Silvia Fissi

La governance dei comuni sui servizi pubblici locali

Public Governance issues are a focal point in the debate about Local Public Utilities (LPUs). In the last decades the organizations providing Public Services in European countries are experiencing key changes in their governance and control systems. The exponential growth of shared entities managing local public utilities resulted in a new role for local authorities, which now have to lead real business holdings of public limited companies delivering services to citizens. The Italian picture is characterized by an odd dichotomy between the mission of the local authority and the activities of the LPUs. Indeed, local governments need to keep LPUs under control and to be able to define how to provide services, in keeping with the principles of social rights and equity. The research aims at verifying the state of the art of Italian local authorities governance on their LPUs by means of a semi-structured survey with multiple-choice questions. The questionnaire has been submitted to a selected sample of Italian local authorities with more than 20,000 inhabitants (515 entities). The main result of this study confirms the previous research: local authorities need to develop a structured multidimensional information system in order to better evaluate and control the competitive, social and environmental performances of their LPUs. To date, few local authorities use governance mechanisms to control their group of LPUs, while the vast majority lacks the required tools and consequently cannot apply appropriate governance on LPUs entities.

Social Network e Stakeholder Engagement, un binomio tutto da sviluppare? Un confronto tra le università pubbliche di Italia e Cina

Interaction between Social Networks (SNs), blogs, websites, and other intenet-related technologies are mostly used to improve Stakeholder Engagement (SE). According to previous researches the universities use the new media tools, however in a traditional ways this underestimate their contribution in SE improving. The article, through exploratory research method, analyses the use of SN by Italian and Chinese public universities also by highlighting the SE’s process. Results reveal, for both countries, increasing attention to SE’s processes in decision-making systems. However, the study has shown how Italian universities achieve a more complete SE than Chinese universities, thus demonstrating greater awareness of the importance of their inclusion in their decision-making processes. Italian universities also manage SN more efficiently, both for news sharing and for data gathering useful to improving SE strategies. In conclusion, the study shows that, despite universities are fully awareness of the link between SN and SE, there is a strong need of improving within hoth countries.

Lo sviluppo competitivo e sostenibile del turismo. Toscana e Catalunya: strategie a confronto

Negli ultimi anni, il settore turistico e stato caratterizzato da una crescente concorrenza e da una particolare attenzione alla sostenibilita delle scelte strategiche, anche in seguito alle indicazioni provenienti dall’Unione europea. La Regione Toscana ha creato gli Osservatori turistici di destinazione, mentre la Comunidad Autonoma de Cataluna ha optato per una gestione accentrata. L’articolo, mediante il metodo della case analysis, analizza i due approcci evidenziandone le caratteristiche, i punti di forza e di debolezza. I risultati dimostrano che le scelte strategiche hanno, spesso, natura dicotomica e, al tempo stesso, come strategie con una comune matrice conducano a soluzioni applicative opposte. L’articolo costituisce inoltre una delle prime analisi sui risultati prodotti dai modelli strategici applicativi legati alla rete Necstour.

Il bilancio consolidato dell'ente locale quale strumento per la valutazione della sostenibilità finanziaria delle esternalizzazioni: luci e ombre dell'esperienza italiana

A partire dagli anni novanta, gli enti locali italiani hanno avviato un processo di esternalizzazione dei servizi che ha determinato la perdita di significativita dei loro bilanci annuali. Si rende pertanto necessario individuare uno strumento in grado di rappresentare agli stakeholders l’attivita dell’ente in modo chiaro ed esaustivo. Per il legislatore e la letteratura tale strumento e il bilancio consolidato. Attualmente, la sua redazione da parte del gruppo pubblico locale ha natura volontaria e, ad oggi, ci sono stati solo alcuni tentativi pionieristici di stesura. Il presente studio, valutato preliminarmente lo stato dell’arte nell’applicazione di questo strumento, si propone di misurarne la capacita a fornire informazioni utili per la valutazione da parte degli stakeholders della sostenibilita finanziaria dell’attivita complessiva degli enti locali. Il metodo utilizzato e il case study. Individuati gli enti locali che hanno redatto un bilancio consolidato, questi sono stati analizzati per valutare la capacita di fornire informazioni agli stakeholders circa la sostenibilita finanziaria dell’attivita del gruppo locale.

