AND The next generation Public Administration has been defined, equipped with the first generation of Pnrr managers, called to the modernization challenge that the country requires today. It’s about 150 students, selected from 7,000 candidates to follow the most important training course in the Public Administration, which after ten months of study he will lead them to the leadership of ministries. This eighth edition of Course-Competition of the National School of Administration (Sna), inaugurated a few weeks ago, marks a turning point.
The Course-Competition of the National School of Administration is taking place at the Royal Palace of Caserta. (photo: ANSA/ CESARE ABBATE)
«We can consider the managers who will be selected at the end of the training and practical application process, the first generation of Pnrr managers, who will not only have to implement the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, but which they will have to absorb from the Pnrr, but above all implement, even after 2026the deepest philosophy» comments Paola Severino, who is President of the National School of Administration.
A modern Public Administration
The goal is to recruit and prepare talents for the challenges of change, especially with respect to digital innovation, to create the ruling class that plans the environmental transition, builds inclusion, faces the challenges of cybersecurity, is the sentinel of legality in resource management the future of the next generations depends on its correct use. Now we need to train public managers – these are again the words of Paola Severino – who know how to govern the transformations that are taking place with great speed. There are many women among the students. iO Donna has met three of them.
“Challenges came very naturally to me and I wanted to overcome them”
Rosa Calabrese 32 years old, from Rome
Rosa Calabrese 32 years old, from Rome
Roman, of a French mother and an Italian father, at 32 he has already faced a life of challenges. While attending classical high school, he also studied at the Conservatory “violin, chosen because it was difficult” – and, meanwhile, in the gym he approaches martial arts, through Jeet Kune Do. In a handful of years he graduated with honors from high school, graduated with honors from the master’s degree in Law. Meanwhile, she became a three-time national champion and once regional in Qinda and Semi-sanda fighting discipline. And, at the Terni Conservatory, she graduated in viola. «I made important sacrifices, especially considering that I was very young: my peers certainly didn’t have a limited social life like mine was. But challenges came very naturally to me and I wanted to overcome them» he comments. There is only one challenge that, when she grew up, Rosa Calabrese won just halfway: the one to enter the judiciary, where she passed the criminal law test, but not the civil one. But since there is no defeat that someone born to win doesn’t turn into an opportunity, here it is at Sna. «I have always believed in useful work, work that is capable of changing people’s lives and, now that I too feel responsible for the future of this country, I think I have found the professional dimension that most belongs to me».
Rosa Calabrese is precisely among those very young people on whom the State says it wants to focus to build change: «I won’t deny that I have a certain fear, because I feel the expectations of those who have bet so much on our generation. But we really want to change the country. Public administration is the engine of the nation, its quality and effectiveness depend on the competence of its leaders and their willingness to make things happen. And the level of preparation of managers, as well as officials, is rising a lot ».
As for the not always optimal perception of citizens with respect to the Public Administration, think that those who work in public institutions must build a strong sense of belonging. «I want to work to form prepared and motivated teams, aware that salaries and career prospects do not easily represent important attractive levers in the public sector. I would like to help eradicate the mentality of the permanent job as a point of arrival, don’t be afraid to take on the risks and responsibilities involved in important decisions”. When she received the news of her admission to the School, Rosa Calabrese worked at the Ministry of Labor and Social Policies and was preparing the competition to enter the Court of Auditors. “I hope to be reassigned to the Ministry of Labour, because I believe it is the one that, more than anyone else, has an impact on the lives of citizens”.
“Prejudices about mothers persist in the world of work”
Francesca Romana Fulvi 46 years old, from Rome
Francesca Romana Fulvi 46 years old, from Rome
«Due to the blockage of turnover, the The country is suffering from a strong shortage of managerial figures and, at the same time, there is a great need to renew skills within the Public Administration, due to the challenges opened up by the Pnrr, but not only». And he adds: “At the National School of Administration, I am meeting extremely capable and highly trained professionals, already perfectly within modernity. The selection was severe: we are all people who have not sat on the skills acquired and who, on the contrary, have continued to study over time, to identify the new, to try to understand where the Public Administration can and should go. After all, given that we will manage public functions and will be paid with citizens’ money, the selection phase is crucial: I believe that people who are not strongly motivated should not be allowed to access crucial public dimensions”.
