Labour market and social policy in Italy. Challenges and changes

Eight years after the outbreak of the financial crisis, Italy has still to cope with and overcome a plethora of economic and social challenges. On top of this, it faces an unfavourable demographic structure and severe disparities between its northern and southern regions. Some promising reforms have recently been enacted, specifically targeting poverty and social exclusion. However, much more remains to be done on the way towards greater economic stability and widely shared prosperity

La valutazione e il controllo strategico

La funzione di valutazione e controllo strategico può contare su ben poche esperienze nella pubblica amministrazione italiana; né, d’altra parte, può essere fatto un riferimento significativo verso le applicazioni riscontrabili nel settore privato, date le peculiarità del settore pubblico e alla luce delle motivazioni che saranno affrontate nel prossimo paragrafo. La tesi che si intende sostenere è che la natura della funzione di valutazione e controllo strategico è quella di supportare il vertice politico nella valutazione delle politiche e nello sviluppo di meccanismi e strumenti per l’attuazione di una politica amministrativa. In altre parole, nella costruzione di processi di apprendimento istituzionale in grado di favorire i processi di trattamento dei problemi collettivi e il pilotaggio degli apparati nella gestione delle politiche. Obiettivo del capitolo è quindi quello di definire i contenuti della funzione sulla base dei quali tentare una prima individuazione degli strumenti e delle modalità organizzative utilizzabili a tale scopo. Il punto di partenza (primo paragrafo) è costituito dalla riflessione sulla distinzione tra politica e amministrazione; ciò permette di delineare i compiti specifici del vertice politico, nell’ambito dei quali individuare i riferimenti per la costruzione della funzione di valutazione e controllo strategico. Il secondo paragrafo è dedicato alla discussione dei contenuti della funzione di pianificazione e controllo strategico, come complesso di attività a supporto dei compiti del vertice politico. Il terzo paragrafo si occupa, invece, degli aspetti metodologici e degli strumenti utilizzabili per la valutazione delle politiche. Infine, il quarto paragrafo fornisce alcune indicazioni per l’organizzazione della funzione

Workers 4.0: skills, profiles and jobs in different business functions

The term “Industry 4.0” refers to a new production paradigm, radically different from the previous ones because of its global scope and its certain (if not clearly defined) impact on social, economic and political structures. The key characteristics of the Industry 4.0 includes the integration of electronics and computer science observed in machine to machine communication (nowadays known as the Industrial Internet of Things), the possibilities opened up by cloud computing, the opportunities to explore big data, and augmented and/or virtual reality made possible by the past investments in computer games. The need to manage the use of these new technologies is likely to bring about a radical change in the design of products, how they are produced and, concomitantly, the organisation of work. This suggests that consideration needs to be given to the skills needs that are likely to arise. While predicting emerging skills needs from Industry 4.0 is still in its infancy, it is vitally important that steps are made to identifying those skills which people will need in the future. This chapter builds upon the previous one by Fantoni and his colleagues to: (i) Identify where, according to the Porter value-chain model, the effects of Industry 4.0 will take place; and (ii) Building on (i) identify the basic competences associated with the emerging job profiles resulting from Industry 4.0. After having identified and clustered competences by using text mining techniques, the chapter analyses how competences are distributed among company functions (i.e. marketing, sales, production, design, R&D, maintenance, etc.). Data are drawn from Scopus – the abstract and citation database – and O*NET. These provide information on emerging job/professional profiles and associated skill profiles respectively. Porter’s value-chain describes the structure of an organisation as a limited set of processes; it is divided into nine main processes, five primary and four supports. The primary processes are those which directly contribute to the creation of output, while the supporting ones are necessary for the latter to be produced. Using this model it is possible to identify the functions within organisations most affected by Industry 4.0. The result is a matrix that cross-classifies workers’ Industry 4.0 job profiles by business functions. From the analysis it is possible to notice not only where the new skills will have a particular impact, but also which are the professional profiles associated with them and in which business area they will contribute most

