean

102

In the graph we have decided to separate internal from external costs in order to make evidence

of each contribution. While, in the table above, is reported the total amount of costs sustain

to manage each motion.

From a first interpretation of the graph, it can be affirmed that the municipalities under the

average are more efficient in managing the ADI service compared to the other ones.

Furthermore, at first glance, it is evident that external costs are far superior to internal ones.

This is absolutely in line with the cost analysis carried out previously and, in addition, it is

justified by the fact that the costs of providing and monitoring the ADI service are greater to

those for taking care of and managing service requests that is the administrative management

of the instance.

The municipality of Viterbo stands out in negative since it has the higher total costs for handled

the motions, even spending € 5.320 per instance managed, value far grater to all other

municipalities. As you can see, most of the incurred costs are external, while regarding the

internal ones are in line with those of other municipalities. This means that Viterbo is not very

efficient in managing external costs and therefore it is probably not so able to administer

relations with its suppliers who are responsible for providing the service and monitoring it.

This result could initially seem strange because we have previously seen that Viterbo sustain

lower costs compared to the average of other municipalities (see internal and external costs

chart pag. 97); the problem is related to the very low number of instances managed by Viterbo.

In fact, it manages only 145 motions per year and sustained an extremely high management

cost. It can therefore be concluded that, compared to the other municipalities under analysis,

it is not very efficient in managing this service and especially in negotiating supply conditions

with suppliers.

The second municipality in terms of poor efficiency in the management of the ADI service is

La Spezia. In this case, the fact that the municipality is inefficient in managing relations with

the provider of the service is evident. In fact, despite the internal management costs of the

requests are extremely low (€ 31), the external costs are the second highest after Viterbo.

On the contrary, Taranto turns out to be the most efficient municipality as it is able to spend

only € 784 for take charge and oversee a single instance. Even in this case the greatest weight

is given by external costs (€ 742), while the internal ones proved to be extremely low (€ 42),

the second lowest after La Spezia (€ 31). The municipality of Taranto is an example for the

other municipalities as, although managing a number of instances on average very high (800

103

motions per year), it is able to efficiently control the internal management costs and also the

external ones regarding the service provision contract and its monitoring.

Immediately after Taranto the municipality that proves to be more efficient is Padova. This

municipality is able to sustain a total cost for motion equal to € 1.058. It is also worth

mentioning that Padova is the municipality that manages the largest number of instances per

year (1.510 motions).

Another municipality that come out is that of Modena, where the internal costs are much

greater than the other municipalities (€ 942). As we have already highlighted above, Modena

sustain internal costs much higher, compared to other, as it is the only municipality in which

the provision of the ADI service and subsequent monitoring is internalized in one of the 4

poles of the municipality. Moreover, Modena, in spite of being the municipality with the

greatest total costs, turns out to be instead an efficient municipality since it is able to manage

about 840 instances a year.

To measure the efficiency of the municipalities we did not limit ourselves to analysing the

number of instances managed, but we used another indicator of efficiency. As we have said

previously, this second indicator uses the number of ADI windows located in each municipality as

a driver. Each window is managed by a person employ in the municipality.

First of all, through the ratio between handled motions and ADI window, we want to compute

how many motions are managed in each ADI window and consequently how many instances

are managed by each municipality employee. Below we have reported the results obtained.

La Spezia Modena Padova Pescara Taranto Viterbo Motions 544 840 1510 408 800 145 Windows 3 4 7 1 4 2 Motions/Windows 181,3 210,0 215,7 408,0 200,0 72,5

Table 17-ADI Motions/ADI Windows

As we can see, Pescara proves to be a real outlier in the management of the ADI motions; the

municipality is able to run a number of instances equal to 408. On the contrary, Viterbo is the

municipality that manages less with only 73 instances managed for each windows.

The other municipalities, La Spezia, Modena, Padova and Taranto supervise a number of

extremely aligned motions: around 200.

To conclude the analysis of the efficiency of the municipalities in the management of the ADI

service, we calculate the second indicator as the ratio between internal costs and number of

104

ADI windows. In this indicator we have considered only the internal costs as they are the

internal employees of the municipality who are dedicated to the management of the ADI

windows.

The graph below shows the efficiency values obtained.

Table 18-ADI Internal Costs/ADI Windows

First of all, we can note that, considering different indicators, the municipalities can show

extremely different performances in term of efficiency.

Even in this case we can assess that municipalities below the mean are more efficient than the

others. In term of efficiency, the situation is extremely different from that analysed with the

first indicator (€/motion), in fact, if before the less efficient municipality turns out to be Viterbo,

in this case it is precisely Viterbo to represent an example in terms of efficiency for the others

municipalities. The same goes for La Spezia, since it proves to be not very efficient in managing

the costs related to the motions, while it is very efficient in managing the ADI windows.

An opposite case is instead represented by Modena, which is not very efficient in managing

the windows by spending even 197.856 € for each windows.

€5.665,57

€197.856,05

€55.193,32 €27.640,64

€8.419,80 €17.506,14

€52.046,92

€-

€50.000

€100.000

€150.000

€200.000

€250.000


2nd Indicator: Internal Costs/ADI Windows [€/Window]

Internal Costs / # ADI Windows MEAN

105

5.2.2. Effectiveness Analysis

In this part of the report we analyze the objective quality of the service offered (ADI). It is

possible to asses this aspect thought the evaluation of objective characteristics; in this case we

develop the analysis on two level: the first one is referred to the level of process digitalization, the

second one is related to the level of window’s availability.

First, we analyzed the level of process digitalization. Only Viterbo e Monza did not provides

us with this data and for this reason are not reported in the Radar chart. To examine the

objective effectiveness, we asked each municipality to tell us, on a scale from 1 to 10, their

level of digitalization related to the management of the ADI process; in particular, 1

corresponds to the absence of digitization, 10 corresponds to the entire process digitalization.

Below we have reported the values provided to us.

Table 19-ADI Level of Digitalization

First of all, it should be noted that no municipality in analysis has a digitization level of 10; the

municipalities with the highest level are La Spezia and Padova that indicated 7. These two

municipalities digitalized most of the process except for the time of submission of the

application, which is through a paper form submission compiled by the user at the beginning

of the procedure.

Avellino and Taranto have a quite good level of process digitalization but they did not provide

us with further information on which parts of the process are digitized and which are not.

01234567Avellino

La Spezia

Modena

Padova

Pescara

Taranto

ADI level of digitalization [scale 0 - 10 ]

106

Modena and Pescara show the lovers level of digitalization compared with the municipalities

under analysis.

From the current situation of the municipalities it is clear how we still have room for a vast

improvement on the digital level. Through an improvement of internet technologies and

interface with the final users, it would be possible to considerably increase the level of objective

efficiency. The people could not only send the request for the ADI service more quickly and

easily, but it would also be possible to considerably reduce the waiting time for handling the

requests. Thanks to an increase in management technologies, the municipality would take less

time to check and, if necessary, validate the requests for assistance and then send those requests

to the service provider.

In this case the benefit would be twofold; there would be an external benefit for the end users

but also an internal one for the municipality itself because would reduce the time taken to

manage ADI requests and therefore this time could be used for further tasks.

Regarding the second level of objective effectiveness analysis, we focus on the accessibility of

the ADI windows and in particular on the opening hours of the windows themselves.

Hereafter we report the valued communicated by the municipalities with reference to opening

hours per week.

Table 20-Opening hours ADI Windows

In this case the situation is more homogeneous among the various municipalities, since on

average everyone has an opening hours of the ADI windows equal to 25 hours per week.

05

1015202530Avellino

La Spezia

Modena

PadovaPescara

Taranto

Viterbo

Opening hours ADI windows [hours/week]

107

The state is different for the municipality of Viterbo which has a clearly lower opening time,

equal to 9 hours per week. This reduced time, certainly affects the level of objective

effectiveness of users who can present their application at the window in an extremely reduced

time frame compared to that of other municipalities. In this circumstance, Viterbo has ample

area for improvement the service.

5.2.3. Efficiency and Effectiveness Trade-off

To have a clear vision of how the various municipal administrations perform in terms of

efficiency and effectiveness regarding the Integrated Home Assistance service, we have

decided to use a positioning map that has an axis in which the level of efficiency is indicated (vertical

axis) while on the other (horizontal axis) indicates the effectiveness.

Since only objective effectiveness has been analyzed, this will be representative of the whole

performance (the same type of reasoning also applies to the other services being analyzed).

For evaluating the efficiency we decided to consider only the first indicator (€/motion) since

it is more significative compared with the second one in terms of comprehensibility and

obtained results.

Regarding the effectiveness, we condider both level of analisis: the level of process digitalization

and the level of window’s availability. Since these two level have different unit of measurement,

we preferred to define two positioning maps, one for each level of objective efficiency analysis.

The crossing point of the two axes corresponds to the average cost for management of the

instances with respect to the abscissas, while for the ordinates to an average value of the weekly

opening hours and to an average level of process digitalization.

Regarding the first positioning map, we consider as effectiveness indicator the hours of

opening windows. In the following table we report the numerical value of both the indicatos.

Effectiveness (hours of opening ADI windows)

Efficiency (€/motion)

La Spezia 27 2609,22 Modena 25 2348,28 Padova 24 1058,81 Pescara 17 2212,4 Taranto 24 784,1 Viterbo 9 5319,53 MEAN 21 2388,72

Table 21-ADI Efficiency and Effectiveness Indicators (1)

108

(*) We do not consider Avellino since, despite the effectiveness indicator is available, it has not been

possible to obtain the efficiency indicator.

Table 22-ADI Efficiency and Effectiveness Matrix 1

From the analysis of the first efficiency-effectiveness matrix, it emerges that as many as three

of the six municipalities that have provided information about them present a good level for

both performances. The two municipalities that prove most virtuous are Taranto and Padua

with the southern municipality able to achieve, with equal effectiveness, a higher level of

efficiency. Both municipalities offer a high level of service in terms of opening hours of the

ADI desk and manage each instance using a limited number of economic resources. The

municipality of Modena also falls within the quadrant characterized by high effectiveness and

efficiency and, while ensuring a higher level of effectiveness than the two previous

municipalities, spends a larger amount for the management of the instance. The municipality

that ranks in the less virtuous quadrant is Viterbo, which in addition to spending a lot in the

management of each instance, does not guarantee the final user an opening of the door

prolonged over time. Pescara, although it employs a limited number of resources to manage

the requests, has a lower level of effectiveness than the other municipalities and a suggestion

could be to use a greater number of resources to guarantee a higher level of service. On the

other hand La Spezia, which guarantees the highest number of weekly opening hours, could

revise downwards the totality of resources used to reduce the cost of management.

LA SPEZIA

MODENA

PADOVA

PESCARA

TARANTO

VITERBO

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Efficiency

Effectiveness

109

Regarding the second positioning map, we consider as effectiveness indicator the average level

of process digitalization

In the following table we report the numerical value of both the indicatos.

