ROME (ITALPRESS) – Retain in service a, limited, number of civil servants up to the age of 70, on a voluntary basis, by including the measure in the Budget Law, and hire 350 thousand young people by 2025, after the 173 thousand hired in 2023. This is one of the goals of the Minister of Public Administration, Paolo Zangrillo, who in an interview with Corriere della Sera explains, “The government’s choices contribute to the good performance of our economy, albeit in a world context that is slowing down also due to the delicate international situation. Just as President Meloni and Deputy Prime Minister Tajani explained in Cernobbio, we must continue to focus on growth, to strengthen the current economic framework. We also intend to do this with the next maneuver, confirming the measures in favor of families, young people and businesses that hire and create jobs. The Public Administration is also a driver of growth, and that is why we have a duty to make life easier for the business system, freeing it from the overload of bureaucracy, which has accumulated over the years, producing no public value and holding back development. We are doing this with administrative simplification, and the news is that we are doing it together with businesses and trade associations.” “We have completely digitized the competition procedure, cutting the time from 780 days in late 2020 to the current 6 months,” Zangrillo stresses. “Today, one registers for competition notices through the smartphone. Thanks to artificial intelligence, with an algorithm developed in house, we are also working to have, soon, a virtual assistant that will help people understand, depending on individual characteristics and their expectations, the most suitable courses with respect to the offer. The result is that in 2023 we have hired 173,000 people. We will do the same in 2024 and 2025. And we will continue to hire, because between now and 2030 the PA will lose almost a million people, who will retire, after the decline of 300 thousand employees, who were not replaced due to the turnover freeze from 2010 to 2020.”
“The entry salary in central government is about 1,500 euros net per month for graduates,” he adds. “But we need to be able to promote a people management system that can enhance skills, talents, and the ability to make things happen, which does not exist in the PA today. I took the trouble to look at the 2022 performance evaluation of managers: they are all excellent. It means that merit does not exist. We need to introduce this value.” The new hires are “recent graduates, new graduates, many young people but also people already in the workforce. At the end of 2021 the average age of civil servants was 51 years and 3 months; today it is 49 and a half years. In 2009 the average age was 43. So for the first time, we see a reversal of the trend; it is another sign. But, as is the case with private companies, we are also having difficulty finding profiles in STEM disciplines. Precisely by virtue of the fact that we are hiring a very significant number of people and a lot of young people, we are reasoning about a postponement of retirement.” “First of all,” Minister Zangrillo explains, “I would like to remind you that employees in the security and defense sector retire at age 60, while everyone else retires at age 65 with at least 42 years of contributions or at age 67. In constructing the seven-year medium-term budget plan, to be included in the next budget law, with Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti we are reasoning to explore the opportunity to retain up to 3 more years.” The option applies “to administrations, including decentralized ones, that consider it an important management lever to retain at work until age 70 (in the case of retirement at 67) a number of employees as a percentage of turnover. On a voluntary basis.” “I proposed 10 percent,” points out Zangrillo, who, when asked what the pension savings would be, replies, “Mef is doing the simulations. The question is not to save money, let’s first see if there is a convergence of views.”
– photo Agenzia Fotogramma –
(ITALPRESS).