Recovery plan, thousands of hires of technicians to prepare the plan – Corriere.it

The Italian Recovery Plan is entering the decisive phase of preparation. For Mario Draghi’s government, it means overcoming the most difficult stage for a country with a notoriously frayed public administration in record time: having the people to implement it. Not for McKinsey’s. In the corridors of the Ministry of Economy, the attention on the 25 thousand euro contract to the consulting company. Its experts are only asked to double-check the plan for Next Generation EU against the reference standards of the projects of other countries and package the final product with eye-catching graphics and pieces of text, before sending it to Brussels. But everyone in the ministries involved understands that the real game is elsewhere. Not only in the team formed for the Recovery of the 50 technicians of the Ministry of Economy, among other things destined to grow. N in those of about fifteen employees each in each of the main ministries.

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The underlying problem concerns State structures to be able to invest in a productive manner209 billion euros in five yearsand a half, because every recovery euro not spent in 2026 risks being lost. Today’s apparatuses do not have the necessary skills and the procedures for recruiting new profiles are inadequate, also because they are too slow. New executives are now entering who won public competitions banned ten years ago, while the government needs to hire thousands of engineers, management engineers, computer scientists, geologists and other professionals within six months (at the latest). The executive phase of the Recovery looms and there is the entire technical structure of the state to be reconstructed, without compromising on the quality of the profiles. Hence the design of innovation in the recruitment of the State, confirmed to the “Corriere” by half a dozen people aware of the developments. That project would be a piece of the administration reform set by the EU Commission as a condition for Italy to be able to receive transfers from Brussels. The government is therefore studying a mechanism for the rapid recruitment of thousands of experts, with market remuneration and initially with temporary contracts. No traditional competitions. For engineers or geologists, the Ministry of Public Administration could rely on the professional registers of those who have passed the state exam.

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The scores obtained would not count in the tests for access to orders, but that selection first would act as a filter for registration in special competitions. As for professionals without a register – active in sectors born after the golden age of orders founded as public bodies in the 1930s – other methods are considered: identification of profiles through the search systems typical of large companies, including recourse to artificial intelligence. Who will be hired for the Recovery, will be able to be hired only on time precisely because the funds end in 2026 and the European rules do not allow permanent contracts. But they can become so later, if the administrations find the necessary resources. So far the management of the emergency, which risks not being enough in a Rome with increasingly disjointed ministries (with the exception of Foreign Affairs and partly of Justice and Economy). The government is therefore thinking of a mechanism already used in large European administrations: the direct call of about 500 figures for top positions, for example in the cabinets of ministers. The idea of ​​creating an osmosis from the private sector (which also involves Italian talents abroad), to the public, in view of a return to the private sector later. Here, too, on the basis of salaries that do not discourage the most capable from serving in the state. There is also a third open front on public competitions already banned, but blocked by the pandemic. Many municipalities, including large ones, are increasingly understaffed and efforts will be made to hold digital exams in institutional settings (for example, large university classrooms). The reform of the administration is certainly the aspect on which Brussels has so far most criticized the Italian system of Recovery. We need a project for new recruiting systems, a new career progression system, a new method of performance evaluation. Italy in the middle of the ford. He can’t stay where.

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