Effectiveness (average level of process digitalization)

Efficiency (€/motion)

La Spezia 7 2609,22 Modena 4 2348,28 Padova 7 1058,81 Pescara 3 2212,4 Taranto 5 784,1 MEAN 5,20 1802,56

Table 23-ADI Efficiency and Effectiveness Indicators (2)

Table 24-ADI Efficiency and Effectiveness Matrix 2

From the second positioning map, different results emerge compared to the first one. First of

all, the municipality of Viterbo leaves the analysis as it has not provided data regarding the

general level of digitalisation of the process. If before there were three municipalities that

presented good practices, considering the level of digitization only Padova remains among the

virtuous administrations in the field of integrated home care. The municipality of Padova

guarantees a high level of digitalisation of the process and for this reason we can expect a quick

time to accept the service request and a speed in the management of the single procedure.

Padova is not only a virtuous municipality in the management of process efficiency but is able

to offer a high level of service to the end user. La Spezia confirms that it is a virtuous

municipality in the level of service offered but fails to achieve good performance in terms of

LA SPEZIA

MODENA

PADOVA

PESCARA

TARANTO

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Efficiency

Effectiveness

110

efficiency in the management of procedures. The municipality of Modena is also emblematic:

after having demonstrated good performance in terms of hours of opening hours per week, it

is placed in the dial of low efficiency and low effectiveness going to consider the level of

digitization, as well as Pescara that already in the first map presented level of effectiveness

below average. A progressive path for the adoption of information systems to support the

ADI process could therefore be recommended to this municipality. Taranto, on the other

hand, shows some shortcomings in the management of internal digitalisation and presents a

lower level than the average. In general terms we can say that the second positioning map

highlights the differences between the municipalities and allows to identify the most virtuous

municipality in general terms of the management of the ADI process, that is the municipality

of Padova.

5.3. School Canteen Service

The school canteen service refers to the process which has, as a final output, the provision of

meals within the public kindergartens and first and second grade primary public schools. This

service is guaranteed by the municipalities since it integrates the school’s teaching activity and

enhances the aspects of nutrition related to health, taste and culture. Indeed, the school canteen

should not be seen solely as a simple fulfillment of nutritional needs, but have to be considered

an important and continuous moment of education and health promotion directed at children.

Increasing attention to food-related issues and respect for different food cultures have also led

to greater attention being paid to catering services within the schools; for this reason, more

customer satisfaction questionnaires have become more and more common and widespread.

This public service is outsourced to third parties and there are several types of school canteen’s

contract management, as we have obtained from the contract documents provided by the

municipality of La Spezia.

Below we list the types of contract management that we identified:

• Management A: the daily supply is at the expense of the contracting company while the meal

production is made inside the public kitchens by the municipal staff.

111

• Management B: the daily supply is at the expense of the contracting company while the meal

production is made inside the public kitchens by the staff of the contracting company itself.

• Management C: the daily supply is at the expense of the contracting company while the meal

production is made,depending on the cold-hot bond, in the “centralized” public kitchens by

the staff of the contracting company itself.

As part of our project, we divided this service into standard activities in order to make school

canteen service homogeneous for all the municipalities and to precisely identify which activities

are outsourced and which are not. The standard activities that composed the process are the

follows:

1. Menu setup / diet

2. Collect registration questions

3. Check ISEE position

4. Production of payment requests

5. Service delivery

6. Reconciliation of payments

7. Quality service monitoring

8. Perform technical checks

9. Payment service to the supplier

School canteen is not just about providing meals to students (service delivery) but there are a

number of ancillary activities that need to be completed; each local administration may choose

to carry out these actions autonomously or delegate to third parties. The basis of meal delivery

is the definition of a menu that must take into account the fulfilment of nutritional

requirements and respect for certain food cultures (menu setup). There is then the

administrative/bureaucratic process that each user, in this case the end user family must

perform in order to be admitted to the service (collect registration questions). According to the

ISEE category checked by the administration (check ISEE position and production of payment

request) a meal price is defined which must be paid either to the local body or to the service

provider. Payment of the compensation to the provider is made either completely by the public

administration or jointly with the user (reconciliation of payments and payment service to the supplier).

Other fundamental activities of the school canteen process are quality service monitoring and

technical check, generally performed by the service provider and necessary to ensure a good level

of service.

112

As can be seen from the table, outsourced activities are numerous, whereas those that are

directly carried out by municipal staff are mostly administrative and bureaucratic activities.

Particularly, all the municipalities, except Avellino who totally outsources the service (clearly

declared by the municipality), charge the activity of checking ISEE documents for defining the

amount to be paid by those who benefit from the school canteen service. In fact, the final

users integrate part of the amount that the municipality pays to outside companies with a meal

fee; this fee varies according to the income brackets.

To have an overview of the different meal fee in the analyzed municipalities see the table

below; for each municipality, the average price for a meal was considered both for public

kindergartens and first and second grade primary public schools. All the data was found in the

contract provided by the municipalities or in the tender published on the website. This is the

cost that each local entity spends for a meal; it is important to emphasize that part of the cost

is subsequently required to families on the basis of the ISEE certificate attesting the effective

income. The municipality of Padova did not provide us with the contract and on the tender is

not specified the cost for each meal; for this reason, we decide to exclude it from the analysis.

Average meal price in school [€]

Avellino 3,15

La Spezia 4,35

Modena 5,37

Monza 5,09

Pescara 5,77

Taranto 4,24

Viterbo 4,65

MEAN 4,66 Table 25-School Canteen Average meal price in school

The prices that each administration pays per meal are different and the range within which

they are is from 3.15 € to 5.77 €. The municipality that is more efficient in bargaining for the

meal price is Avellino, which has a 35% lower price than other municipalities. This city, during

the data collection phase, has specified that it has a computerized and optimal management of

the service that allows the contractor to make the best use of the resources. Each family has

an app available to communicate in the morning if the child is not present, avoiding the

preparation of the meal and allowing saving of resources. In the face of this optimum

management, the municipality of Avellino managed to negotiate a better price for each meal

with the service provider. The municipality, which instead pays the biggest figure for a meal,

113

is Pescara followed shortly from Modena. At a later stage of the analysis it will be interesting

to see how this management impacts on the final price to be paid by each user.

Not all municipalities adhering to the project provided contracts for outsourcing the school

refresher service. For the municipalities of Avellino, Monza, Taranto and Viterbo we used the

specifications found on the websites of the different administrations and subsequently we

sought validation of it. It was thought to do this to ensure comparability between a wider

sample and also because by verifying the received contracts with the relative specifications

found online, it was found that the difference was marginal. The municipality of Avellino has

stated that it outsources the entire refurbishment process, but the specification we have found

is exclusively related to the delivery of the service and not to other activities.

In the tables below the details of outsourced or internalized activities for each municipality are

reported.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 TOT Outsourced

Avellino O O O O O O O O O 100% La Spezia I I I I O I O O I 33% Modena I I I I O I O O I 33% Monza I I I I O I O O I 33% Padova I O Pescara I I I I O I O O O 44% Taranto I I I I O I O O O 44% Viterbo I I I I O I O O O 44% TOT

Outsourced 13% 13% 13% 13% 100% 13% 100% 100% 50%

Table 26-School Canteen Insourcing Vs Outsourcing

(*) List of the school canteen process’s activities: 1. Menu setup, 2. Collect registration questions, 3. Check

ISEE position, 4. Production of payment requests, 5. Service delivery, 6. Reconciliation of payments, 7. Quality service

monitoring, 8. Perform technical checks, 9. Payment service to the supplier

114


After introducing the school canteen service and defining what activities are managed

internally or outsourced, the analysis of the efficiency with which this process is conducted.

First, the number of person employed in the process activities and their cost are verified. Then,

the costs incurred for internal and third-party expenses are compared to determine the

economic weight of each process activity and see if the impact of internal or external costs is

greater. Later, to allow comparability between different realities, a synthetic indicator is defined

using a driver that identifies the volume of activities and defines how each public

administration spends for each child served. The municipality of Taranto is not considered in

the analysis as they did not provide us with the data required to calculate the FTE number (list

of dedicated staff) while for the municipality of Avellino the considerations previously made

apply and therefore the number of FTE is equal to zero. Padova specified that data related to

2015 about personnel, provided in the previous phase of the pilot project, could be considered

also for the year 2016.

Table 27-School Canteen FTE

Table 28-School Canteen Internal Costs

6,2 4,510,4

33,3

12,25

1,411,34

0

20

40

LA SPEZIA MODENA MONZA PADOVA PESCARA VITERBO

FTE

FTE MEAN

€135.921,32 €95.366,97

€315.507,30

€738.082,27

€244.785,50

€31.708,50

€-

€100.000

€200.000

€300.000

€400.000

€500.000

€600.000

€700.000

€800.000

LA SPEZIA MODENA MONZA PADOVA PESCARA VITERBO

Internal Costs

115

Although the degree of outsourcing of activities is similar between the different municipalities,

a very different number in terms of FTE is observed. The municipality that employs more

people is the municipality of Padova, 36 people of whom 32 full time. The case of Padua is

very particular and deserves to be investigated better; this municipality has such a high number

of FTEs since some activities, unlike the other municipalities, are internalized. Among the

employees who take care of the school are in fact present diets who deal with the preparation

of diets and menu activities that is generally carried out by personal of the company providing

the service. Moreover, at some school centres the preparation of meals takes place directly by

municipal staff and all this justifies a high level of FTE present that is also found in a high level

of internal costs. In the second place in terms of the use of FTE, although distanced with

respect to Padova, is the municipality of Monza which employs 17 FTEs, 3 of which are full-

time.

Modena employs 14 people but none of them full-time and only two people employed 90% in

the school canteen service while La Spezia uses nine people and five are dedicated full-time to

canteen and Pescara has 15 people engaged in the school canteen service, most of whom are

full-time (73%). The municipality of Viterbo, however, devotes only 4 people to this process

with a percentage for all less than 90%, and is the local authority employing the lowest number

of resources.

Internal costs reflect the considerations made about the total number of employees and their

percentage of utilization, but also reflect the payroll category to which the various employees

belong.

After considering the costs spent on internal staff, we investigate all the costs associated with

contracts with third parties for reliance on refusal processes. The two cities whose data are not

known for internal staff (Avellino and Taranto) are reported for completeness analysis and

because, as shown by the underlying graph, the internal costs are marginal compared to the

external ones. Contracts relating to the municipalities of Modena and Padova are not only

related to school attendance but also concern the provision of meals in different contexts. The

municipality of Modena has provided us with the exact amount for the scholastic canteen,

while the municipality of Padua has omitted this data; however, to have a comparable figure,

it was decided to use the same percentage as Modena to define the amount of refusal in the

North-Eastern municipality.

116

From the following graph it is possible to see the overall amount of costs divided into internal

and external.