Prediction of Kinetic-parameters For Hydrogen Abstraction Reactions

This paper deals with an effective method for the prediction of kinetic parameters of H-abstraction reactions from hydrocarbon species. The prediction of the reactivity of complex molecules is obtained starting from a large set of well defined experimental rate values for small radicals and molecules as a basis, making use of proper analogy rules and a limited number of reference kinetic parameters. This empirical method allows generalization and extension of previous work. Most of the predicted values agree reasonably well with literature rate constants, when available. These values can be useful when modeling large kinetic schemes with thousands of reactions (like pyrolysis, oxidation and chlorination of higher hydrocarbons), where rather than defining the real values for all the kinetic parameters, it is more important to properly define the relative importance of different reaction channels

Riformare la Pubblica Amministrazione. Italia, Gran Bretagna, Spagna, Stati Uniti

Luci e ombre del processo di riforma della Pubblica Amministrazione sono l'oggetto del volume, in cui alcuni tra i più importanti esperti della materia affrontano criticamente gli esiti del dibattito e l’evoluzione normativa.- Indice #6- Prima Parte Il caso italiano #12- I caratteri generali del processo di riforma, Bruno Dente #14- L’organizzazione centrale della Pubblica Amministrazione nell’XI legislatura: note intorno al processo di riforma, Marco Cammelli #40- Un bilancio del passato e un’agenda per il futuro: il funzionamento e le procedure della P.A. in Italia, Domenico Sorace #58- Il personale pubblico fra continuità e sviluppo,Giovanni Costa #92- La pubblica amministrazione e i cittadini, Giandomenico Falcon #120- Il difficile mestiere di ministro della Funzione pubblica, Sabino Cassese #146- L’amministrazione nell’XI legislatura, Chiara Lacava e Giancarlo Vecchi #168- Seconda Parte Il confronto sulle riforme in Gran Bretagna, Spagna e Stati Uniti #324- Reinventare Whitehall, 1979/94: sviluppare lo stato vuoto?, Rod A. W. Rhodes #326- La modernizzazione della Pubblica Amministrazione in Spagna, Joan Subirats #364- La riforma del governo americano: la burocrazia e oltre, B. Guy Peters #39

Detailed kinetic mechanism of gas-phase reactions of volatiles released from biomass pyrolysis

Comprehensive chemical models to describe the behavior of biomass pyrolysis, gasification and combustion are crucial for the simulation and design of thermochemical processes of ligno-cellulosic materials. Despite this importance, reliable and predictive models are still not well known. The original aspect of this work is to present a comprehensive and predictive model of pyrolysis, gasification, and combustion, starting from biomass characterization, through the description of released volatiles at the particle scale, until the effect of the secondary gas-phase reactions at the reactor scale. All these aspects can play a relevant role in the biomass thermo-valorization processes. Most of released species from biomass devolatilization are oxygenated hydrocarbons. This study aims at identifying some reference rate parameters, based on analogy and thermochemistry rules, for the different reaction classes. Once rate rules are defined, they allow an easy extension to analogous compounds. In this way, the kinetic mechanism already developed for jet and diesel fuels is extended to the new tar species released by biomasses. Despite unavoidable approximations when the interest is also at the reactor scale, this model is the only one, to our knowledge, able to describe the whole process from biomass to final products, in a predictive and satisfactory way

Multilevel policy implementation and the where of learning: the case of the information system for school buildings in Italy

The paper builds on the case of the design and implementation of the National Information System for School Buildings in Italy. The project is one of digitalisation of the public sector and involves several layers of territorial governments (the State Department for Education, regional and local governments) and ICT experts, and is becoming a tool for policy making in the field. Nonetheless, the programme was initially designed with a top-down approach immediately stuck. Its effective implementation only took place some years later by downsizing policy design and allowing regions to implement those digital solutions which, in the meanwhile, had been designed and implemented from the bottom-up. The paper draws from the case study theoretical considerations about the importance of where policy learning happens and the strategies that policy makers may adopt in case of policy failure in order to re-establish the conditions for effectiveness