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The Civil Service, Towards Privatization
Since a long time, the evolution of Italian administration has been under the alternative influence of a hierarchical model (bureaucracy) and a business model (management). The Italian civil service has not escaped the consequences of this phenomenon : it was mainly based upon the hierarchical model and has resisted until recently to different attempts of modernization inspired by the business model. However, there seems to be a radical turn with the Legislative Decree n° 29/1993 — so-called privatization decree — which reforms dramatically the regulatory framework of public employment by decreasing the scope of legislative regulation and favouring collective agreements between unions and public employers. Another phenomenon is increasing : the "southernization" of the civil service is caracterized by a shortage of personnel in the North and a growing distance between administration and society.

<i>Italy.
Modernization of the Civil Service </i>

The reforms of the 1980s resulted in the increasing use of collective bargaining, the introduction of "professional profiles" in career planning and an effort to standardize civil service management methods as well as controlling such management costs. An assessment of the implementation of these reforms revealed that certain objectives were not attained : improvement in job efficiency, improvement in responsibility of civil servants, cost control. The more recent measures tend to corne doser to private sector management methods ; they also tend to encourage productivity and make top civil servants into self-reliant and responsible managers.