Asmel Consortile

Countries

Italy

Policy areas

Organisation name Municipality of Caggiano

Contact person: Isabella M. L. Vairo

ivairo@asmecomm.it

The Municipality of Caggiano and the Asmel Consortile project anticipated the guidelines that the European Directives 23/2014/EU, 24/2014/EU and 25/2014/EU would indicate in 2014. The purpose of this was to use the stimulus of the normative obligation to invite the municipalities to adopt an efficient solution that could improve the action of the public administration. The model of telematic centralisation proposed by Asmel anticipated the national law introduced in 2016; in this way, the municipalities have managed to develop innovative and efficient models spontaneously, before they were obliged by law to comply with the European model.

The municipality of Caggiano, together with the ASMEL Association, has been a pioneer in developing the European model throughout the country, overcoming many political and regulatory obstacles. Only the far-sightedness and the full harmony with the legislative addresses coming from the European Union have allowed the development of the public tender model of Asmel Consortile. In a few years this has reached more than 1400 participating entities, and more than 3000 tenders managed on the telematic platform for a transaction value of approximately EUR 2 billion.

The objective was to improve the efficiency of the municipalities’ tender procedures, make them faster and more transparent, guarantee specialist and technological support, and achieve critical mass in respect of the autonomy of the authorities and their real needs. The figures and the result obtained confirm that the proposed model is efficient and works. Parallel to the activities of the Asmel Consortile, the ASMEL Association has also developed various training programmes, also in collaboration with the Universities of Naples and a University in Milan. These offer, free of charge, the updating and the training of the staff operating in the municipalities associated through programmes finalised to the improvement of the professionality and the efficiency of the administrative processes.

The potential for adaptability of the project by other entities is shown by Asmel Consortile, born in 2013 solely on the initiative of the Caggiano local council and ASMEL, having 808 public entities directly involved in 2019.

The economic sustainability of the project is shown by the costs of the procurement procedure being paid for by the company awarded the contract, who pay a fee of up to a maximum of 1% of the contract value for all the auxiliary services provided to the municipality (Art. 2, Direttiva 2014/24/UE), whereas the use of the electronic platform (Art. 2, Direttiva 2014/24/UE) is a cost sustained directly by Asmel Consortile and the direct operational costs remain at the municipality level. (Art. 2, Direttiva 2014/24/UE).

The project effectively finances itself and any eventual profits go towards the improvement of services or to reducing the costs allocated to the awarded company. The fee in 2019 has been reduced since 2013 from 1.5% to 1%.

Italy has 7983 municipalities, with 55% located in in the north (3033 are in the northwest and 1419 in the northeast; these represent respectively 38% and 17.8% of the total of the Italian municipalities). A total of 1789 municipalities (22.4 %) are located in the south, 975 municipalities are located in the centre (12.2%) and 767 municipalities are located on the two islands (9.6 %).

It is very important to look at the density of the population of Italian municipalities, because it produces significative consequences in the management and the results of the local government. Almost 70% of municipalities have a population of 5000 habitants and 20% of these have under 2000 habitants. Then, only 14.8 % of municipalities have a range of population that goes from 5000 to 9999 habitants. Only 15% of municipalities have a population greater than 10 000 habitants.

This project started because of the rule provided by Art. 33, paragraph 3-bis of Legislative Decree No 163/2006, that imposed on small municipalities – with a population of fewer than 5000 inhabitants – the requirement to aggregate to manage procurement procedures and, because of the inadequacy of the models present until then in Italy.

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