Table 29-School Canteen Internal Vs External Costs

It turns out that the costs incurred for outsourcing are far superior to the internal ones; this is

largely justified by the degree of outsourcing of the activities that composed the process. The

results that emerge from this graph show that from the economic point of view different

activities do not have the same impact. The provision of the service and its qualitative and

technical control are the activities that are outsourced and, seeing the costs, it is easy to deduce

that they have a much greater cost than the administrative management of the process. The

municipality of Avellino while outsourcing all the activities spends a lower amount than all

other municipalities and this figure may perhaps be explained by the number of meals served

daily.

In order to ensure comparability of data on efficiency, a driver was chosen to indicate the

volume of served meals and therefore the actual number of scholars who benefit of the school

catering service.

€135.921 €95.367 €315.507

€738.082

€244.786 €31.709

€698.949

€2.451.178

€5.965.012

€6.156.019 €5.622.803

€2.943.856

€1.441.752 €1.355.536

€-

€1.000.000

€2.000.000

€3.000.000

€4.000.000

€5.000.000

€6.000.000

€7.000.000

A V E L L I N OL A S P E Z I A M O D E N A M O N Z A P A D O V A P E S C A R A T A R A N T O V I T E R B O

External costs Internal costs

117

# of children receiving

service (kindergarten)

# of children receiving service

(first and second school of primary order)

Total number of children served

Avellino 900 400 1300

La Spezia 1426 3797 5223

Modena 2488 6400 8888

Monza 9596

Pescara 2592 1500 4092

Viterbo 1004 701 1705

MEAN 1682 2560 5134 Table 30-School Canteen Total Number of children served

The municipalities of Padova and Taranto did not provide the total number of pupils served

and therefore, since the driver choose to build the indicator is missing, it is impossible to carry

out the analysis for these two municipalities. The number of scholars served also depends on

the type of school hour each institution chooses to adopt. In fact, if the lessons are exclusively

in the morning, there will be a lower number of children who will benefit from the canteen

service.

Information on the training offer of each institute was not found and therefore we will only

focus on the efficiency analysis by verifying how much each municipality spends for a meal.

To calculate how much each administration spends per scholar we considered both internal

and external costs and we relate them to the number of users they use the service.

€537,65 €495,33

€681,86 €674,40

€779,24 €813,63

€663,69

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

AVELLINO LA SPEZIA MODENA MONZA PESCARA VITERBO

Efficiency Indicator: Total Costs/Students [€/Student ]

Table 31-School Canteen Total Costs/Students

118

The chart shows that on average, the municipalities spend around € 663 per child each year.

The municipalities of Modena and Monza align very close to the average and therefore can be

said can be said to achieve satisfactory efficiency. The municipality of Viterbo spends about €

150 more than the average and is the least efficient in managing the process. Just below Viterbo

is the reference to Viterbo, while Avellino and La Spezia are the most efficient cities.

In this type of analysis, however, one must not forget that each municipality receives a fee

from each child who has access to the service. Considering the corresponding fee, we see how

Viterbo, which is the municipality that spends more for serving the scholars, is also the one

who requires the lower average amount fee (€ 3) than all the other municipalities. Modena, the

municipality where the average fee charged by the user is the highest (€ 5), is in line with the

average while La Spezia, whose tariff is slightly lower (€ 4,74) than the one mentioned above,

spends the lowest amount for the provision of school catering services.


As explained above, the level of effectiveness perceived by the end user is not easy to detect

even because of poor predisposition by the municipalities. To be honest, many municipalities

have initially been shown to be available at customer satisfaction questionnaires but have been

pulled back in practice. As far as the process is concerned, questionnaires have already been

compiled for useful information, but only La Spezia has provided material. The Ligurian

municipality has in fact proposed the results of a survey carried out by the contractor for the

assessment of the school canteen service. The questionnaire was proposed to both scholars

and teachers of primary schools; the children had to express their preferences regarding food,

while teachers expressed their opinions about the quality of the service provided. This

information was then used by the contractor to set up the most appropriate menus to meet

the needs of the users and to improve, where required, the quality of the service.

As far as objective effectiveness is concerned, however, no indicators have been selected that

can be requested from the different municipalities. As we know, objective effectiveness also

concerns the timing of processes as service time is one of the most impacting factors on the

perception of quality by the end user. During the pilot project, the following indicators were

chosen but, having not brought significant results during the analysis, they were not taken into

account in the next phase of the project. In particular, the choice was relegated to: time spent

119

in delivering school canteens, time-consuming in procedures for facilitating school tuition and

time between the checking of fees and the actual application.

Another indicator that you could use is the range of menu that end users can choose from.

Based on factors related to health, religion and culture, a large number of special diets can be

differentiated


After analysing performance in terms of efficiency and reasoning about effectiveness, we

conclude by giving a concise judgment of how municipal administrations manage the entire

school canteen process.

For an overall view of how the local administrations perform a predictable efficiency-

efficiency matrix was built. On the vertical axis there are the €/child served that is how each

administration spends annually for each single refusal service and the value at the intersection

of the axes is represented by the arithmetic mean of the values of the five municipalities that

provided us with data complete with regard to the refusal service. As for the horizontal axis,

and therefore the effectiveness, no kpi was considered to represent how effectively the

municipalities offered the service; to overcome this shortage, it was thought to choose the

average price paid by each child to meal.

Average meal price in public schools [€]

Avellino 3,66

La Spezia 4,35

Modena 5

Monza 4,1

Padova 4,81

Pescara 3,56

Taranto 4

Viterbo 3

MEAN 4,0625 Table 32-School Canteen Average meal price in public school

This value is chosen as it directly impacts the end user and is therefore an objective indicator

of the effectiveness of the service. In this case, the value at the intersection of the axes was

understood as the average value of the prices of the meals of the municipalities (considering

120

the price of the meal in primary and secondary schools). Efficiency increases as the €/child

spent by the community decreases while efficiency increases as the price decreases for the end

user meal.

Table 33-School Canteen Efficiency-Effectiveness Matrix

The chart clearly shows a split between the participating entities: the municipalities where users

pay a lower meal price are the ones that support high internal costs for delivering the service.

In the eyes of end users, only the positive aspect is visible, i.e. a lower cost to support, and

they do not have a more general view of the total costs that the municipality supports. Within

the quadrant with a high level of efficiency and effectiveness, there is no administration. The

municipality closest to the first quadrant is Monza who spends 674.4 €/child served and

guarantees a mean meal price of 4.10 € for the user. As mentioned earlier, municipalities that

provide a lower average meal price are those that support higher costs internally. The fact that

no community proposes a good practice to be replicated by other municipalities demonstrates

that this process is still in an embryonic stage of performance development and so much has

yet to be done to achieve good results. In addition, the fact that all municipalities under review

have outsourced management of similar activities does not allow them to give judgment on

which outsourcing choices are optimal.

In order to find reliable data about the average price paid by each users per meal, we relied on

information present on the administrations’ website and as medium income we considered

20’000 €. In the table are reported all the data used the to compile the efficiency-effectiveness

LA SPEZIA

MODENA

MONZA

PESCARA

VITERBO

450

500

550

600

650

700

750

800

850

900

2,503,003,504,004,505,005,50

Efficiency

Effectiveness

121

matrix. The data acquired are relative to the first grade primary schools, therefore, we assumed

that this value can also correspond also to the primary schools of the second grade and to the

kindergartens. In the table these data are highlighted with the grey cells.

5.4. Single Centre for Building

The Single Centre for Building (SUE – Sportello Unico per l’Edilizia) is created by the only text

of the laws and regulations on building (Single Text for Construction) approved by DPR –

Decree of the President of the Republic – 380 of 2001 and is the "twin" of the Single Centre

for Production Activities (SUAP – Sportello Unico per le Attività Produttive).

Article 5 concern about the centre and the requirement for the municipal administrations to

build an office called SUE; this office has to “deal with the relationship between the private

and the administration and, where appropriate, the other administrations required to adjudicate

in respect of the construction work which is the subject of a request for permission or a

complaint of commencement”. The functions of public centre can be summed up in the

following five functions that are summarized in the Single Text:

1. Administrative function with regard to building procedures and their management.

2. Informative function for all those who want to start an activity, open a shop, start living for a

home or anyone in need of hospitality and building assistance. This role could be accomplished

through the provision of a database containing the necessary regulatory elements, information

on procedures for completing the procedures, the list of submitted applications, the state of

their procedural and any useful information available, accessible for free.

3. Promotional function to promote the collaboration, promotion and development of the

territory, thus stimulating economic activity.

4. Assistance service for the best building and building opportunities.

5. Collaborative function with the municipality as regards all building and town planning activities

of the territory.

The centre is a reference for all those who want to initiate any action that concerns the building

industry both for residential buildings and for those relating to productive and commercial

activities. This was set up with the aim of creating a single interface channel between public

administration and citizen, in the case of building intervention, without having to deal with the

122

need to present various instances in various offices pertaining to territory or certain aspects

(e.g. landscape-environmental).

The SUE receives the claims of the owner or property right holder and issues the resulting

action where provided. The Single Centre for Production Activities is, instead, the only access

point for entrepreneurs who want to start or develop a business and receive all the clarifications

about the requirements and the necessary fulfilment.

The general principles that must inspire the operation of the counter are organizational

efficiency without duplication of structures or increased costs for the Public Administration

and users and the effectiveness of the service to ensure that a single organizational structure is

responsible for method.

Once presented to the SUE structure and role, we have to specify the activities whose composed

this process:

1. Building compatibility verification (including environmental compatibility)

2. Check the documentation presented at the centre

3. Sending the documentation to the entities involved and interaction with the same

4. Procedures management

5. Management of archives and databases

SUE manages the building proceedings in compliance with the applicable law and the initiation

of the administrative procedure takes place at the time of acceptance of an application or act.

First of all, this application is verified by the SUE front office, who, in the absence of

attachments and documents required for the definition of the practice, does not accept the

request.

In case of a positive outcome’s verification, the SUE has to take care of all the requirements

necessary for obtaining the opinions and acts of consent of other public administrations called

upon to rule during the proceedings. After having manages these coordination activities

between different public entities, the SUE has the task of preparing a database. Moreover,

SUE is provided with technological equipment that allows for quick procedures management,

easy and constant connection with the user, with other municipal structures and with outside

bodies. This technological facility guarantees the creation and operation of the database, the

computerized management of the proceedings and the automatic production of alerts and

communications to users.

123

Regarding our project, the municipality of La Spezia in the definition of the perimeter of

analysis chose not to consider the SUE process while the municipality of Padova did not

provide process data. In the case of the municipalities under analysis, all activities are carried

out internally; we have drawn this conclusion from the fact that no municipality has provided

contracts for us for the year 2016 for this kind of process. The conduct of all activities by

internal staff can be justified by the fact that these are strictly related and dependent on the

administrative management of the local body (e.g. the Regulatory Plan of each municipality).

Knowledge of the territory and the various regulations are part of a know-how that an external

company can hardly have.

