Confartigianato offers the government a pact for a “good bureaucracy”

“We work for a PA allied with businesses”. The commitment that the Minister for Public Administration Paul Zangrillo relaunched yesterday from the stage of the national Convention of Forza Italia is music to our ears. A fast, efficient, simple Pa represents one of the priorities that Confartigianato has always highlighted to facilitate the activity of companies, to support the relaunch of the economy, to encourage young people to start their own businesses, to attract investors. And, let’s not forget, it is an enabling factor for the implementation of the Pnrr and for the many reforms that the country needs. Yesterday, precisely during the FI Convention, I testified to Minister Zangrillo the expectations of artisans and small businesses for an essential turning point to build Italy’s future and our confidence in the implementation of concrete and useful actions to simplify our lives.

There is a lot to improve. This is confirmed by the surveys of the European Commission which measured the exposure of companies to administrative complexities, legislative hypertrophy, labor standards and the burden of taxation. Well, Italy is in 1st place among the EU countries for the greatest bureaucratic pressure on businesses, with an index of 75.5 percent compared to the 58.3 of the EU average. Our entrepreneurs are forced to waste 238 hours a year extricating themselves from the bureaucracy that hangs over tax compliance. It’s still, we are also in the last positions in Europe for digital interaction with public offices. Only 40.4 percent of Italians “dialogue” with the public administration via online portals, a figure 24.4 percentage points lower than the European average of 64.8 percent. Furthermore, digital innovation has not yet reached some essential public services for businesses. For example, for the building sector, just 15 per cent of municipalities envisage the complete electronic procedure for issuing building permits. A share that rises to 20 in the north-west and drops to 9 in the South. The complete online management of this important service is missing as many as 6,760 municipal administrations. In the era of globalization and artificial intelligence, in a world that runs very fast, we really can no longer afford the slowness of paperwork, the long times of an “ink stamp”. We want to be free to do business without the endless waiting at the counter for an authorization or permit, without the hassle of useless and costly fulfilments, the dripping of a thousand levies. We want to count on efficient public services, on the certainty of the rules.

Minister Zangrillo is aware of this and is working on it with a managerial approach and particular attention to human capital, training and merit. Not a small “revolution”, because the motivation and qualifications of people can make the difference and help change things, inspiring the relationship between the PA and businesses to the principle of trust. In other words, we think that the logic of “preventive suspicion” must give way to that of subsequent control. Our goal of simplification is this: a single instance, a single IT platform, a single response and a single control. To achieve this, it is necessary to digitize communications between companies and the Public Administration, also overcoming the digital divide in inland and mountain areas. It is necessary to make the public databases communicate with each other and to unify the front-offices of the digital Suap, so that the differences in treatment in the various territories of the country can be eliminated. We also need to standardize procedures so that the requirements and conditions for doing business are the same everywhere. And again, the company’s electronic file must be strengthened to ensure that the PA does not continue to ask the entrepreneur for the information already in its possession. But all this is not enough if we don’t also commit ourselves to “simplification is simplified”. Let me explain: the simplifications already introduced and their effects must be monitored, avoiding the continuous issuing of new regulations that modify the previous ones. Otherwise, it would be like emptying the sea with a leaky bucket! In this regard, we unfortunately have recent examples not to be imitated, such as the 237 regulatory changes, in just two years, of the much-discussed building bonuses. In short, I would like to say that there is a lot to do, but even a little would be enough, a dose of common sense and good will, to make the dream of a good bureaucracy come true. So far we have considered it an oxymoron. Shall we bet it comes true?

Marco Granelli, president of Confartigianato