The evolution of the application of Legislative Decree no. 150/2009 in local government: an attempt at historical analysis

The Legislative Decree No. 150 of 2009 is changing the culture of public administration although it has not fully achieved its goals. What are the reasons for this? The author proposes an analysis of the main factors of the process that took place in local institutions; the great majority of these istitutions tried to transform and bend the rules so as not to change the existing balance of power. Evaluation of individual performance was the primary focus, at the expense of the evaluation of the whole organization; indeed the performance cycle was interrupted in several points, being thus made ineffective. The choice between OIV and Evaluation Committees allowed for bureaucratization of the performances which were transformed from an assessment of the quality of the provided work and services to a formal obligation carried out to secure the payment of productivity bonuses. A near-fatal blow to the affirmation of assessment as a tool for the improvement of services has been assigned by the redistribution of the tasks once centralized in CiVIT. A second blow was the attribution to OIVs and Evaluation Committees of the control of the bureaucracy of the municipality also in relation to the Transparency and Anti-Corruption Decree (Legislative Decree 33/2013).

Keywords: Evaluation, Performance, Policy, Assessment Bodies, Bureaucracy, Public Administration

Lucio Pier Paolo Verre, L’evoluzione dell’applicazione del D. Lgs. 150/2009 negli enti locali: un tentativo di analisi storica in "RIV Rassegna Italiana di Valutazione" 63/2015, pp 51-67, DOI: 10.3280/RIV2015-063004