A lame Pa, where digitization remains little more than an aspiration

Among the missions of the Pnrr, the acceleration of the digitization of the country plays a strategic role for the competitiveness of our economic system. The most recent surveys indicate that, despite important progress, Italy continues to occupy the 19th position among EU countries for the digitalisation index of the Public Administration with a score of 58.5, lower than the average value of 67.3. On the opposite side, 60.3 percent of Italian SMEs have reached at least a basic level of digital intensity, against the European average which stops at 56 percent. There is a clear gulf between the two performances, which is even deeper in relation to the different benchmarks.

For companies, the digitization index is imposed by the reference market. If the company does not meet the requirements of the application, it is expelled by virtue of the Darwinian principles that regulate the free market. On the other hand, for the Public Administration there are generic and non-binding targets, and without any relation to the needs of the production system and citizens. An imbalance that over time has produced a growing mismatch between public and private in relation to the progress of the digitization process with obvious consequences on the competitiveness of the Italian company. As indicative and important as the numbers and percentages are, they only tell a piece of the reality of doing business in Italy. The digitization rate must be connected to the procedures, to the norms, to the integration of the systems.

It is this whole that makes up the economic environment and it is the lack of coherence and balance in the dosage of the individual elements that has generated that all-Italian phenomenon of overflowing bureaucracy, which thrives on the creaky and sometimes confused attribution of responsibilities between the central state and local authorities . This context prompted the CNA to set up the Bureaucracy Observatory. A tool for measuring and weighing how and how much the Public Administration and bureaucracy affect economic activities, analyzing and investigating a specific area every year so as to offer political decision-makers and public opinion a real picture of the critical issues and possible corrections.

A worrying insight emerges from this painstaking work. For example, to start the car repair business it is necessary to spend over 18 thousand euros on bureaucracy which translates into 86 fulfilments that call into question 30 different entities to be contacted up to 48 times. To aggravate the picture, those disturbing numbers vary across the entire peninsula. The case of the One Stop Shop for productive activities (SUAP) is emblematic. For practices such as the Single Environmental Authorization, the Suaps should be the only interface between companies and the Public Administration. In reality, however, the company continues to turn to a plethora of bodies and institutions, Arpa, region, province, Asl.

The confirmation that digitization is lame without the interoperability of public databases, at best results in a useless computerization of documents. In the age of connected technology it is at least a waste of resources. The lack of uniformity of rules and procedures negatively impacts the close relationship that exists between digitization and sustainability. It is easy to imagine the great utility of a national cadastre of thermal plants with a view to improving energy efficiency. On the contrary, we are witnessing a patchwork of regional platforms without any possibility of dialogue and interaction. Digitization remains little more than an aspiration even in public procurement.

Our Observatory has found that 30 percent of tender procedures are still carried out in paper form, the procedures of the contracting authorities do not have common standards, forcing the business system to navigate a jumble of rules and forms that vary even among small municipalities neighboring. This brief overview highlights the vast gray area that has accompanied the political debate on what level of federalism should be since the end of the 1980s. A debate historically confined to legal architecture, in search of balances and compromises between political forces, subjected to the changing variables of consensus.

A process that has neglected the essential reference towards citizens and businesses, has ignored the need to observe and measure the concrete effects but above all careless of the reflections on the bureaucratic apparatus. If federalism on an institutional level is still an incomplete work, on an economic and regulatory level it has long been a consolidated ecosystem, albeit a messy one. Businesses have to deal with a PA that often confuses autonomy with anarchy, which operates not as a part of the system but as an institution in itself. The paradox is that our companies have to face the global market while in Italy they are forced to operate on regional micro-markets as a result of the progressive pulverization of rules and procedures and the rift between the center and the periphery.

Dario Costantini
president Cna
Othello Gregorini
general secretary Cna