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Apulia region as CAF competency center for local municipalities

Received Golden Case recognition at the CAF Users Event 2025 in Warsaw

CAF Best Practice
Date of publication: September 2025

Executive summary

The project involved the Apulia Region on the basis of an experience already underway at its audit structure in 2012-2013, aims to strengthen the previously acquired skills using CAF in the Department of Labour Policies, Education and Training, as well as to support and spread the use of the model in local municipalities in order to build a common language on the issues of supply chain performance on relevant policies.

About the organisation

Apulia is a southern region of 4 million inhabitants. According to the Italian constitution, the regional Administration, a 1.804 emplyeers, is composed by the Legislative Assembly and the Government, formed by 10 Chancellors and headed by the President. Mr Michele Emiliano is the President in charge. The Governing Body, focused on an ambidextrous model, consists of 10 Departments, responsible for the exploitation functions as the exploration functions are delegated to the regional Agencies. In compliance with the principle of subsidiarity, the Apulia Region, plays a fundamental role in identifying tools and procedures to coordinate and consult with local authorities within the scope of their respective competences. In fact, local authorities have become preferential recipients of the community’s requests, fully implementing the constitutional principles of autonomy, administrative decentralisation and adaptation of state legislation. In Apulia, there are six provinces divided into 257 municipalities (3.3% of the national total) of which 88 have a population of 5,000 or fewer inhabitants.

Quality improvement aspects

The Public Administration Department, in coordination with Formez (an in-house public agency of the Italian government, and supervised by the Department of Public Administration. It provides technical support, training, and innovation services to help modernize Italy’s public administration), proposed to different Regions to use CAF model in the municipalities as well as administrative branches. Apulia Region participated. The project was conducted in order to allow the construction of a Regional Competence Centre for the dissemination of CAF model and practices among local authorities through the supervision of organisational self-assessment processes within the municipalities and shared improvement actions supported in its implementation through the intervention of the Region.

The Apulia Region, together with the national CAF Resource Centre, proposed to carry out an initial test to evaluate the results in order to subsequently extend the good practice to other municipalities in the territory as well as other structures of the Region. The objectives were to:

  • Carry out the self-assessment process at one Regional Department to strengthen skills on the model, self assessment and improvement processes
  • Involve 10 municipalities in the use of the model
  • Carry out the self-assessment process in at least 5 organisations
  • Analyse the results of self-assessments to identify common and specific weakness points
  • Define and start the improvement plan in at least three of the organisations involved, giving priority to common themes and encouraging collaboration in the implementation
  • Identify actions related to the critical issues emerged from the self-assessment reports where the Region can intervene directly within the scope of its strategic coordination skills
  • Evaluate the experience of the model, its strengths and weaknesses, for the purpose of its replicability

Stakeholders and communication

The project manager is Mr. Roberto Venneri, Secretary General of the Presidency of the Apulia Region. The project was supported by Ms. Angela Guerra, Director of the Transparency and Anti-Corruption Service of the Apulia Region.

The Apulia Region participation, with Department of Labour Policies, Education and Training, was formally submitted to the Public Administration Department. To lounch the project in the municipalities, a Public Notice was approved with a Regional act and published on its websites as well as communicated to the Regional level of ANCI (National Association of Italian Municipalities). The Notice, accompanied by the project adhesion form, also identified the participation criteria open to a maximum of 10 municipalities representing all six Apulian provinces where possible.

Dedicated meetings with the organisations involved took place both in person and remotely with a final event to present and share the results. According to the CAF Model, a Self-Assessment Group was formally appointed with a note from the Director of the Department of Labour Policies, Education and Training that conducted the self-evaluation. The employees of the same department were involved in a preliminary analysis through the use of questionnaires. The same process was followed for the participating municipalities (Bari, Bisceglie, Manduria and Trani) where the Self- Assessment Group was appointed and the questionnaires were used to involve the employees.

In the self-assessment activities, the staff was directly involved as internal stakeholders through the questionnaires indicated above, in which an assessment regarding leadership, strategies, people, resources and processes of the organizational were expressed.

The project was carried out with the support of Formez, as well as the CAF National Resource Centre, which made the F@CILE CAF platform available.

Implementation process/approach

Phase One: Involvement

The General Management of the Apulia Region proposed to apply the CAF model to the Department of Labour, Education and Training in January 2023. This department was chosen because it was participating in a project of Public Administration Department and FormezPA on the topic of performance evaluation and on the methods of construction of the IPAO (Integrated Plan of Activities and Organisation – see section 8 of the sheet) and they wanted to test the connection between IPAO and diagnostic checks based on CAF Model.