We developed the analysis starting from the efficiency, that we focus on the effectiveness and

finally we assess a trade-off between the two.

For this service we were not able to evaluate the perceived effectiveness due to the lack of data

by the participating municipalities. For measuring the perceive effectiveness of this service, we

wanted to provide a questionnaire to the end users of the SUE but this has proved to be too

complicated, also due to the lack of interest shown by the municipalities themselves.


As we assess before, the activities of SUE process are totally performed by internal staff so the

FTE computed represent the whole workload of the service.

Table 34- SUE FTE

7,00

11,8614,00

24,00

12,008,61

12,91

0,00

5,00

10,00

15,00

20,00

25,00

30,00

AVELLINO MODENA MONZA PESCARA TARANTO VITERBO

FTE

FTE MEAN

124

The chart shows that on average the municipalities employ a workforce of about 13 FTE. The

Pescara case, which employs double resources compared to Taranto and Modena, and even

three times higher than Viterbo and Avellino, goes to the eye.

Avellino, Monza and Taranto employ workers dedicated full time to SUE; in particularly,

Avellino employed 7 workers, Monza 14 and Taranto 12. While Modena and Viterbo have

part employees who spend full time at this service (11 and 1, respectively) and others are only

partially applied for SUE (2 and 8, respectively).

An audit of the costs actually incurred by the administrations results in the same results

obtained by comparing the FTE used and from this it can be concluded that the type of staff

employed for this service is on average the same wage category for all municipalities in analysis.

Table 35-SUE Internal Costs

The simple cost of delivering the service in analysis is of little importance since to judge how

efficiently an administration is performing is of fundamental importance to consider the

volume of managed procedures.

In the table below is reported the number of handled procedures by each municipality and also

the territorial extension of each of them expressed in Km. In order to find out a comparable

data, we computed the ratio between the procedures managed and the territorial extension.

This relationship can be consistent due to the fact that SUE refers to building permits on the

municipal territory itself.

Modena Pescara Viterbo Avellino Monza Taranto Handled Procedures 1105 4903 2603 1435 1707 2976 Km2 183,2 33,3 406,2 30,6 33 209,6 H. Procedures/Km2 6,0 147,2 6,4 46,9 51,7 14,2

Table 36-SUE Procedures/Kmq

163.936,3 €239.304,8 €

389.035,7 €

528.527,4 €

250.750,8 €183.903,4 €

€-

€100.000

€200.000

€300.000

€400.000

€500.000

€600.000


Internal Costs

125

It emerges that the instances handled by the municipality of Pescara are significantly greater

than the other municipalities, and this can be justified by the fact that it has a higher internal

cost and so high FTE. However, there is a need to find a reason for this anomaly in the

volumes handled by the centre Italy municipality. The justification for this fact can be found

in a different concept of the SUE; very often, the proceedings concerning the SUE and SUAP

counters are considered inherent in the same office and therefore in the collection of data are

considered the same way although the activities of competence are different.

This possible mistake in defining the perimeter does not, however, limit the analysis of the

efficiency achieved by the various local administrations. For assessing the efficiency reach by

the municipalities, we decided to use a synthetic indicator to find out how much each procedure

costs to the municipal administration.

The efficiency driver used for assess the efficiency indicator for SUE service is given by the

ratio between internal costs and the number of handled procedures.

Table 37-SUE Internal Costs/Procedures

The municipality that is more efficient is Viterbo, which guarantees each process a three times

lower cost than Monza and Modena. Pescara, which had high FTE values and managed

procedures, is below the average and this reinforces the hypotheses previously made to justify

high values. Monza, however, appears to be the least efficient municipality but it should be

emphasized that due to the lack of information on the actual percentage of employment of

each employee for the SUE process, it assumed that every employee occupied 100% of his

time in this activities. This could result in an error in the definition of the FTE actually used

for the volume of proceedings submitted.

€114

€217 €228

€108 €84 €71

€137

€-

€50

€100

€150

€200

€250

Avellino Modena Monza Pescara Taranto Viterbo

Efficiency Indicator: Internal Cost/Procedures [€/Procedure ]

Internal Costs / # H. Procedures MEAN

126


Regarding the evaluation of the perceived effectiveness, it was decided to consider the level of

availability of the SUE, meant as weekly opening hours, as well as the average time between

receipt of the request by the office and taking over by the instructor.

In the following Radar chart it is reported the two effectiveness indicators. We use the same

chart even if they have different measure units.

Table 38-SUE Effectiveness Drivers

The municipalities of Modena and Monza are the ones that make the citizen a greater number

of hours while Taranto remains open for only 6 hours a week. This data greatly influences the

level of service offered to the citizen, and as a result, if we have customer satisfaction surveys,

most likely the inhabitants of Modena and Monza will be more satisfied than those of Taranto.

As regards the average time between receipt of the request by the office and taking over by the

instructor, the administration's objective should be to minimize this indicator. In the data

collection, the abnormal case of Monza emerged, which reported a 92-day interval between

the receipt of the instance and its takeover. It is assumed that the municipality of Monza has

misunderstood the information requested and understood it as the average time between the

receipt of the request and the conclusion of the procedure; for this reason, the data has not

been reported within the Radar chart.

02468

10121416Avellino

Modena

Monza

Pescara

Taranto

Viterbo

Effectiveness Drivers

Hours /weekDays

Missing Data

SUE weekly opening hours

Average time between receipt of the request by the office and taking over by the instructor.

127


To conclude the analysis of the process inherent to the SUE it was decided to summarize the

data collected in a matrix that correlates the degree of efficiency and effectiveness achieved by

each municipality.

On the horizontal axis the efficiency has been positioned and therefore how much each entity

spends for the management of a single procedure; the average value that is at the intersection

of the axes was found by making the arithmetic average between the different performances

of the municipalities. Efficiency increases as the cost incurred by each municipality for the

management of the procedure decreases.

On the axis of the ordinates, on the other hand, the weekly opening hours of the window were

considered. The average time between receiving and taking charge of the procedure, despite

being the second indicator chosen in the previous analysis of objective effectiveness, was not

chosen because the municipality of Monza provided a value that is difficult to compare with

that of the others municipalities and therefore the comparison between the different adherents

would have been difficult. The intersection point of the axes coincides with the average value

between the data received from the municipalities. Objective effectiveness improves with

increasing weekly opening hours providing a higher level of customer service.

Effectiveness

[Weekly opening hours] Efficiency

[€/Procedure] Avellino 11 114,24 Modena 16 216,57 Monza 16 227,91 Pescara 8 107,8 Taranto 6 84,26 Viterbo 12 70,65 MEAN 11,5 137

Table 39-SUE Efficiency and Effectiveness Indicators

128

Table 40-SUE Efficiency-Effectiveness matrix

From the matrix it emerges that all the quadrants are populated with the exception of the third

quadrant or the one characterized by low efficiency and effectiveness and without a doubt this

is a positive sign regarding the one-stop-shop process for the building industry. The

municipalities that can propose good practices are Avellino and Viterbo, in particular the latter.

In fact, Viterbo guarantees a cost for handling procedures lower than all the others (70.65

€/procedure) also offering a number of hours per week of the window above average (12

h/week). The same applies to Avellino albeit with a slightly higher cost but still below the

average (114.24 €/procedure) and one hour less than opening (11h/week). The municipalities

of Monza and Modena achieve a good level of objective effectiveness with as many as 16 hours

per week of opening but at the same time employ a greater number of resources than the other

entities, thus obtaining a high cost of management for each procedure. These two

municipalities could be recommended a way to improve the trade-off between efficiency and

effectiveness, which consists in reducing the resources employed against a reduction in weekly

opening hours. As for the municipalities of Pescara and Taranto, it is possible to see how the

cost per procedure is lower than the average as well as the weekly opening hours of the branch.

Both municipalities could increase the number of resources used, thus trying to guarantee a

higher level of service to users.

AVELLINO

MODENA

MONZA

PESCARA

TARANTOVITERBO

0

50

100

150

200

250

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

Efficiency

Effectiveness

129

5.5. School Building

School building is the process consisting of activities related to the construction of buildings

devoted exclusively to scholastic use. These buildings are defined according to the order of

study and the age of the scholars; the Gelmini’s reform has introduced a specific nomenclature

that distinguishes school building into:

Name Duration Property

Nursery School (kindergarten) 3 years (age: 3 to 6) Municipality

Primary School 5 years (age: 6 to 11) Municipality

First Grade Secondary School 3 years (age: 11 to 14) Municipality

Second Grade Secondary School 5 years (age: 14 to 19) Province Table 41-School Building School Typologies

School buildings, places and related equipment are the property of the state or local authorities

(regions, provinces and municipalities). In particular, buildings destined to nursery, primary

and first grade secondary schools belong to the municipalities; those institutes and colleges of

higher education, including art schools and art institutes, music conservators, colleges and state

educational institutions, are owned by the provinces to which are also transferred properties

already belonging to the State or to the municipalities and used as the headquarters of the

aforementioned school institutions, resulting in the assumption of relative burdens by the

province.

According to current regulations, real estate owners are obliged to build and / or provide

school premises and thus have the burdens of the necessary ordinary and extraordinary

maintenance, restructuring, extension and adaptation to the current regulations, save the power

to delegate routine maintenance tasks to the educational institutions, with the allocation of

resources necessary for the exercise of delegated functions. Bodies are required by law or by

agreement to comply with the obligations regarding the structural and maintenance

interventions necessary to ensure the safety of premises and buildings in use to public

administrations or public offices. In particular, with regard to the safety of places and buildings

assigned to schools, the obligations relating to the necessary structural and maintenance work

shall be borne by the local or provincial administration to which they belong. Recent standards

have envisaged initiatives to rehabilitate public buildings, with regard to the risks associated

with the presence of asbestos, prioritizing others to school buildings; as well as interventions

to ensure the safety of school buildings present in the national territory that have aspects of

particular concern regarding seismic safety.

130

Article 3 of Law 23/96 stipulates that, in implementation of Article 14 of Law 142/90, which

governs the Order of Local Self-Government, the ordinary and extraordinary maintenance of

school buildings is the responsibility of the municipalities for the lower grade schools and

provinces for upper secondary schools and colleges.

For the purposes of the project's efficiency and effectiveness analysis, the process of school

building has been divided into two macro areas: Ordinary Management and Extraordinary

Management. Ordinary management refers to maintenance work carried out by local

authorities regarding repairs, renovation and replacement of buildings such as doors, windows

and floors. Ordinary maintenance works are also considered to integrate and maintain the

efficiency of existing technology plants, such as the heating plant or the electrical plant.

Extraordinary maintenance works are those relating to the realization of works and

modifications to renovate or replace existing structural parts of existing buildings and the

realization and integration of sanitary and technological hygiene services. Extraordinary

maintenance, to be considered as such, must always contain an element of innovation; energy

saving jobs, such as replacing the boiler, installing thermal solar panels that produce hot water,

renovating underfloor heating, and installing photovoltaic panels, are usually under

extraordinary maintenance.

