DEFINING

STABLE AGGREGATIONS
OF MUNICIPALITIES
TO REDUCE ADMINISTRATIVE
FRAGMENTATION

Walter Castelnovo
Department of Science of the Culture,
Politics and Information - University of Insubria (Italy)
walter.castelnovo@uninsubria.it

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009

Administrative fragmentation in Local Government

Lombardy:

• is the most populated region in

Italy (more that 9.7 million
inhabitants - 15,8% of the whole
Italian population)

• contributes to the Italian Gross

Internal Product with a
percentage which, during the
years, has been constantly
higher than 20%

• comprises 12 provinces and

1546 municipalities

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009

Administrative fragmentation in Local Government

The system of Local Government in Italy and Lombardy

N° of
N° N° of municipalities
% municipalities in %
inhabitants in Italy
Lombardy
0-5000 5836 72,04 1153 74,58

5000-10000 1153 14,23 229 14,81

10000-20000 639 7,89 104 6,73

20000-65000 387 4,78 49 3,17

More that
65000
86 1,06 11 0,71

TOTAL 8101 100,00 1546 100,00

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009

Administrative fragmentation in Local Government

Problems related to administrative fragmentation:

difficulty to ensure the availability of suitable financial
resources to support innovation processes

difficulty to ensure a widespread presence of specialized

competencies for the management of innovation processes

difficulty not only to manage innovation projects in order to

satisfy the citizens’ need for higher quality services, but also
to maintain the level of the services already delivered

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009

Administrative fragmentation in Local Government

Merger of municipalities

Forced merger  not viable in Italy due to the autonomy of the

municipalities granted constitutionally
Voluntary merger  Unions of Communes
• increasing the efficiency, the effectiveness and the quality of Government
through the sharing of resources among small municipalities
• reducing the number of small municipalities through special funding devoted
to those Unions of Communes that implemented processes geared towards
the fusion of the member municipalities

During the past years 62 Unions of Communes have been created in

Lombardy, involving about 200 municipalities.

The total number of municipalities of Lombardy

in 2009 is the same as in 1991
EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009
Administrative fragmentation in Local Government

Intermunicipal cooperation
“Intermunicipal cooperation may be defined as an arrangement between
two or more government organizations for accomplishing common goals,
providing a service, or solving a mutual problem”

SISCoTEL (2001-2005)
121 projects funded
1146 of the 1546 municipalities of Lombardy involved
76 Shared Services Centres activated until 2008

in 2008 only 765 of the 839 municipalities that had been

funded during the period 2001-2004 were still members
of one of the 76 Shared Service Centres

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009

Administrative fragmentation in Local Government

As shown by the past experiences of Lombardy, the stability

of an aggregation does not depend on its institutional form
( institutionalized  Union of Communes
non-institutionalized  SISCoTEL )
The stability of an aggregation of municipalities can be
achieved by forcing and maintaining a high level of
involvement of the partners towards the cooperation.

This can be done more easily if the partners of the

cooperation have been selected accurately

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009

The SSLG/ISLG Project

1. Define a cooperation model such that:

a. It could guarantee the setting up of aggregations of municipalities
that would be stable in time
b. the municipalities are free to decide whether to adhere or not to
an aggregation
c. the cooperation should not necessarily be of the institutionalized
form

2. Define a standardized process for the formation of

aggregations of municipalities that would implement
an intermunicipal cooperation for service delivery

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009

The SSLG/ISLG Project

The selection process

Five steps

1. call for interest

2. profiling of the potential partners
3. assessment of the networkability level of the potential
partners
4. definition of the strategic goals of the cooperation
5. final composition of the aggregation

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009

The SSLG/ISLG Project

1. The call for interest

A (public or private) subject, playing a catalyst role launches a call for
interest concerning the establishment of a partnership among
municipalities

The call for interst could be based on very smooth requirements; hence,
the number of municipalities that answer the call can be quite large. This
set represents the pool of the potential partners for the cooperation.