The general management also decided to open a notice of adhesion to the use of the model to all the municipalities in the territory. The notice was published on the Region’s website in August 2023. Four municipalities joined: Bari, Bisceglie, Manduria, and Trani. A special information meeting on the model, the self-assessment and improvement processess. was held (with the support of FormezPA).

Phase Two: Planning and implementation of the self-assessment process and improvement plan

The F@CILE CAF platform of Public Administration Department provides a self- assessment and improvement planning process structured according to the model guidelines. Therefore, all participating municipalities and the Department itself planned to carry out the self-assessment from 18 September 2023 to the end of February 2024. The Region had access that allowed it to monitor progress and verify if there were any critical issues.

Everyone involved nominated and formalised the self-assessment group which was appropriately formed with slides and documents made available by the CAF National Resource Centre: slides illustrating the model criteria and the methods of conducting the process, tools for collecting evidence, and the questionnaire as tool to pick up evidences about employees perception of their organisations. The questionnaire was provided to the self assessment group of each entity and administered by it.

The results of the questionnaires were included in the Self Assessment Report as an objective evidence for the Enablers Criteria assessment but a first significant result was the large number of people’s participation in the survey – in the all entities.

AdministrationPersonnel unitsCompleted

questionnaires

%
Department of Labour, Education and Training987576%

 

Municipality of Bisceglie1529160%
Municipality of Trani282278%
Municipality ofManduria875765%
Municipality of Bari (personnel sector)473779%
Municipality of Bari (financial sector)4040100%
Total 322 

During the process, the National CAF Resource Centre – FormezPA guaranteed a help desk and held a feedback meeting at the end of the Self-assessment Report, and a final one at the end of the improvement planning phase.

The self-assessment group collected all the relevant evidence and and on that basis made its assessment of all CAF Criteria during the individual evaluation and consensus phases. Five of the participating administrations achieved the first self-assessment conclusion result. Two of them planned the improvement.

Phase Three: Support for the resolution of common critical issues

Through the analysis that emerged from the SAVs and the coherence with the improvement actions, some common weakness areas for improvement issues were identified on which the Region intends to intervene with support actions. The Region intends to promote meetings and coordination actions in the planning of improvement measures to overcome the common critical issues identified with the interested organisations, creating a Regional Competence Centre.

There wasn’t cost for the activity because all costs for training and for the support of the self-assessment process and improvement planning process were hold up in the Public Administration Department project.

Success Measurement . Main results with regards to the focus area

A general evaluation of the project results was made to verify project effectiveness (participation, completion of self-assessment processand definition/start of improvement plans) and its replicability in other organisational contexts or different Italian territorial areas.

Quantitative measures and qualitative assessments were therefore set:

  • How many organisations completed the self-assessment
  • How many organisations have started an improvement plan

 

Furthermore:

  • What was the satisfaction from the process taken and how did this create the will to continue the experience
  • For each self-assessment process, to what extent common improvement directions identified could become a basis to collaborate for the future.

These are the results to date:

  • Of the 10 organisations involved, 5 organisations participated in the training activity held by experts from the CAF National Resource Centre (in total 8 meetings, integrated with additional telephone support and IT contacts)
  • 5 organizations completed the self-assessment process, complete with all the elements required by the model. The expert support and the use of the F@cileCAF Platform allowed us to obtain a detailed picture of organisational maturity in relation to the CAF model, also thanks to the use of “Fine Tuning” Score.
    • The analysis of the Self Assessment Reports, allowed the identification of common intervention/improvement area, as well as specific areas in which define shared improvement projects. Some common areas were highlighted: Communication, consultation and collaboration with stakeholders (limited /occasional involvement in the organisations’ processes)
    • People skill development and assignment of tasks/objectives (weak links with strategy and operational plans)
    • Citizen/customer satisfaction and internal climate surveys (lack of systematicity and real use of the results)
    • Structured collection and analysis of performance results (dashboard; lack of complete picture, poor practice of benchmarking)
  • According to CAF Guidelines, two organisations have formally set up an improvement plan with the common directions identified, now they are continuing their implementation. Although the initial objective was not completely reached (at least three organisations with a formal Improvement Plan), all organisations have declared that they will apply the indications emerged from the self-assessment process in their strategic planning, with the intention of resuming formal application of the model in the future.

Beyond these direct results, it was important to know the level of satisfaction for the journey made together by the organisations with the support of the Region and the national CAF Resource Center. This is essential to understanding if it can be replicated in different geographical areas or sectors and which points need to be improved in the future.