The two types of management are in turn made up of different types of activities. In particular,

ordinary operations are divided into:

1. Collection and management of reports

2. Periodic inspections and improvement of the buildings

3. Control of passive safety systems

4. Coordination of the implementation of the interventions

5. Perform maintenance work

6. Database update "Regional Registry"

Extraordinary management in turn:

1. Approval of tenders

2. Transfer of funding to the regions

3. Preliminary design

4. Handling tenders

5. Definitive design

6. Executive design

7. Realization

131

8. Construction supervision

9. Check work and tests

As far as ordinary school buildings are concerned, all activities related to the ordinary

interventions carried out at school buildings are considered. The task of reporting to the

administration the need for action is the responsibility of the head teacher who collects reports

from both internal staff and citizens. Inspections are periodically carried out to check the status

of both the various school complexes and the security systems installed. Once the maintenance

request has been received, the administration proceeds with the definition of the specific

requests for assignment and with the choice of the external company to whom to entrust the

realization of the service. In some cases, the administrations outsource the database update

service containing the building master data and the relative interventions carried out.

Instead, in the case of extraordinary maintenance interventions, which are more relevant both

in structural and economic terms, the administration is responsible for drafting a call for

tenders to which various companies can take part. Since there are some extraordinary building

interventions of regional competence, the municipal administrations must also deal with the

management of the subsidies provided by the regions for the municipalities. Together with the

contractor, a plan is defined for the execution of the intervention and then the intervention is

continued. Extraordinary maintenance work should be subject to strict controls during

execution in order to avoid discrepancies between the planning and the actual and therefore

incur extra-budget. Once the work is finished, continue with the tests to verify that it has been

correctly completed.

All adherent municipalities, except Padova, were considered in the analysis, although not all

data was provided.

Among the collected data about school building process, Modena is the only municipality that

provide us a contract of this service which is called "the management and adjustment service

of lifting, registration training, data updating, information flow and related ancillary building

services in property owned or in the availability of the City of Modena". None of the other

municipalities provided any kind of outsourcing service contract.

Despite this it is difficult to think that the activities that make up this service are made

exclusively by internal staff of the municipalities. In particular, with regard to the actual

realization of both ordinary and extraordinary maintenance of school buildings. This type of

service is likely to be handled by municipalities through short-term and single-transaction

132

contracts. These types of contracts appear to be numerous and probably difficult to detect.

For this reason, we have supposed that municipalities have had difficulties in collecting and

providing such contracts to us.

For the purpose of the analysis, he data provided is sufficient to evaluate the efficiency of each

municipality.


Assuming that all the costs incurred by the municipalities, with the exception of Modena, are

internal, the analysis of the FTE that each municipality uses for ordinary and extraordinary

management of the school building and then for the valorisation is carried out.

Table 42-School Building FTE Ordinary

Table 43-School Building FTE Extraordinary

1,86

13,70

26,35

3,58 5,000,75 1,63

7,55

0,005,00

10,0015,0020,0025,0030,00

AVELLINO LA SPEZIA MODENA MONZA PESCARA TARANTO VITERBO

FTE - Ordinary Management

FTE MEAN

1,52

7,78

3,96

1,00

3,001,63 3,15

0,00

2,00

4,00

6,00

8,00

10,00


FTE - Extraordinary Management

FTE MEAN

133

The municipality of La Spezia did not provide data regarding the number of employees

dedicated to the extraordinary management of school buildings, for this reason, is not present

in the corresponding chart. Regarding the ordinary maintenance work, La Spezia employed 25

people who are partially (about 55%) dedicated to the service.

The result that comes to the eye is undoubtedly the case of Modena which presents a very high

FTE values which compared to those of other municipalities. Modena has even 83 workers

employ or in the ordinary maintenance works or in the extraordinary ones or in both; all of

them are not employed full-time but instead dedicates a small part of the working time to this

service (33% to the ordinary management and only 10% to the extraordinary management).

Avellino has 5 people who take up half of the ordinary service and half the extraordinary one.

Monza has 18 people all employed in the ordinary management of school buildings, while only

13 of them are involved also in extraordinary management. Regarding Pescara all the 6

employees deal with both ordinary school buildings for the 88% of their working time and

extraordinary school building for the 17%. Viterbo has 5 people equally dedicated to ordinary

and extraordinary management. The situation is different for Taranto which employed 4

people who have staffed most of the extraordinary building maintenance (75%) compared to

the ordinary one (19%).

As already mentioned in the analysis of other processes, the only value of the FTE both

absolute and valued, is not enough to judge the efficiency of the whole process, and it is also

necessary to consider another value to make those data comparable.

For this specific service it was requested by the municipalities to indicate, on the excel file, the

overall value of the ordinary and extraordinary maintenance work in the buildings schools as

well as the actual output level. This is understood as the cost incurred by the municipality and

paid to third parties for the implementation of maintenance work on school buildings. It

should therefore be understood as an additional cost compared to that incurred for the

payment of internal staff.

The chart below shows the costs incurred for the internal staff and the overall costs of the

ordinary and extraordinary maintenance work expressed by the municipalities.

134

Table 44-School Building Ordinary Maintenance costs

(*) Taranto does not provide the data about the overall costs of ordinary maintenance work and for

this is not reported in the above chart.

The average value of ordinary maintenance work for the municipality under analysis is around

315.000 €.

Table 45-School Building Extraordinary Maintenance costs

42.109,7 €

283.820,0 €

544.016,2 €

90.559,2 €119.746,7 €

17.451,4 € 37.351,8 €58.564,7 €

300.000,0 €

811.234,0 €

564.550,0 €

40.000,0 €

114.000,0 €

€-

€100.000

€200.000

€300.000

€400.000

€500.000

€600.000

€700.000

€800.000

Avellino La Spezia Modena Monza Pescara Taranto Viterbo

Ordinary Maintenance Costs

FTE - Ordinary Overall value of ordinary maintenance work

€34.313 €189.039 €100.820 €23.955 €67.401 €37.352 €168.352 €570.000

€2.870.000

€1.658.144

€4.753.113

€24.366 €-

€500.000

€1.000.000

€1.500.000

€2.000.000

€2.500.000

€3.000.000

€3.500.000

€4.000.000

€4.500.000

€5.000.000

Avellino La Spezia Modena Monza Pescara Taranto Viterbo

Extraordinary Maintenance Costs

FTE - Extraordinary Overall value of extraordinary maintenance work

135

The municipality of Taranto has provided us with the total amount of the extraordinary

maintenance work carried out in 2016 including those starting in 2015 and ending in 2017; for

these interventions we have considered only the 2016 competence.

(*) The graph is not complete as La Spezia, as we previously mentioned, did not provide the

data regarding the number of employees dedicated to the extraordinary management of school

buildings while Monza did not furnish the overall value of extraordinary maintenance work.

From the analysis of the two graphs emerge many ideas to reflect upon.

The first thing that emerges is that the costs incurred for ordinary intervention are extremely

lower (315.000 € on average) than those made for extraordinary maintenance (2.215.000 € on

average). This significant discrepancy is justified by the type of activities covered by the

extraordinary management since it is related to the renovation of existing buildings or to the

realization and integration of sanitary and technological hygiene services; definitively more

onerous activities, both in term of cost and time, with respect to the ordinary ones.

For both managements it can be seen that the total costs incurred for the interventions are

considerably higher than the costs incurred for the FTE (with the exception of Pescara

regarding the ordinary operations). From this it can be deduced that the actual utilization of

interventions employs many more employees than the bureaucratic and administrative

management of the school building process.

This great gap between these two costs – FTE and value of maintenance work – can also

justify the fact that some of the process activities are outsourced to third parties; FTE are only

referring to the costs of internal staff while the overall value of maintenance work include also

the activities demanded to external providers.

The fact that the cost of the intervention is greater than the cost of the FTE indicated by the

municipalities shows that not all activities have the same economic impact; in this case the

operational intervention is undoubtedly more expensive than the bureaucratic administrative

management. The municipality that spends the higher value for the realization of ordinary

interventions is Modena, which already emerged to be the one with a greater number of FTE.

It can also be noted that the value of the interventions sustained for the municipality of Monza

is significantly higher than the cost for the FTE while for both Modena and La Spezia the

costs are almost equal.

136

The municipality of Taranto did not provide the overall value for ordinary interventions and,

for this reason, it is difficult to interpret the results. Despite this, it is possible to find a

justification for the high cost linked to the extraordinary maintenance expenses sustained by

Taranto. These expenses are used to finance 27 school building projects throughout Puglia

territory. Sebastiano Leo, councillor for education, training and work of the Puglia Region,

says that has invested a sum equal to 18.5 million euros for the renovation and securing of

Puglia’s schools. These interventions have been identified in the framework of the three-years

Plan for school buildings 2015-2017 thanks to the Law 107/2015 for the “Good School”. Part

of this significant amount, has certainly been provided to Taranto which have to develop

extraordinary maintenance interventions in line with the framework of the three-years Plan for

school buildings.

In extraordinary management, the difference between the two costs is greatly amplified and

no cost incurred for FTE is comparable to the total value of the interventions. For the

municipality of La Spezia it was not possible to return the amount claimed for the FTE while

the municipality of Monza did not provide data regarding the total value of the extraordinary

maintenance work.

In order to evaluate how much each intervention is paid by each local authority it is necessary

to understand the output volume generated and then the sum of the internal costs and the

additional costs incurred must be related to that. As a driver to estimate the output volume

generated, the number of actions performed for both types of management was chosen. In the

following tables, the data received from the local government regarding the number of

interventions are restated.

# Maintenance Works – Ordinary

# Maintenance Works – Extraordinary

Avellino 104 6 La Spezia 1400 2 Modena 6334 12 Monza 752 / Pescara 192 17 Taranto 900 17 Viterbo 184 16 MEAN 1409,43 11,67

Table 46-School Building Number of maintenance costs

137

Even in this case it is noticed how the volume of activities managed by the municipality of

Modena in terms of ordinary maintenance is significantly higher than the others. For a further

demonstration of the excessive value reported, an evaluation will be conducted that will

determine the number of ordinary maintenance work per square meter of school building.

Avellino La Spezia Modena Monza Pescara Taranto Viterbo # Ordinary

Works 104 1400 6334 752 192 900 184

Mq school building 80639 72000 252350 117600 94360 116900 28217

# Works/Mq 0.0013 0.019 0.025 0.0064 0.0020 0.0077 0.0065 Table 47-School Building Works/Square meters

Modena and La Spezia have much higher values than other municipalities and this can justify

the ordinary cost related to both FTE and overall maintenance work.

In order to give a concise assessment of the efficiency of the two types of management, the

total cost incurred for each intervention is calculated obtaining results shown in the graph. As

for Modena, the contracting cost incurred (the management and adjustment service of lifting,

registration training, data updating, information flow and related ancillary building services in

property owned or in the availability of the City of Modena – 187.371,46€) for outsourcing

part of the process will also be considered.

