Franceschini: we need to hire young people in public administration

Minister of Cultural Heritage Dario Franceschini, speaking today at the House question time, had the opportunity to talk about the issue of hiring at the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism. The question was posed by 5 Star Movement deputy Rosa Alba Testamento, who addressed a question to the minister on the issue. “The various structures of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism,” Testamento notes, “already for a few years, have significant staffing shortages, a situation exacerbated by the COVID-19 health crisis that our country is going through; to cope with it, in fact, a recruitment plan was adopted for the three-year period 2019-2021 that provides for the launch of selection procedures on 5.920 available positions, however, not adequate and sufficient due to the continuous blocking of competitive procedures and various difficulties related to the current emergency.”

However, Testamento points out, “the need to make up for staff shortages has led to the increasingly constant, within the structures belonging to the cultural heritage, of less qualified professional figures, hired with collaboration and fixed-term contracts and the employment of volunteer staff,” and “the increase of volunteer staff in the Italian cultural sector has certainly allowed in recent decades to recover an important part of the cultural heritage, which was otherwise destined to be abandoned or to remain half-known, but it has contributed to the increase of precarious employment and the use of non-highly specialized figures, undermining the preservation and enhancement of the Italian cultural heritage.” Testamento, while acknowledging “the value of the work performed by volunteers in the cultural sphere,” makes it known that “it is essential to clarify that voluntary forms cannot replace real and specialized work in the sector.” According to the Pentastar MP, “the current regulatory framework has facilitated the transformation of volunteering into real disguised free labor, as well as incentivized its systematic use as a substitute for paid and qualified work. This situation has done nothing but alter the labor market in the sector, conditioning not only the possibilities of access by professionals and their salary levels, but also the quality of cultural services offered.” Testamento therefore asked what initiatives the minister intends to take in order to enhance and increase professionals in the cultural heritage sector, to ensure more adequate qualification and professionalism in the cultural sector, as a cornerstone of the country’s socio-economic well-being.

Franceschini responded by premising that “the issues raised are absolutely well-founded, both because it is a matter of giving the possibility of an adequately recognized outlet to all the people who have studied (and there are many of them) and who have professionalized in the cultural heritage sector in our country, and at the same time to give functionality and efficiency to the ministry, which, like the entire public administration in general, but particularly in my sector as well, has a very advanced average age, which requires grafts of young skills, technologies, and new and up-to-date skills.”

“With the 2019-2021 Three-Year Personnel Needs Plan,” Franceschini said, “provision was also made for the recruitment of 250 specialized professionals of non-managerial qualification. They are librarians, archivists, architects, art historians, archaeologists, paleontologists, biologists. Already in 2017-2018, thanks to a competition announced in 2016 (it was a period of hiring freeze in which we managed to have a waiver) one thousand technical officers were recruited, such as archaeologists, architects, art historians, librarians, archivists, promotion and training experts who are already average young people of great quality serving in the Ministry. Decree-Law No. 104, the so-called August Decree, provided for the possibility of holding a special course-competition (this is a novelty for our public administration) to recruit managers with specific technical skills in the areas of protection and enhancement of cultural heritage and landscape, based on a specific collaboration between the Ministry’s heritage school and the National School of Public Administration, and is already being implemented.” Franceschini was referring to a measure contained in the August decree and officially approved in October when the decree was converted into law.

“In addition to this,” Franceschini went on to say, “specific measures inspired by the positive experiences made in Pompeii and other autonomous institutes were adopted in the last decree, the possibility for the Ministry’s peripheral offices to use collaboration contracts for professionals who are experts in the protection of cultural heritage.”

“Is this enough?” wonders Franceschini. “No, absolutely not enough,” the minister concludes. “I could mention the Youth Fund for Culture and other measures. There is a need to graft new professionalism, it is not only the issue of giving an outlet to the many who study in this sector, but also to make the sectors of protection and enhancement of cultural heritage work, which need new energies. I want to say this, as a general theme: the season when hiring in the public administration raised waves of criticism and suspicions of patronage is over; today we need, if we want to keep up with new technologies, with digitization, with the aspiration for simplification, to lower the average age and bring young professionalism into the public administration. There is a great need for this, and I think it will be one of the choices that the government and parliament will have to face in the coming months.”

Franceschini: we need to hire young people in public administration

Warning: the translation into English of the original Italian article was created using automatic tools. We undertake to review all articles, but we do not guarantee the total absence of inaccuracies in the translation due to the program. You can find the original by clicking on the ITA button. If you find any mistake,please contact us.