Francesca Romana Fulvi has a PhD in Criminal Law and Procedure and university collaborations still open, has one long chain of lectures – from the High School of Police to La Sapienza University, from Luiss to the Department of Penitentiary Administration – and, before joining Sna, she worked since 2006 as an official at the Ministry of Labour, serving in the support structure of the independent Body of performance evaluation and then of the Anti-Corruption Manager/Community Funds Audit Authority. “QThese experiences have given me managerial training and a transversal approach to the functions of the administrations that today allows me to plan, coordinate, control the functions themselves in an overall vision. To this I added expertise in terms of transparency and anti-corruption. I must say that, out of attitude, when I encounter a new professional dimension, I throw myself in: I study, I make it my own, I reinterpret it».
For example, tell about having wanted to design, for the Ministry of Labour, the architecture of a system that computerized the risk management process, thanks to which she was selected to work at the National Anti-Corruption Authority. «I think it was this composite preparation of mine that made me choose the National School of Administration. I think the design of whoever presides over the SNA is to prepare highly professional managers on the Pnrr and European funds, and on the many challenges awaiting the country. Managers to be assigned to the administrations that will need them from time to time, because the transformations they have to interpret will shape the future of the next generations”.
Francesca Romana Fulvi, who is the mother of a one and a half year old girl and commutes from Rome to Caserta every day where the training of the Sna is held – highlights the significant presence of women in the public spheres that can be accessed by competition: «Unfortunately, resistance and prejudices related to working mothers remain in the world of work. I used to be a lawyer and several times I’ve heard young professionals ask if they intend to have children soon, not to mention how many didn’t get the job just because they were women. In public bodies that can be accessed by competition, the majority, on the contrary, are women because tests are anonymously corrected, i.e. the examiners do not know the gender of who drafted the written test. Here women win because they are good and nobody can ask them if they are thinking about having a child».
“The time has come to give back what I was offered”
Ilde Forgione 37 years old, from Empoli (FI)
Ilde Forgione 37 years old, from Empoli (FI)
«Being a student director of the National School of Administration makes me particularly proud because I owe this State what I am. Thanks to public schools I was able to study and obtain the title of research doctor, just as in public structures I studied music and played sports, first as a competitor, then as an instructor to pay for my studies. Today the time has come to give back what I was offered». This is how Ilde Forgione greets the new passage of professional life, after the brilliant one at the Uffizi Gallery in Florencewhere she has been responsible for the launch, strategy and content creation of the Uffizi TikTok channel, emerging two years later with a series of firsts: the Uffizi becomes the third most followed museum in the world on social media, Art Newspaper inserts Forgione among the four best social media managers in the world for managing museum accounts during the pandemic, and the very young visitors of the Uffizi make a leap of 120 percent.
«It is now clear that if we enhance cultural heritage through digital technology, we can also bring it to those who don’t know it, to the youngest, for example. But I would always say that, in general, if we use digital technology effectively, we end up supporting citizens: digital helps the public machine to function better and when the public machine works well, services are generated for citizens. After all, the philosopher Luciano Floridi often repeats that we now live in environments where real and digital experience inevitably merge».
Ilde Forgione, that is graduated in Law and in 2022 worked as an official at the Ministry of Economy, recalls the culture of results as a lever for change. «Smartworking has taught us that working according to clear objectives helps to be more effective and save life time. After all, technology is a powerful facilitator with multiple applications: it can make the databases of the various public administrations truly interoperable or tender procedures faster and more measurable, as well as allowing citizens to interact comfortably from home with a virtual counter, skipping the queues of the physical counters».
The Pnrr, moreover, offers a unique opportunity for the transformation of the country, starting precisely from technologies: «We thirty-year-olds want to design a different society and we bring enthusiasm, also because we arrive at public management with the resilience trained by tiring years of precarious and fixed-term jobs. As for my contribution, I think the examiners have understood the ability to be transversal to multiple themes and dimensions: in the Law assignment, for example, I reasoned about the possibility of resorting to public-private partnerships for the economic valorisation of cultural heritage, especially thanks to the use of new technologies, NFTs and the like. Moreover, it is not necessary for technological and digital projects to be carried out within the administrations: rather, it is necessary that intelligence, visions and skills capable of grasping the need to innovate reside here to identify suitable solutions and projects also externally. I am ready to act in this direction».
iO Woman © REPRODUCTION RESERVED