Corriere del Veneto / by Gian Maria Collicelli
“There is a sick person, with a disease that tends not to cure.” The health metaphor of Constitutional Court Judge Emeritus Sabino Cassese perfectly captures the stalemate in which the country’s administrative system finds itself.
Where the “sick person” is the public administration, the “sickness” is the bureaucracy – at least in its most negative and impactful part – and the impasse is generated by politics. “To reform public administration requires at least a decade,” is Cassese’s thought, “with costs in the immediate and results only in the medium to long term. And this certainly does not incentivize governments to engage in serious and deep reform of the system, when instead the issue should be the first point of any government program for the country.” In short, for the jurist, the finger against bureaucracy should actually be extended to the political world as well: “In the presence of weak governments, strong administrations would be needed, but this does not happen.” Cassese, former minister for the Civil Service in the government led by Azeglio Ciampi in the years 1993-1994, gave a lectio magistralisfromthe stage of the Olympic theater yesterday on the theme “State and business, where bureaucratic bottlenecks originate,” as part of the program of the Festival città impresa. A lecture on the world of public administration and what the morning’s moderator, Corriere del Veneto editor Alessandro Russello, called “a monster,” namely bureaucracy. But not only an indictment of that “monster” is to be expected. Cassese’s reasoning is broader, starting from some examples in which papers, regulations, rulings or obligatory steps slow down public works and initiatives, and arriving at a key point: “If bureaucracy is an obstacle,” the jurist said yesterday, “there is something that in turn blocks bureaucracy and public administration in general.
Cassese identifies several influencing causes in bureaucratic bottlenecks. It starts from the political world (“Every Parliament tries to design laws that overcome bureaucracy, however, creating increasingly complex rules that complicate things.”), involves the judiciary (“When judges get to be decision makers of last resort on works and projects.”) and also targets within the civil service itself: “The difference in salaries has been leading good technicians, for many years, to move from the public to the private sector. With the result that the civil service increasingly outsources decisions, projects and pure project ideas, increasing costs and time.” Political appointments do not help either: “Each government appoints its own officials, and since, on average, executives last only a short time,” Cassese said yesterday, “turnover is continuous and skills do not emerge. The result is a paradox, well explained by the judge emeritus: “The government points to the bureaucracy and the bureaucracy is displeased with the government and the state.” A vulnus, then. However, the recipe to get out of it is there: “Expertise is needed and not improvisation,” the distinguished jurist closed, “one must change organization and paradigm of reasoning keeping in mind the time variable, but all this must enter the political agenda. It is not mentioned in government programs and yet it should be one of the first items on the agenda.”