With the end of Covid, citizens also began to frequent public offices again and, consequently, waiting times at the counters began to increase again.
Compared to before the advent of the pandemic - according to data from the CGIA of Mestre - the productivity levels of many public administrations are still below the threshold so much so that for 2.5 million citizens the queues are longer.
In 2023, over 500 thousand public employees were still working smart - recalls the CGIA - not to mention that in recent years the number of those who retired without being replaced by a new hire has continued to increase.
Therefore, since 2023, Italians have returned to frequenting public offices, but, for a whole series of reasons, the latter have not yet recovered optimal performance.
Therefore, a problem has resurfaced that we had removed in recent years: in local health authorities and municipalities, especially in the South, the queues at the counters have started to get longer again and older people are waiting longer.
Between 2021, the year in which the pandemic crisis was in full swing, and 2023, the first post-Covid year, the people who went to an ASL increased by 12.9% (+ 2,246,000 people), while those in waiting for more than 20 minutes increased by 24.4% (+1,926,000 people).
Again in the same period of time, those who had to physically interface with the registry office of their municipality increased by 13.4% (+1,976,000 people), while the wait lasted beyond 20 minutes for the 14th, 1% of respondents (+553,000 people).
The CGIA therefore estimates with good approximation that in 2023, compared to 2021, among all the citizens who had to go to a public counter (of an ASL or the municipal registry office) and waited more than 20 minutes, almost 2, 5 million (17.3% of the total) saw waiting times lengthen further.
Public administration (PA) is also a big problem for SMEs.
For more than 8 out of 10 entrepreneurs, in fact, the PA forces companies to undergo very complicated administrative procedures.
Excluding France, no other Euro Area country recorded such negative sentiment as Italy.
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