What remains for municipalities after the NRP

As we approach the closing phase of the PNRR, it is possible to begin to draw some conclusions, if not on the impacts (which is clearly still premature), at least on the capacity of Italian public administrations to implement investments and how this capacity has improved thanks to the challenge of the PNRR and the related administrative strengthening measures.

Research by the Polytechnic of Milan and the University of Padua debunks some commonplaces, as emerged at the conference 'Administrative Capacity: Definitions, Measurement, Policies and Economic Impacts', the concluding event of the project of the same name of national interest (PRIN) that took place a few days ago in Rome at the SNA (National School of Administration).What makes the difference

A number of relevant insights for future administrative reform policies and the reorganisation of multi-level governance of future cohesion policy emerged from the project and discussions. Thanks to the funding of the MUR and the collaboration of bodies such as the Ragioneria Generale dello Stato and the Dipartimento per la programmazione e il coordinamento della politica economica della Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, the research team was able to develop a more granular measurement of the administrative capacity of Italian municipalities than those available so far, using open data on individual projects and cross-referencing unique project codes (CUP) with databases on civil servants and municipalities. Two important findings emerged from this work: first, that the level of administrative capacity of Italian municipalities is much more diverse than the traditional north-south divide would suggest; second, that the link between administrative input and administrative output is not linear as commonly assumed. What makes the difference is how public administrations mobilise their resources (what we called 'administrative throughput' in our study).

The NRP has given a strong boost to municipalities, which have been able to capitalise on their new central role as implementers and have achieved an important implementation performance. A significant percentage of the currently active CUPs is linked precisely to the Plan. When considered separately, these projects show higher overall levels of progress than projects not financed by the Plan, which confirms the considerable administrative effort in a context of strong pressure. It is also significant to consider that, although the financial appropriations allocated to Southern Italy are larger, the disparities in implementation compared to the North appear relatively limited.

However, although the PNRR was an important laboratory and Italian municipalities as a whole proved capable of meeting the implementation challenge, municipalities still had to deal with budgetary and recruitment constraints that severely limited their capacity. Many had to turn to support outside the administration. Capacity building measures were only a partial, albeit important, and mostly temporary response. In the survey conducted with the top levels of the administrations of provincial capitals, it emerged that 62% of the respondents considered the level of administrative capacity of their municipality to be good overall but with specific areas of weakness, while 70% pointed out that capacity building measures had only had a partial effect due to insufficient listening to the territories. Italian municipalities have coped creatively with their structural deficiencies, which are the legacy of years of austerity, by resorting to reorganisations, reshuffling, temporary staffing, outsourcing, and collaborations between entities, but continuing to invest in the skills and organisational and subjective aspects of public work will be fundamental so that municipalities can keep up with new technologies, invest in human capital by rewarding merit, and become attractive employers for young people. In the same way, it will be crucial to invest in strengthening their information systems in order to have more detailed data on the qualifications and territorial specificities of local civil servants.