Information and Communication Technology in local government administrations

There are remarkable differences among local public administration in the way they are organized to use ICT. In the year 2009, 20 Regions out of 22 and 85.3 per cent of Provinces had one or more autonomous offices in charge of ICT, while for Mountain local authorities and Municipalities the percentages were respectively 21.8 and 15.3 per cent. The highest rate of ICT staff on the total amount of employees of local public administration was recorded in Regions (2.9 ICT employees on 100 employees), followed by Mountain local authorities and Provinces (respectively 2.3 and 2.0 per cent of ICT employees) and the Municipalities with 1.6 per cent.

The development of software and the ICT training were two of the areas where the Municipalities with more than 60,000 inhabitants intensively looked for outsourcing activities. 84.3 per cent of large Municipalities outsourced the development of software and 68.8 per cent outsourced the ICT training. For small Municipalities the same percentages were lower, that is, respectively 50.7 and 31.2 per cent.
During the year 2008, 21 Regions out of 22 organized training courses on ICT (all the Regions in Northern-Central Italy) and 61.8 per cent of Provinces. On the contrary, only 19 per cent of Mountain local authorities and 17 per cent of Municipalities held ICT training activities.

With reference to the computerization level of management activities, for all the local administration in the year 2009, an extensive use of network computerization for accounting, protocol and payments functions was recorded. On the other side, public relation office, call for tender management and staff selection procedures turned out to be the least computerized activities for all local administrations.