Table 48-School Building €/Ordinary maintenance work

Taranto provided us only data referred to FTE considering the Ordinary maintenance works

and for this reason the overall costs incurred for a single intervention is much lower compared

to the other municipalities; for this reason, we decided not to consider it in the efficiency

€968,02

€417,01

€243,55

€871,16 €832,01 €822,56

€- €100 €200 €300 €400 €500 €600 €700 €800 €900 €1.000

AVELLINO LA SPEZIA MODENA MONZA PESCARA VITERBO

Efficiency Indicator: €/Ordinary maintenance work

138

analysis and its value (19.39 €/Ordinary maintenance work) is not reported within the previous

graph.

Regarding ordinary management, in spite of what could be expected from the results of

previous analysis, the municipality which is less efficient is Avellino than with 968.02 € /

intervention far exceeds the cost incurred by other local authorities. This result is justified by

the lower number of works carried out. Modena, managing a high number of procedures, can

absorb the costs it sustains and positions itself shortly after Taranto in terms of efficiency. The

case of Taranto is also very special, as it is rather strange that a municipality cannot spend so

much for each intervention but it should be remembered that this municipality did not provide

any value with respect to the total amount incurred for ordinary management but only the

FTE costs.

In conclusion it can be said that the evaluation of efficiency for the ordinary management of

school building is difficult to understand and the results that can be drawn from this analysis

are not relevant; there are too many discrepancies between the data collected and it can be

assumed that the perimeter of analysis considered by the various municipalities has not been

homogeneous.

Table 49-School Building €/Extraordinary maintenance work

Extraordinary management also has problems of interpretation since the results are overly

heterogeneous. The results of the municipalities of La Spezia and Monza have not been

mapped as they have omitted the total number of interventions. Taranto is the municipality

that spends more for each job, twice as much Modena that is in the penultimate place in terms

of efficiency. In general, it can be seen that the costs for extraordinary maintenance are much

higher than the ordinary one and this can be justified by the definition of the two types of

interventions given previously. In fact, extraordinary interventions are wider and relate to

significant structural changes, while ordinary ones are interventions that are carried out on a

€33.777,60

€254.919,94

€98.947,01

€474.561,88

€3.857,36 €-

€100.000

€200.000

€300.000

€400.000

€500.000

AVELLINO MODENA PESCARA TARANTO VITERBO

Efficiency Indicator: €/Extraordinary maintenance work

139

daily basis and have a lesser impact. This is also evident from the total number of interventions

carried out by type.

A type of analysis that we thought useful to do is related to the verification of the existence of

a correlation between the square meters of school buildings and the number of FTE used by

each administration in the school building. The result we expect to find is that as the square

meters grow, the number of FTE also increases.

Table 50-School Building Linear Regression

The graph shows a good level of correlation between the two factors mentioned. The

municipality that declares a greater number of municipal square meters is Modena that

employs, as you can see, a number of FTE greater than double compared to other

municipalities. It is precisely this city that “pulls” the regression. Instead, Pescara, Monza,

Avellino and Taranto have a number of square meters related to school buildings very similar

and also at FTE level are similar. The case of La Spezia emerges, which uses a larger number

of FTE compared to a smaller number of square meters. This could be due to the geographic

conformation of the Ligurian territory that involves a level of maintenance required higher

than other areas of the peninsula. The number of FTE used by Viterbo is in line with the

square meters of school buildings and both values are lower than those of the other

municipalities.

AVELLINO

LA SPEZIA

MODENA

MONZAPESCARA

TARANTOVITERBO

R² = 0,5987

-5

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

0 50000 100000 150000 200000 250000 300000

FTE

Internal sqm school buildings

140


For an assessment of the objective effectiveness of ordinary management, the average time

between the instant of ordinary maintenance is carried out and the receipt of the first signal

was chosen as an indicator. In this case all the municipalities have provided the data and from

the following Radar Chart you can see the results. The chart shows that the best performing

municipality is Avellino, which guarantees one day of waiting while La Spezia takes a week to

make the required intervention.

Table 51-School Building Effectiveness Drivers

For the effectiveness of extraordinary management, we rely on the relationship between the

cost variation between planned and actual and the total amount spent. The analysis of this type

of indicator would be of little relevance as the only municipality that provided information

about this data is Avellino (with a variation of 38539.5 € between the planned and actual cost).

Other municipalities either omit data or report zero.

Municipalities are obliged by law to write in the balance sheet the amount of interventions that

will be carried out during the year and it is rather strange that there is no discrepancy between

what is planned and what actually achieved. An explanation to this fact could be a lack of

accuracy in comparing these two types of data that would explain why many municipalities did

not provide the data. It should also be noted that a correct and precise planning phase can

0

1

2

3

4

5Avellino

La Spezia

Modena

MonzaPescara

Taranto

Viterbo

Effectiveness Drivers

Average time between the instant of ordinary maintenance esecution and the receipt of the first signal

141

guarantee to the municipalities the achievement of a good level of efficiency as it has the

perception of the ways in which the resources are allocated and any errors committed in the

implementation phase.


To get a clear view of the situation in terms of the performance of the different municipalities

it is useful to map the dimensions of efficiency and effectiveness within a matrix. This type of

reasoning is possible only with regard to the ordinary management of school buildings, since

for the extraordinary management it was not possible to obtain significant results in terms of

efficiency and it was not possible to define an indicator for effectiveness. The subsequent

reasoning will therefore be linked exclusively to ordinary management. The level of efficiency

achieved is shown on the horizontal axis. A lower value of €/maintenance work indicates a

high level of efficiency as it means that a municipality is able to carry out an intervention using

fewer resources. On the other axis, the effectiveness is expressed in terms of average time

between the instant of ordinary maintenance and the receipt of the first signal is reported. The

intersection point of the axes corresponds to the arithmetic mean of the two dimensions. due

to the excessive discrepancy of the values relating to the efficiency of the municipality of

Taranto, it was decided not to consider it in the mapping.

Effectiveness [Average time]

Efficiency [€/Ordinary maintenance cost]

Avellino 1 968,02 La Spezia 5 417,01 Modena 4 243,55 Monza 2,33 871,16 Pescara 2 832,01 Viterbo 2 822,56 MEAN 2,72 692,39

Table 52-School Building Effectiveness-Efficiency Indicators

142

Table 53-School Building Efficiency-Effectiveness matrix

From the map it emerges how no municipality is placed in the first quadrant, that is the one

with high efficiency and effectiveness. Municipalities that achieve a good level of efficiency

such as Modena and La Spezia have an average time almost double compared to the overall

average and therefore the level of objective effectiveness rather low. The municipalities that

perform well in terms of effectiveness and have low response time, however, spend more for

each intervention.

From the results it emerges therefore that to guarantee a good level of service to the user and

therefore to guarantee short times for the intervention required, higher costs must be incurred

and therefore efficiency reduced. There are no examples of good practice among the analysed

municipalities and the proposal that can be made to try to move the municipalities towards the

first quadrant is to better balance the trade-off between the costs related to efficiency and the

level of objective effectiveness. Municipalities that excel at efficiency may decide to use more

resources to try to reduce response time, while those with low response times may want to

save resources at the cost of slightly increasing time.

AVELLINO

LA SPEZIA

MODENA

MONZAPESCARA

VITERBO

€-

€200

€400

€600

€800

€1.000

€1.200

0123456

Effectiveness

143

5.6. Supply of Goods and Services

The supply of goods and services is a service that is transversal to the entire municipal

administration and concerns purchases made by the body. Provveditorate's service, which

deals with the aforementioned process of supplying goods and services, carries out cross-

supplies and cross-service purchases on the basis of a timely forecast of the entity's needs

(yearly or biennial supply planning) in order to avoid splitting up purchases, rationalizing and

achieving economies of scale that rely on significant savings for administration (spending and

management savings). The economic crisis of recent years has made the state pay more

attention to the ways of supplying the various municipalities. Very often the municipal

administrations paid little attention to the costs of purchasing and thus generated a high level

of inefficiency.

The recent economic crisis has gradually affected all public administrations and private

companies. This crisis has heavily affected the country's GDP by halting economic growth,

and has hit sovereign debt and public finances. The policies taken by European governments

to deal with the situation that emerged in the last five years are aimed at austerity. The leverage

used by many political systems to address this unfavourable economic situation is a quantitative

decrease and a qualitative optimization of public spending. Supply management, which has

been in the years underdeveloped by economic literature, is back to being a focal point of

study.

There have been numerous decrees that have been promoted to regulate purchasing

arrangements in public administrations in order to increase efficiency and avoid waste of costs

and resources. For example, the entry into force of Legislative Decree no. 50/2016, has

introduced significant novelties regarding central purchasing obligations for Italian

municipalities. Previously with DLGS 95/2012, the obligation for local authorities to supply

themselves through the conventions or framework agreements made available by Consip

S.p.A. and the regional reference commissioning centres. Consip is a joint stock company of

the Ministry of Economy and Finance, its sole shareholder, and operates according to its

strategic guidelines to the exclusive public service; Consip makes the use of public resources

more efficient and transparent, providing the Administrations with tools and skills to manage

their purchases of goods and services, stimulating companies to compete with the public

system.

144

During the research project, the analysis of this type of process proved to be rather

complicated since finding the necessary data proved to be difficult. The supply of goods and

services is a cross-cutting process for the different sectors of public administration since

central purchases are made by the office of the supervisory body but also decentralized by the

individual offices. The inter-sectoral nature of this process creates difficulties in obtaining data;

in fact, the various offices are difficult to collaborate and communicate and it is not possible

to have an overall view of what actually is bought by the administration in general.

The municipality of La Spezia, already in the phase of presenting the program, chose not to

consider the supply of goods and services as the process being analysed, while the municipality

of Taranto, at the data collection stage, pulled back for internal problems.

The overall process of supply of goods and services is composed by different activities that

are the following:

1. Analysis of the purchasing needs of the entity for the supply of goods and services

2. Purchase planning

3. Specification and functionalities definition

4. Choice of custody procedure

5. Supplier search and verification of requirements

6. Definition of tender specifications

7. Management of the phases of the race

8. Performance analysis of the purchase process

9. Administrative management of the contract

Municipalities under analysis carry out all the activities of the process internally and have not

provided any kind of contract for reliance on third parties. This choice is understandable since

the management of purchases is closely linked to the institution's internal strategy and

therefore only internally it can be found the know-how and skills required. As mentioned

earlier, purchasing management is regulated by rules defined by the state centrally and for this

reason, municipal decisions are similar and comparable.

145


We have decided to articulate the efficiency analysis with regard to the supply of goods and

services on two levels. First, we wanted to investigate the efficiency with which resources are

being used in order to understand whether each administration correctly manages public

spaces and resource utilization. To do this, we used information about square meters and total

cubic meters of school buildings that were later used as drivers to allocate costs. The second

level of analysis, indeed, refers to the way in which the whole process of supplying goods and

services is managed and in particular the total amount of costs that is managed by each

employee; below is the total number of FTEs employed.