The Performance of Nursery Schools in Italian Municipalities

In a neo-liberal approach, the need to increase levels of cost saving, effectiveness, and quality in producing local public services is correlated to awareness of the limited resources available and is an economic issue that has been much debated in recent decades. Ways of measuring and evaluating public services have stimulated academic interest for several years now. In this context, evaluating the levels of performance of public services provided by non-profit organizations (NPOs) as a consequence of contracting-out by public administration is an essential variable in rationalizing—both in terms of quantity and quality—public expenditure. The aim of this article is to measure multi-dimensional aspects of nursery school services offered by Italian municipalities and to verify whether using different management models makes a difference in the results obtained. We examine data contained in final accounts of main Italian municipalities in order to evaluate effectiveness, cost saving, and quality aspects of the nursery school service supplied. Regarding overall performance, the distinction between direct management and contracting-out has not brought out significant differences in terms of effectiveness and cost saving, even if the direct management solution is better than the externalized one. By contrast, as previous research showed, quality levels for externalized services are on average lower than for directly managed services.

Dalla contabilità finanziaria ai risultati economico-patrimoniali nei musei pubblici: una proposta metodologica / From financial accounting to financial results in pubblic museums: a methodological framework

Secondo il New Public Management, tutti i settori della pubblica amministrazione devono essere in grado di misurare le loro performance secondo una visione multi-dimensionale. I musei pubblici – statali, civici, universitari, ecc. – sono spesso una parte di una pubblica amministrazione, percio i loro dati contabili e di bilancio sono “confusi” con quelli dell’ente proprietario. Questo produce un doppio effetto negativo. Da un lato, e arduo quantificare esattamente le risorse pubbliche trasferite al museo e, dall’altro, e impossibile misurare direttamente le attivita e le performance economiche, patrimoniali e finanziarie. La ricerca, di natura esplorativa, propone una metodologia per ovviare ad entrambi questi inconvenienti. Il metodo di ricerca e prevalentemente deduttivo. L’articolo, dopo un’analisi delle principali teorie e tecniche di misurazionedelle performance e la costruzione diun modello teorico, termina con un’analisi critica del modello. According to New Public Management’s principles, all sectors of public administrationmust check their annual performance from multiple perspectives. Public museums – state, municipal, or university museums to give just a few examples – are often part of the administrative and accounting data and are therefore often mixed up with the museum’s owner. The result is doubly negative. On the one hand, it is extremely difficult to quantify the public resources transferred to the museum. On the other hand, it is impossible to keep track of its annual economic, financial and assets performance. The research is exploratory and suggests a methodology attempting to solve both problems. The research method is mainly deductive. The paper begins with an analysis of the mainstream theories and techniques for performance measurement, then it proposes a theoretical model and finally a critical analysis of that model.

La contabilità analitica : presupposto necessario e sufficiente per la determinazione degli standard di costo negli enti locali?

From an accounting standpoint, the recent federal reform is based on the standard costs’ determination. However, to date, only 27% of the Italian local authorities have a management cost accounting system that, in theory, is able to calculate the standards. The aim of this paper is to verify if a local authority with a management cost accounting system based on cost centres is able to determine the services provided standard costs. To achieve this goal, the article carries out a case study analysis. The research confirmed that the effective identification of objective and, above all, coherent measurements with local realities is very difficult even with the presence of a management cost accounting system providing a proper basis for calculating standard costs. The cost standard determination requires a mature application of management cost accounting for cost centres or activities based, which, to date, most local authorities did not develop.