During the refinement process some potential partners will be discarded;

hence it is necessary to provide for a guaranteeing role that guarantees
the municipalities that the selection is fair and based exclusively on
criteria related to the well functioning of the aggregations that will be set
up

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009

The SSLG/ISLG Project

2. The potential partners profiling

The partners profiling amounts to a standardized description of

the potential partners in a format explicitely defined in the call for
interest

The profiling information concern:

human resources

organizational resources

managerial resources

technological resources

financial resources

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009

 The SSLG/ISLG Project

Examples
human the kind and the level of the competencies available
organizational description and the evaluation of previous cooperation experiences
description of all the contracts for service provision in force
description of how the services are managed and delivered
Resources

elements of strength and weakness within the organization

managerial general competences (educational background)
competences acquired within public administration bodies
competences acquired within other Local Government bodies
competences acquired within the same municipality
technological number and quality of the computer workstations and connectivity
devices
a complete and detailed description of the application portfolio
the security policies and the policies for the backup of information
financial structural budget indicators, such as those used by the Italian
National Institute of Statistics

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009

The SSLG/ISLG Project

3. The partners’ networkability assessment

the capability of an organization to establish, maintain and develop
relationships with other organizations in order to pursue new common
business opportunities or improve the results of an existing business
through co-operation

Steps of the assessment

a. definition of a Reference Model describing a set of interoperability
attributes
b. identification of the key stakeholders to be involved in the assessment
c. evaluation of the interoperability attributes by each stakeholder
d. comparison and discussion of the results of the evaluation
e. convergence of the stakeholders on a shared evaluation of the
interoperability attributes (by applying standard techniques, such as the
Delphi technique)
EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009
The SSLG/ISLG Project
Strategic Sharing of the mission and objectives
Involvement of the partners
Interoperability domains

Interoperability attributes
Sharing of the enterprise model (EM)
Sharing of language and ontology
Organizational Standardization of the processes
Common management styles
Sharing of the resources
Dissemination
Operational Homogeneity of working tools used by the partners
Sharing of the training activities
Availability of tools for inter-organizational communication
Availability of tools for the monitoring of the cooperation
Technological Sharing of infrastructures for connectivity
Homogeneity of the partners’ IT application portfolio
Sharing of data among the partners
Sharing of the security policies

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009

The SSLG/ISLG Project

3. The partners’ networkability assessment

Twofold evaluation
a. Evaluation of the attributes with respect to the level the key
stakeholders believe would be necessary to adequately support the
cooperation

b. Evaluation of the attributes with respect to the level the key

stakeholders believe to be realistically achievable, given the current
status of the organization they belong to.

The overall level of networkability of an organization is determined by

the shared evaluation concerning the value of the interoperability
attributes the stakeholders judge as the one desirable to achieve
(point (a))

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009

The SSLG/ISLG Project

4. The definition of the strategic goals of the cooperation

The definition of the goals of the cooperation determines a further
selection among the potential partners, since not all of them could be
interested in the defined form of cooperation.

1. share a standardization process leading to a system of partners that

are strictly interoperable, up to cooperabiity, without considering the
opportunity of evolving such a standardized system in a system of
integrated partners
2. implementing a standardized system as a preliminary step of a
process that the partners already agree will lead at the end to an
integrated system (this means that the partners agree on a two phases
process: first standardization, then integration)
3. directly implementing an integrated system, thus agreeing to run the
standardization and integration processes in parallel.

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009

The SSLG/ISLG Project

5. The final composition of the aggregation

the SSLG/ISLG project defines a formation mechanism that is based on
the concurrent application of a set of different qualitative criteria
concerning, for instance:

1. the level of cooperation readiness of the potential partners, as

determined during the survey of their networkability level
2. the exclusion of partners that could exert a dominant position within
the aggregation
3. the amount and the quality of the resources each potential partner
could make available for the cooperation, as results from the
partners’ profile
4. the balance between the overall amount of resources that have been
declared as available for the cooperation and the activities the
cooperation should perform on behalf of its members.
EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009
Conclusions

Both the cooperation model and the standardized process

for the formation of aggregations of municipalities have
been validated by the Regional Government of Lombardy

We are now planning a test of the model with both

aggregations that already exist and new aggregations

We expect that the first results of the test, concerning only

the formation process, will be available within 6 month

EGovShare 2009 – Antalya, 9 December 2009