In THAT order, please.

In order to save its State apparatus, [Italy must hire young people in ministries and public administration] (https://www.espresso.repubblica.it/attualita/2020/06/16/news/assumere-giovani-ministeri-1.349943): a lot of young people, as soon as possible. Here’s why, summarizing the interview to Mr. Carlo Mochi Sismondi, president of ForumPA:

• only 1% of the workforce in italian Public Administrations (PAs) is less than 30 years old
• average age of civil servants is the highest of all OECD countries: 51 years, up to 54 in some ministries
• the arrival of a new workforce under 40 “is a prerequisite for survival for the Public Administration”

The current situation is the result of ten years of staff cuts, that reduced the workforce of 220K units. Right now, the machine keeps going only thanks to more than 350K temporary workers (assuming they are all still employeed, in spite of the lockdown…)

And that is nothing

The current workforce shortage and aging of italian PAs is just a walk in the park if you compare it to what should happen very soon, solving the “aging” part, if nothing else: half million PA employees will retire by 2022, having reached the age limit.

In the interview, Mochi Sismondy says that Italy would need 700K new employees as soon as possible, to “return to the levels of 2008”, and that Public selections for 500K employees to be hired in the next three years are being called (not executed!) “in these months”.

Hire WHO, and to do WHAT?

This is the real problem: which people should be hired, and to do what?

Being under 30 is no guarantee of competence, including minimal “digital” competence. And hiring anybody to do useless jobs is a burden both for society, and for who does those jobs.

Mochi Sismondi does denounce this risk:

“If we [replace] outgoing officials with new staff who do exactly the same things, then we will end up with an administration unable to keep up with the times, with the demands of citizens and companies who, we know, are fed up. Public Administrations… must become the directors, the leaders of a development process. The public employee can no longer remain in his office to sign papers, he must go out in the field, among society and companies, to serve them”.

“Let’s put it this way, “, continues Mochi Sismondi:

“the old public employee was limited to administer funds, the new one must be a project manager, a programmer, a computer scientist, a negotiator… because he has to make that money [work where it is needed]”

Consequently, “it is the [personnel] selection system that must change… If the selections are made [in the wrong way], we will get another thirty years of bureaucratic inefficiency”.

To avoid that risk, it is necessary [besides competitive salaries, and clear career opportunities] that “each public body clearly identifies its function [and strategic mission], decides how to carry it on and defines the skills it needs”

And that is where the real problem will start

None of this is news. Mochi Sismondi launched practically the same warning just five months ago. And the tsunami of retirements that should hit the italian economy in the next two years is not limited to PAs, and no secret at all: it is just being ignored, since well before COVID19.

The problem is what is written behind the lines of Mochi Sismondi’s warning. To avoid thirty more years of unbearable inefficiency (in one of the most rapidly aging countries of the planet, I would add), it is necessary, he said, that

“each public body clearly identifies its function [and strategic mission, and] decides how to reach it

As things stand now, for most italian PAs no intellectually honest, actionable translation of “clearly identify our mission and decide how to carry it on” can exclude something like:

“Throw away at least half of all the procedures, rules and org charts we have now, and write from scratch new ones that make sense today”

This because (and I am sure Mochi Sismondi knows this very well) too many “competences” and ways of working of italian PAs are camels whose backs DESERVE to be broken. This imminent exodus of civil servants could be one of the best things that may happen to Italy, but only if it selection criteria for new personnel are reformed after reforming the machine from top to bottom.

If that doesn’t happen, all the best employee selection methods of the world may accomplish nothing, for Italy, but placing very talented people in offices where they will get paid to accomplish nothing concrete.

(This post was drafted in June 2020, but only put online in August, because… my coronavirus reports, of course)