The first step in the efficiency and effectiveness analysis is based on the observation in the

number of FTE each community dedicates to the process of supplying goods and services.

The municipalities were required to provide the number of employees and the relative

percentage of employment for all sectors involved in purchasing; it will be included in the list

both the employees working in the office, who deal exclusively with the management of the

purchases, but also the employees of the various offices dealing instead of decentralized

purchases and related to the sector of interest. As already pointed out, not all municipalities

have provided data on employees in the process of supplying goods and services and

specifically only for the municipalities of Modena, Monza, Pescara and Avellino are able to

define them.

Table 54-Supply of goods and services FTE

The different number of FTE employed in the service can certainly be tied to the total

workload required in the various municipalities but before taking this conclusion, it is necessary

to assess the actual cost incurred for the internal staff by the local authorities as shown in the

chart below.

4,00 €

8,66 €

13,29 €

4,13 €7,52 €

0

5

10

15

AVELLINO MODENA MONZA PESCARA

FTE

FTE MEAN

146

Table 55-Supply of goods and services Internal costs

Basically, the differences that emerged from the absolute number of FTE employed also affect

the relative cost except for Avellino, which despite having an absolute value of FTE slightly

lower than Pescara, supports a higher cost than the other for internal staff. Pescara and

Avellino have a cost for FTE much lower than the average while Monza has a double value

compared to the average.

At this point, in order to evaluate the efficiency with which purchases are made within local

administrations, it is necessary to understand the amount of expenditure that has been made.

The expenses that have been considered are those relating to payments for the year 2016 for

utilities and charges for telephony and transmission networks, for electricity, water and heating.

These types of costs fall within the category defined by Dlgs 95/2012, whereby public

authorities must rely on Consip at the time of purchase to ensure greater transparency and

convenience. Data on the above expenses were tracked in the SIOPE online portal and

subsequently asked for validation by the municipal administrations. A further amount

requested to administrations was the total expenditure above threshold (> 40.000 €) made

during 2016; also for this category of purchases there is an obligation to resort to conventions

defined by Consip.

Over-threshold purchasing data was requested to the various local governments, but not all

provided the requested data, and excessive discrepancies were found between the results

provided and therefore the data received was also difficult to interpret. For clarity of analysis,

we include data on over-threshold purchases reported by municipalities.

€101.884

€187.848

€303.453

€94.745 €171.982

- €

100.000 €

200.000 €

300.000 €

400.000 €


Internal Costs

147

Table 56-Supply of goods and services Purchases over threshold

The municipality of Modena has an excessively high value compared to other municipalities

and this fact shows that, most likely, the perimeter of the analysis of the municipalities has not

been interpreted in the correct manner and therefore these discrepancies occur.

ith regard to the payments for the above mentioned utilities, since they have been found and

subsequently validated by each administration, they are also reported in their entirety also for

municipalities that have not provided any further data regarding the process of supply of goods

and services, including the municipalities of La Spezia and Taranto who have not adhered to

this part of the project.

€110.830.126,00

€67.000,00 2.516.372,03 €197.684,29 €-

€20.000.000

€40.000.000

€60.000.000

€80.000.000

€100.000.000

€120.000.000

MODENA PESCARA PADOVA VITERBO

Purchases over threshold (> 40.000 €)

€193

.500

€230

.323

€333

.002

€749

.835

€355

.308

€286

.550

€1.4

52.7

77

€382

.982

€1.2

28.6

25

€2.9

24.7

25

€2.7

27.4

48

€4.1

89.6

57

€2.9

28.7

61

€2.0

87.6

99

€5.7

35.8

49

€659

.946

€1.0

11.3

63

€538

.028

€779

.910

€952

.547

€210

.089

€862

.545

€582

.492

€1.5

34.9

14

€237

.128

€1.8

99.0

18

€6.7

24.1

83

€134

.798

€57.

255

€17.

409

A V E L L I N O L A S P E Z I A M O D E N A M O N Z A P A D O V A P E S C A R A T A R A N T O V I T E R B O

PAYMENTS FOR UTILITIESTelephony and trasmission networks Electricity Water Heating

Table 57-Supply of goods and services Payments for utilities

148

As can be seen from the chart, the payments incurred by local governments are very different

from each other and are dependent on several factors that need to be analysed in detail. This

type of analysis is impossible to conduct for those municipalities that have not provided any

further indications, so it goes on with the rest. It was thought that in order to evaluate how

efficiently the expenditure on utilities is managed, it could be considered as drivers how much

each administration spends per square meter or cubic meter of municipal building; in this way

you get a comparable indicator between the different local authorities from which interesting

reflections can be drawn. Condition required to perform this kind of analysis and evaluating

efficiency is to know square meters and cubic meters of communal buildings. This type of

information was only received by four local administrations: Modena, Monza, Pescara, Padova

and Viterbo. Below are the values regarding square meters and cubic meters supplied by

municipalities:

Modena Monza Pescara Padova Viterbo Square meters 24.526 64.360 357.328 95.577 Cubic meters 1.684.628 98.104 407.865 1.450.788 394.308

Table 58-Supply of goods and services Square and Cubic meters

Table 59-Supply of goods and services €/Square meter

Table 60-Supply of goods and services €/Cubic meter

€31 €1 €4 €4

€171

€8 €32

€7 €32

€3 €3 €6

€77

€19 €2 €0 €- €50,00

€100,00

€150,00

€200,00

MONZA PADOVA PESCARA VITERBO

1st Indicator: €/Square meter

Telephony and trasmission networks Electricity Water Heating

€0 €8

€0 €1 €1 €2

€43

€2 €5 €2 €0 €8

€1 €1 €1 €0

€19

€5 €0 €0

€- €10,00

€20,00

€30,00

€40,00

€50,00

MODENA MONZA PADOVA PESCARA VITERBO

2nd Indicator: €/cubic meter

Telephony and trasmission networks Electricity Water Heating

149

Table 61-Supply of goods and services € tot/Square meter

Table 62-Supply of goods and services € tot/Cubic meter

What emerges from the charts is that the higher spending incurred by local governments is

about electricity, as could be expected because this type of supply is needed as well as lighting

for the functioning of the information systems in the municipalities. Monza is the municipality

that employs the largest number of economic resources for the payment of utilities and this is

clearly visible from the two summary graphs in which the municipality far exceeds all the

others. Even considering the expenses for utilities alone, Monza surpasses any other

municipality in any sector. An important comparison could be with Padova for heating costs;

the climate in both cities is similar but it can be noticed that Monza's expenses are 400% higher

than the north-eastern city. Per square meter the municipality of Monza spends an amount of

ten times that of Padova and the same as cubic meters. This could be justified by inefficient

municipal space management as well as by excessive waste of resources. Considering the cubic

meters, where we also have the data of the municipality of Modena, it is noticed that Modena

is the city that manages the utility more efficiently. Pescara and Padova are worth about 5

€/cubic meter above Modena. Viterbo reach a good level of efficiency both in terms of

€/square meter and €/cubic meter.

This type of analysis would be very interesting if it had a greater number of participants, as it

would have been possible to compare local municipality data in the same geographic areas and

thus with similar external factors.

€310,63

€30,67 €42,25 €16,67 €-

€200

€400

MONZA PADOVA PESCARA VITERBO

1st Indicator: € Tot/Square Meter

€2,28

€77,66

€7,56 €6,67 €4,17

€- €20

€40

€60

€80

€100

MODENA MONZA PADOVA PESCARA VITERBO

2nd Indicator: € Tot/Cubic Meter

150

As mentioned in the previous part, the second level of the analysis is about the definition of

how each FTE manages the volume of expenditure. This type of verification is used to evaluate

how efficiently the whole process of supplying goods and services is performed and therefore

whether the work volume is proportionate to the available workforce. Since the data on over-

threshold purchases (€ 40.000) have shown abnormal values, it is decided to consider only the

costs associated with the supply of utilities (telephony and transmission networks, electricity,

water and heating). FTE will therefore be considered in absolute value and not valued. The

synthetic indicator that allows this type of analysis is represented by the ratio between the sum

of the costs for the utilities and the number of FTE employed. For only four municipalities it

is possible to find this indicator because only those provide us information about the

personnel.

Table 63-Supply of goods and services €/FTE

The results are interesting and allow us to compare the different municipal realities. In relative

terms, there are no significant differences between municipalities because there is no great

variation from the average. The municipality that manages each FTE with a smaller volume of

purchases is the municipality of Avellino while the one that manages the highest amount is

Pescara. However, it should not be forgotten that Avellino's result is spoiled by a lack of data

on the costs for the supply of water and heating not shown on the SIOPE portal and not

provided by the administration. It can therefore be concluded that the most efficient

municipality in terms of managing the purchase process is the municipality of Pescara where

each employee manages an amount of 658,382.22 €. In this type of reasoning it should be

considered that the absolute FTE reported are not related to the sole Provveditorate which

deals with the purchase of utilities but also those who work in other sectors and deal with

decentralized purchases are included. However, the data required by the municipalities did not

have this type of differentiation and therefore we consider the totality of the FTE reported.

355.531442.911

573.245658.386

507.518

0

200.000

400.000

600.000

800.000


3rd Indicator: €/FTE

151


Once the assessment of the efficiency of the project adherents is completed, both in terms of

resource efficiency and purchasing process management, we continue with the analysis of the

objective effectiveness achieved by each municipality. To evaluate this type of performance, it

was decided to use as an indicator the timing of the procedure for entrusting services above

the Community threshold or purchases > 40.000 € which allows to define how much each

municipality uses to award a contract for the delivery of a service to a third party. It should be

recalled that the process of supplying goods and services also includes the activities related to

the award of contracts and thus outsourcing. Not all the municipalities provided this kind of

data and among the five cities for which we were able to calculate the €/cubic meter (indicator

of efficiency) we excluded Monza because the information is missing. It should also be

remembered that the municipality of Monza presented abnormal values in terms of efficiency

assessment and was largely different from other municipalities.

Table 64-Supply of goods and services Effectiveness Driver

As can be seen from the Radar Chart above, municipalities have very different times for relying

on services over the threshold; from 140 days (4 months and a half) to Padova up to 30 (1

month) of Viterbo, which is therefore the most effective municipality. The data that was

collected concerns only 4 municipalities on the 6 who have decided to take part in the analysis

of the supply of goods and services. The improvement margins for the municipalities of

Padova and Modena are ample, even if the workload they have to handle is also considered.

