Social and organisational collective systems in Italy are characterised by a huge level of complexity, pluralistic settings and forms of organisation. Municipalities represent the basic local authorities level in the Italian system and the Italian Constitution attributes administrative functions to them. This is done according to the principle stating that the management of public functions should be attributed to the entities nearest to the citizens and therefore in the best position to grant them the most efficient services. But in these last years, the role of the public administration in Italy, as in other European countries, has changed profoundly, with an evolution of its roles and functions. This brought concrete problems to some, particularly the excessive use of resources that has had a negative and widespread impact.
In recent years, public administrations have faced the challenges of reducing public costs while maintaining high levels of efficiency in response to the increasingly complex needs of communities. Recent regulatory reforms in Italy have imposed actions of spending reviews in public administrations. Usually within complex and structured organisations, the services whose costs must be reduced are established by managers at the higher levels of government, who are often not fully aware of the operational activities put into practice.
In this context, the problem of limited resources available and the financial instability of the new organisational and management models of the public administration led to the measure called Spending Review. This is a means to solve problems of financial sustainability for public expenditure. One of the dangers regarding spending review measures is to get a reduction in the efficiency and effectiveness of services. Taking these elements into account, the Municipality of Bergamo has tried to identify an alternative – and more effective – way of rationalising expenditure, encouraging the participation of its entire staff to improve the quality of services for the citizens. To achieve this goal, it was decided to apply the principles contained in Law 11/2011 (conversion of Decree Law 98/2011). This identifies the possibility for local authorities to allocate – during collective bargaining – a share of the savings achieved by the realisation of innovative projects to the productivity of employees.
This law is poorly applied by Italian local authorities, and never with this innovative bottom-up approach. In 2016 the project called ‘IDM – ideas for improvement’ was launched by the General Manager of the Municipality of Bergamo, to invite employees to propose innovative solutions in terms of both improvement of the service quality and costs reduction. The objective of this bottom-up approach was to have motivated employees who place the importance of people and their relationship at the centre of their work, increasing the feeling of pride and belonging to their organisation.
The realisation of the project did not require additional resources, but different organisational ways to manage the services, using skills and internal staff of the institution. The participation process requires that the improvement ideas developed by employees have to be analysed and evaluated, using indicators established by both the internal evaluation body (OIV) and the auditors. The economic incentives related to the IDMs realised that have passed the assessment, are then paid in the productivity share of wages.
In the three years in which the project was implemented (2016–2018) the Municipality of Bergamo saved €953 000 thanks to the realisation of the IDMs fit with the evaluation criteria. One half of this share was allocated to the funds for employees’ productivity, the other half was included in the budget of the institution to be reinvested in improving services for citizens. The share allocated to employees’ productivity has been further divided: 80% has been allocated equally to the employees who realised the ideas, the remaining 20% has been distributed equally among all employees of the institution.
The IDM project presents an innovative way of containing public expenditure based on a bottom-up approach that recognises that employees play a central role in the improvement of the institution.