Minister for Public Administration Renato Brunetta launched, a little over a month ago, what he called a ‘transparency operation‘. The idea is to publish online all the details for the personnel of public bodies, including contact details and rates of abstenteeism and other absences, so that Tizio or Caio (the Italian version of Smith or Jones) can call these people to complain at them.

I’m not convinced that such measures will lead to a great citizen-led (consumer-led?) increase in the efficiency of public administration in Italy, but I do think it could be interesting to social scientists to see the types of people who get nominated to lead these bodies (in other words, are they all party hacks?). At the moment, the operation only extends to the quangos surrounding the ministry – the Scuola Superiore della pubblica amministrazione, Aran [public sector wage-negotiating body], Formez [], Cnipa [the computing service]) – but if it extends also to other bodies it could be interesting, particularly if nomination procedures vary between these ministerial appendages.