Accountability and Reporting: New Developments in Italian Local Governments (original) (raw)
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The recent evolution of governance systems of the Italian local public authorities underlines, besides a growing interest in the processes of measurement and control of performances, a widespread tendency toward logic of transparency in relations with stakeholders. Transparency is, in fact, a requirement of good governance which is a dominant quality of all the activities of the public institution whose relations with external stakeholders finds primary expression in the communication processes. Transparency in the governance of local public authorities finds significant regulations that have occurred since the last decade of the last century. The most important reform laws – laws 142 and 241 in 1990, Legislative decree n. 150 of 2009 and Legislative decree n. 235 of 2010 and the recent directives on the subject of social and gender reporting– stress, however, the connection between enlargement of the information necessary for a clear governance, content and channels of communication. The public dimension of municipalities also emphasizes the criticality of institutional communication, as an element of promotion of fiduciary relationships with different stakeholders for obtaining lasting consensus on the choices implemented in favor of the community. Consistent with the limited resources available, each municipality should have its own website in which to place a set of appropriate information to ensure the transparency of governance, on how to use the economic resources available and the results achieved in favor of reference community. This contribution is based on many years of research, which took into account a large number of Italian municipalities and has developed a detailed assessment of the effectiveness of external communication through the use of the Internet. Specifically, the empirical analysis covers the period 2007/2011 and considers – according to a joint role, dimensional situations, complexity and availability of resources – all the chief town of the Italian Regions, all the chief town of the Lombardy Provinces, all municipalities in the Province of Brescia (in total 260 municipalities). The research approach is empirical/inductive and is based on the provision of a convenient grids containing the necessary elements to enable one to evaluate the effectiveness of institutional communication. The definition of items considers: rules/guidelines and the essential requirements of transparency, also taking into account the latest contributions of management studies in the field of public communication. The aims of this paper are to highlight, in particular, the degree of use and the limits of the Internet for transparency and quality of communication implemented by the municipalities, the current evolutionary trends and its connection with the regulatory action, the relationship between formal and substantial transparency, the main areas for improvement in order to obtain optimal effectiveness in relations between municipalities/stakeholders.