Here is the summary of the evaluation obtained from a brief questionnaire sent to the organisations at the end of the project.The answers are summarized below in qualitative terms:

  • Overall satisfaction with the path taken: very high
  • Satisfaction with the guidance/support received: very high
  • Usefulness of the joint path: very high
  • Added value received from the application of the model (in decreasing order):
    • organisational analysis
    • guidance for improvement
    • TQM Culture
  • Critical issues that emerged in the application: in decreasing order
    • low participation of top management
    • time availability
    • low priority
  • Intention to complete and/or to repeat the experience in the future: all the organizations;

These results, joined with the people participation level during the self assessment process (for example very high percent of answer to the questionnaire administered) show a high level of people engagement in the project both within the region and externally in the municipalities, and the opportunity to cooperate for improvement implementation.

There are also some other aspects to take into consideration for the success:

  • The importance of involvement of top management from the beginning and along the Where this involvement was higher, the best results were obtained in terms of quality of the self-assessment/improvement process and continuity in the process
  • Foster further collaboration between organisations in all phases of the process, and in particular in improvement phase(such as exchange of experiences and sharing of approaches)
  • Increase support from experts (regional or from the CAF Resource Center) in training
  • Enhance support and guidance to organisations throughout the whole training and improvement process

The essence of the innovation and the transferability of the solutions introduced

The idea of building a Regional Competence Centre dedicated to the dissemination of CAF arises from the role that the Region has towards the local authorities of the territory, with particular reference to certain policies such as federalism, public transport, environment, and labour. Dialogue on these policies is continuous and the Region has deemed it necessary to build a common base of skills, based on the knowledge of the principles of excellence and TQM, useful in promoting this dialogue.

The innovative nature of the project lies in the role that the Region assumes with regard to the model that strengthens the importance of programming in an integrate way and governing the organization as a whole, especially since the national reform, that introduced the IPAO, urges administrations to think in terms of supply chain and no longer in a stand-alone logic. Moreover, through the F@CILE CAF platform, a further innovative element is represented by the possibility to conduct self assessment process with the same times and the same “rules” and to identify Common Areas of improvement with the regional level support. The experience is transferable to all other Regions and also to the Provinces. Formez is developing a project in this direction. There are no results in this sense yet but the basic idea is in transferability. The Regions are facilitated in this because they have a coordinating body, represented by the Conference of the Regions and Autonomous Provinces, which promotes constant and periodic discussions.

An element of success was participating in the FormezPA project on the topic of performance evaluations and seizing the opportunity to learn about the model and use it as a tool to strengthen common skills. The sensitivity and interest of the administration’s top management to support the initiative was another important element. The possibility of using the F@CILE CAF platform of the Department of Public Function favoured the implementation of the self-evaluation process in the institutions and gave the Region the opportunity to monitor the progress.

For those who want to use our experience, we suggest immediately setting up a coordination group to oversee the activities of the municipalities; a group that must be appropriately trained on the model’s underlying themes and on its connections with all reform policies at a national level. It is similarly important, in order to fully understand the model that the same regional body that assumes the role of coordination carries out a process of self-assessment and improvement with the CAF.

The experience can be replicated in all administrations that, by role, perform a programming, coordination and financing function towards other public administrations in the territory. Its added value would also be considerable in the dissemination of the model. If the 20 Italian regions performed this role towards the local authorities in their territory, the CAF could reach a significantly greater number of administrations (potentially the 8,000 Italian municipalities).

Lessons learnt

Based on our experience, we suggest 3 lessons learnt for those who want to set up a local/territorial competence centre dedicated to the entities in their territory:

  1. Set up a reference guide committee within the administration, possibly with diversified skills, in particular project management and performance evaluation and knowledge of local entities in the territory
  2. Develop the skills of the committee members both by involving them in the self- assessment and improvement process with the CAF within their administration and by training them on the model’s underlying principles and the good practices it represents. The training must also concern the main national reform processes underway in order to connect them to the CAF and stimulate interest in its use. The training and experience acquired would allow the members of the Committee to respond promptly to the questions posed by local entities during the self-assessment and improvement process.
  1. Monitor the progress of the self-assessment and improvement process in local authorities by maintaining constant, even informal, contact with the self-assessment group referents in order to more easily identify common critical issues that emerge from the self-assessment reports and direct common improvement actions.
    If collaborate and involve people and other administration in the same route toward the excellence, speaking the same language, the first result is empowerment, engagement and motivation to changing!

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complete study

About the author(s)

Roberto Venneri
Apulia Region
Italy

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Written by: Roberto Venneri
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Read also:

CAFficiency (www.cafficiency.suk.gov.rs)

Received Golden Case recognition at the CAF Users Event 2025 in Warsaw
September 2025 -
The Human Resources Management Service (Government of the Republic of Serbia)
, Serbia