Strategic Planning and Management in Italian Public Administration

Chapter 7 is the first of a set of chapters analysing the trajectory of development of key administrative and public management functions in the public sector in Italy. The chapter considers the evolution of strategic planning and management, from the 1960s to 1970s to the current practices, providing a unique account of the development of strategic planning in Italy. The chapter analyses trajectories in the levels of diffusion and in typologies, drivers, and barriers to different approaches to strategic management, distinguishing them across levels and functions of government (central vs. local administrations; policy sectors), the influence of the waves of reforms over time, and connections with other management tools such as performance management. The analysis enables a framing of the complex and multifaceted layers of strategy making in Italy, where local healthcare units have started engaging in strategic management long before they were prescribed by reform laws to develop such managerial approaches, while central administrations have only come of late to adopt, in often a piecemeal way (albeit with important glaring exceptions), approaches to strategic planning and management, notwithstanding legislative prescriptions to do so. The chapter then considers the significance of the EU-funded National Recovery and Resilience Plan for the development of strategic planning and management in Italy.