0

50

100

150MODENA

PADOVA

PESCARA

VITERBO

Procedure time for entrusting services above the Community threshold or purchases > 40.000 €

152


After analysing the performance of some municipalities participating in the Good Practice

project in terms of efficiency and effectiveness, it is useful to jointly evaluate these two

performances. Through an efficiency-effectiveness matrix it is possible to map the position of

each administration and bring out the best practices that can be an example for all common

members. On the vertical axis of the matrix the efficiency of each administration is indicated

and, since in the analysis phase it was divided into two levels, we decided to consider the

second level that is the one that identifies the efficiency in the management of the whole

process of supply of goods and services. This decision derives from the fact that the way in

which resources are used is far from the focus of our project and relative competences fall

outside our sphere of interest. The indicator used to express the efficiency in the management

of the project is the €/FTE that is the total amount that each employee deals with the supply

of goods and services. We consider the total costs related to the payment of utilities. As the

amount managed by each FTE increases, efficiency increases because there are fewer used

resources to manage purchases. On the horizontal axis, on the other hand, it is mapped the

procedure time for € 40,000 that is the indicator for objective effectiveness. As days decrease,

the effectiveness increases as the level of service guaranteed to the end user increases, which

in the case of the process being analysed is an internal user of the administration. The first

quadrant is characterized by high efficiency and effectiveness and the municipalities that will

be positioned within it will be the virtuous ones in the management of the supply process of

goods and services.

Unfortunately, due to the lack of data, it was not possible to map all the participating

municipalities. In terms of efficiency, only the municipalities that have provided data on

personnel have been included in the matrix (Avellino, Modena, Monza and Pescara) and the

same applies to information regarding efficacy.

Effectiveness

[Procedure Time] Efficiency [€/FTE]

Avellino 70 355.531,30 Modena 135 442.910,72 Monza 85 573.244,53 Pescara 50 658.386,22 MEAN 85 507.518,19

Table 65-Supply of goods and services Effectiveness-Efficiency Indicators

153

Table 66-Supply of goods and services Efficiency-Effectiveness matrix

The results that emerge from the map show that only one city among the four is located in the

first quadrant. The critical situation is for Modena where each FTE manages a low amount,

albeit not the lowest (Avellino in fact is the worst in this sense), and also the timing for the

award are the highest compared to other municipalities. Modena should therefore improve

both in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. Avellino instead presents a good level of

objective effectiveness but each FTE manages a minimum amount of €; it could therefore

reduce the human resources used and thus be able to improve efficiency. The effectiveness of

Monza is equal to the average while the efficiency is good. The municipality that as regards the

process under analysis could serve as a good example for the others is Pescara, which is able

to guarantee low timing in the face of a high amount managed by a single FTE.

AVELLINO

MODENA

MONZA

PESCARA

€-

€100.000

€200.000

€300.000

€400.000

€500.000

€600.000

€700.000

020406080100120140160

Efficiency

Effectiveness

154

Chapter 6 CONCLUSION

The results obtained at the end of the project are numerous and from them different types of

lessons can be drawn addressed to different categories of stakeholders. Without a doubt, at a

more operational level, there are good practices emerged concerning the various processes that

must be deepened and shared by the municipalities participating in the project and then put

into practice. Secondly, there are implications at a strategic level to be learned in order to

develop a culture aimed at measuring performance and a consequent process of continuous

improvement.

During the project we have been able to verify that the culture that reigns within local

administrations is still very far from the ideal one; we encountered many difficulties in

collecting data and often the requested information was not received or, if received, contained

wrong data and referred to a wrong analysis perimeter. This evidence does nothing more than

demonstrate what is reported in many academic studies that underline how the culture of

public administration is one of the main limits for the dissemination and adoption of systems

for measuring and evaluating performance. The commitment of the entire administration is

the essential element for the dissemination of the principles related to the culture of

performance but in the cases under analysis only a few municipalities have demonstrated a

sufficient level of participation. For the collection of data two methodologies were used, i.e.

each municipality could choose to have a single referent for the entire project or have multiple

referents, each of them responsible of a single process being analysed. We have found that the

municipalities that have opted for the single referent are those who have shown less difficulty

in delivering the data and have been urged less often; from this we concluded that the figure

of a leader who acts as the sole responsible and contact person for data collection is of

fundamental importance. The commitment on the part of the leader proved to be essential for

the success of the project, but unfortunately in not all the administrations there was such a

figure. In case there were more referents responsible for the project, we encountered more

difficulties since not everyone was willing to collaborate with the research team. Moreover, the

fact of having more referents caused greater complexity in divulging the aims of the project;

many of the referents did not feel part of the project and were not aware of their role in this.

155

In the description phase of the background related to the diffusion of the performance

measurement in Italy, the effort by the legislative bodies to disseminate the "culture of data

and performance" was emphasized, but during the project we had the opportunity to verify

that this culture is still at a primitive stage. Local administrations do not fully understand the

importance of performance measurement and see it as a mere fulfillment of a legislative

obligation. The administrations fail to grasp the importance of performance measurement with

a view to improving efficiency and effectiveness. The concept of continuous improvement

thanks to the measurement and constant assessment of performance is a concept still far from

public administration. The administrations are not aware of the benefits deriving from the

measurement of performance or improvement opportunities thanks to the application of

benchmarking techniques with other municipalities.

Another relevant result emerging from the project is the lack of "process culture" in the

administrations and the case of the process of supplying goods and services is explanatory of

this. We have verified that there is a lack of a cross-sectional (transversal) vision of the internal

processes of public administration, a concept that is, indeed, widely spread and adopted in the

private sector. Furthermore, it has emerged that municipalities tend to think in watertight

compartments and have a poor vision of the entire value chain linked to the single process.

When asked to consider a process across the board, many municipalities went in trouble in

understanding both the perimeter of the process and the actors involved; for this reason, they

preferred to exclude it from the analysis and they did not provide data about it. Each sector is

used to accounting exclusively for its activities without considering the whole process; from

this derives a very important consequence that the administration does not tend to reach a

global optimum but rather to a local optimum. However, it must be remembered that the

achievement of many local optimum corresponds to a lower result than the achievement of

the global optimum.

During the project we had the opportunity to verify that the principles of New Public

Management are very well known on a theoretical level, but on a practical level there is a

worrying lack. The positive examples of the Anglo-Saxon world seem far from the Italian

reality and an effort must undoubtedly be done by the institutions. The 2011 Brunetta decree

had already highlighted some shortcomings in the implementation phase, but obviously,

despite seven years have passed, improvements in this area have not been made.

In the light of the experience gained with the Good Practice Public Administration project, we

would like to propose some advice to the legislators. In order to obtain a dissemination of the

156

culture of data, performance and process, it is necessary that municipal managers be provided

with a type of education based on the principles of New Public Management; however,

education must not be limited to a theoretical approach, but real cases of application of these

principles must be presented, and a tutor service should be guaranteed to support the various

municipal administrations. The tutor figure has to be seen as a leader able to spread the

performance measurement culture through the administration and to generate commitment

from all the actors involved. Only in this way will it be possible to obtain a relevant and

effective dissemination of these principles with a consequent improvement in municipal

performances.

However, it is also necessary to recognize the efforts made by the various administrations that

have enabled us to achieve significant results at the end of the project. In general, all the

municipalities have shown a good level of commitment to data collection even if structural

difficulties in the retrieval of information have often emerged. It can be said that the goodwill

shown by the municipalities has not always been supported by a sufficient system of data

collection.

Turning now to the most operational level, it must be said that not all the processes had shown

good practices. Only in three processes out of five good practices emerged. Specifically: ADI,

Single Centre for Building and Supply of Goods and Services. As regards the ADI, considering

the two levels of effectiveness analysis, only Padova proves to be an example for other

municipalities since it is able to maintain a great level in terms of both efficiency (€/motions)

and effectiveness (Average level of process digitalization and hours of opening ADI windows).

For the Single Centre for Building emerges the case of Viterbo that is the most efficient in

managing procedures and the municipality with the highest number of weekly opening hours

related to the dedicated window. Pescara, indeed, is the city in which a single human resource

manages the highest amount of euros and moreover, it is able to guarantee the lowest time to

procedure a request.

In the school canteen process no municipalities prove to be virtuous, even if there are examples

of management that if refined could prove to be carriers of efficiency and effectiveness. There

is no local administration that proves to be virtuous in the management of all five processes

subject to analysis and, in many cases, those who excels in a service is then very lacking in

others. Culture aimed at achieving good performance should permeate the whole

administration and not just some sectors.

157

As for the good practices that emerged, it is now necessary to organize discussion tables

between the different administrations in order to allow sharing. No municipality must see its

negative performance as a defeat but must seize the opportunities that have emerged from

other local realities. As already mentioned in the literature, the practice of benchmarking is not

a beauty contest but it must be a challenge to be accepted with a view to continuous

improvement to be able to later act as an example for others. The innovative idea proposed

by the Good Practice Public Administration project is the application of an input-output model

for the measurement of performance in public administration. This reference model is made

up of predefined indicators that allow a multi-level evaluation of efficiency and effectiveness.

The set of these indicators constitutes a useful dashboard of indicators to be used by the

administration for continuous and constant monitoring of the performance of the processes

with a view to continuous improvement. Although the initial model refers to five specific

processes, it appears to be scalable and therefore easily extendable to other areas.

PROCESS EFFICIENCY INDICATOR EFFECTIVENESS INDICATOR

ADI • Total Costs Motions • Internal Costs/ADI

Windows

• Level of digitalization • Opening hours ADI windows

SCHOOL CANTEEN • Total Costs/Students

SUE • Internal Cost/Procedures

• SUE weekly opening hours • Average time between receipt of the

request by the office and taking over by the instructor

SCHOOL BUILDING

• €/Ordinary maintenance work

• €/Extraordinary maintenance work

• Average time between the instant of ordinary maintenance is carried out and the receipt of the first signal

SUPPLY OF GOODS AND

SERVICES

• € Tot/Square Meter • € Tot/Cubic Meter • €/FTE

• Procedure time for entrusting services above the Community threshold or purchases > 40.000 €

Table 67-Dashboard Indicators

At the end of the project we believe that it is also important to recognize the possible

limitations of the model used for performance analysis. It does not seem right to make the

responsibilities of some gaps occurred during the project fall on the participating

administrations. The model used, as described above, is based on three fundamental pillars:

input, output and outcome; most likely, these three simple elements do not fully fit the context

of public administrations and some specificities of the processes being analysed cannot be

considered within the indicators chosen to describe input, output and outcome. The same type

of model was optimal for the analysis of the performance of Italian universities but it must be

158

considered that in that context the culture of performance is more developed than public

administrations.

The Good Practice Public Administration project is an example of the application of a model

for measuring performance in the Italian public sector and aims to verify its status. Without a

doubt, projects of this kind will have to be re-proposed in order to understand any

improvements made in this area in the face of government interventions. The model that has

been developed and applied, based on the analysis of the processes subdivided by activities to

be analysed in terms of input and output, can be reviewed in order to better adapt it to the

public administration context. Public administrations are expected to be able to seize the

opportunities offered by such projects for measuring, evaluating and benchmarking

performance in order to defeat the old image of public administration as a source of

inefficiency and ineffectiveness and replace it with an image of agility and focus on the needs

of the citizen.

159

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