Italy

In recent years, international development co-operation has undergone a transition from a conventional donor-recipient model to a partnership-centred approach, including with regions and cities. Friuli Venezia Giulia, a small region in north-eastern Italy with extensive policy autonomy, has been active in international co-operation and is seeking to get more out of its actions both for the region and with its co-operation partners around the world. This paper evaluates its strategy on international partnership and co-operation and proposes recommendations, including more targeted initiatives that leverage the expertise of the region for greater impact in partner countries and for local benefits.

The Rethinking Regional Attractiveness in the New Global Environment report highlights lessons learned from multiple regional case studies from five EU countries (Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden), additional work with Latin American and Caribbean regions, and a series of webinars and one-on-one dialogues on rethinking regional attractiveness. The OECD’s innovative multidimensional approach to assessing regional attractiveness considers global engagement beyond international connections and economic factors alone. The methodology considers more than 50 indicators to develop regional attractiveness profiles covering six domains of attractiveness: economic attraction, connectedness, visitor appeal, natural environment, resident well-being, and land-use and housing. The report helps regional and national policy makers to understand how individual regions fare in a new global environment that continues to deal with the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, compounded by the consequences of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and existing megatrends – all of which produce asymmetric impacts within and between countries and regions – and identify the policy levers available to enhance their attractiveness to the international target groups of investors, talent, and visitors. It also considers the need to co-ordinate across levels of government, across policy fields, and with private stakeholders, and highlights good practices to implement regional attractiveness policies.

In the face of what has increasingly been referred to as an ongoing 'permacrisis', governments must cope with and respond to emerging threats while already grappling with longstanding issues such as climate change, digital disruption and low levels of trust. In this context, understanding new approaches and spreading successful ideas has never been more important. To promote this, the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) has analysed 1 084 innovative initiatives from 94 countries to derive and understand novel government practices. The report discusses four key trends: 1) new forms of accountability for a new era of government, 2) new approaches to care, 3) new methods for preserving identities and strengthening equity and 4) new ways of engaging citizens and residents. Ten case studies and dozens of supporting examples illustrate these trends.

This report provides an overview of green infrastructure planning and the use of nature-based solutions in Italy. It identifies key challenges and trade-offs and provides recommendations to promote their uptake across the different levels of government. The report also analyses four case studies that have been identified in agreement with the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport: the Green Node in Bari, the metro line M4 in Milan, the Ridracoli Dam in Emilia-Romagna, and the railway line Bicocca-Catenanuova.

In 2017, Italy became the first country in the OECD to link well-being indicators to economic and budget programming in government. The achievement was but one milestone in the country’s development of its Equitable and Sustainable Well-being framework. The Treasury Department of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, in conjunction with the National Institute of Statistics, has continued to develop the framework since then. This Action Plan contributes to that development by proposing ways to progress the integration of equitable and sustainable well-being indicators into policy development and budgeting. The Action Plan contributed to a consultation process with government ministries and stakeholders in 2022 by identifying a range of actions the government could consider in the near and medium term to achieve that integration outcome.

Italy's National Action Plan for Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development (PCSD) brings together the institutional mechanisms, evaluation frameworks and coherence tools needed to integrate sustainable development into government policy making. This Action Plan shows how to streamline existing mechanisms to improve policy coherence across levels of government and to involve civil society more closely in policy formulation. It also suggests how to make the most of complementarities across existing data collection efforts. The Action Plan includes suggestions for better linking mandates across departments and levels of government to avoid overlap and make greater progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Finally, it provides targets and measurable processes for each action to help track progress.

Around one-third of the European Union’s budget is dedicated to cohesion policy, which promotes and supports the overall harmonious development of its Member States and regions. The success of this investment relies on effective partnerships among governments, stakeholders, and citizens. Citizens have a key role to play in shaping decisions on public investment, as well as in making public authorities more transparent and accountable. From July 2020-December 2021, the European Commission and the OECD partnered to explore how five authorities across Europe could place citizens at the centre of their investment decisions. This report summarises lessons learned throughout this project and, particularly, the results of applying innovative citizen participation methods to cohesion policy more broadly.

To make the most of its longstanding tradition of manufacturing and innovation, Piedmont, Italy, is undertaking a process of industrial transition, the success of which may be linked to an updated approach to its regional innovation policy. This should include promoting technology and non-technology driven innovation, building the innovation competences of micro- and small enterprises in addition to medium and large ones, better connecting regional innovation actors, and ensuring that innovation contributes to the region’s broader development goals such as sustainable regional development. It also requires diversifying the role of Piedmont’s innovation clusters and reinforcing the multi-level governance system for innovation policy. This report features a comparative perspective of the trends, challenges and opportunities for innovation-led growth in Piedmont, and highlights how Piedmont could build a dynamic innovation ecosystem based on its smart specialisation strategy, a fresh perspective on innovation, and future-oriented innovation cluster organisations. The report provides actionable recommendations and offers insights into making the most of innovation policy as a lever for place-based regional development.

Italy’s start-up visa aims to make the national start-up ecosystem more easily accessible to foreign talent, rich with knowledge and skills, and more integrated into global markets. Government reports show that the programme has not yet achieved a critical scale. The analysis of similar initiatives in Chile, France, Ireland and Portugal identifies five gateways for attracting more foreign entrepreneurs, such as an effective policy outreach, smooth inter-institutional co-operation across the migratory process, and the provision of sound support services for a 'soft landing' of entrepreneurs upon arrival. These takeaways may also inform new talent attraction policies targeting remote workers, an expanding group in the context of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Industries and businesses are becoming increasingly digital, and the COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated this trend. Regulators around the world are also experimenting with data-driven tools to apply and enforce rules in a more agile and targeted way. This report maps out several efforts undertaken jointly by the OECD and Italian regulators to develop and use artificial intelligence and machine learning tools in regulatory inspections and enforcement. It provides unique insights into the background processes and structures required for digital tools to perform predictive modelling, risk analysis and classification. It also highlights the challenges such tools bring, both in specific regulatory areas and to the broader goals of regulatory systems.