Young People and the Public Administration: a multi-voiced landscape – innovation is built from within and from without

70 per cent of those searching for ‘public administration’ online are under 35, but only 6 per cent of civil servants are aged between 18 and 29. Barely 4 per cent of young people believe that the public administration communicates effectively with them (source: YouthinkPA Youth Observatory). This was the backdrop for the afternoon event on 20 October organised by YouthinkPA, the charitable initiative of Lattanzio KIBS. The meeting was hosted by Luiss and opened with a welcome address by Giuseppe Italiano, Deputy Rector for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Skills, Full Professor Department of AI, Data and Decision Sciences Luiss University.

The lenses of change

Youth participation and artificial intelligence were at the heart of the discussion between JELU Consulting - represented by Matthieu Boubeaud and featuring a video contribution from Enrico Palmisano - and Vincenzo Antonelli, Deputy Director of Luiss’s ‘V. Bachelet’ Research Centre. Two questions were posed. What can the university do to ensure that those studying the public administration learn how to design it? For a young civil servant, is it more important to know the regulations or to know how to use AI? On this topic, the second edition of the White Paper ‘Opening the Doors: Artificial Intelligence in the Public Administration’ was previewed.

From the outside: consultancy as a lever for change

The figures presented by Marco De Amicis, Director-General of Confindustria Assoconsult, show that the public administration can also be innovated from the outside. By 2025, management consultancy for the public administration and the healthcare sector will be worth 673 million euros and will be the most dynamic segment of the market, with an average annual growth rate of 18.8 per cent from 2021.
Thus, in an interview with Ezio Lattanzio, Founder of Lattanzio KIBS and Past President of Assoconsult, a world emerged that few young people are familiar with - one where work focuses on public policy and the country’s development.

From within: what makes the public sector an attractive choice

The round-table discussion was chaired by Annachiara Annino, Head of the YouthinkPA Youth Observatory. Antonio Naddeo, President of ARAN; Monica Cecchi, Head of the Technical Secretariat of the Minister for the Public Administration; and Marco Luppi, Member of the Executive Committee of the National Youth Council, discussed the factors driving the sector’s appeal: contracts, career progression, work-life balance, and support for new entrants. When asked what they would say to a recent graduate to convince them to choose the civil service, one of the responses was: “Working for the civil service means working for others”.

The YTPA Thesis Award

The first edition received 117 theses from 39 universities. They reflect the perspectives of young people who often study the civil service from the outside: only one in eight candidates actually works there. One in four, however, does not merely describe it; they propose ways to change it, and many theses anticipated issues that only later emerged in public debate. 

The assessment panel, comprising Giuseppe Italiano, Vincenzo Antonelli and Antonio Naddeo, awarded the prize for the bachelor’s degree category to Tommaso Magnani (Bocconi University) for “Public Administration and the War for Talent: a comparative analysis”. In the category for master’s and doctoral theses, the prize was awarded to Andrea Coppotelli (University of Rome Tor Vergata) for “Open Data in Italian Public Administrations: Context, Opportunities and Prospects”. Special mentions, selected by Massimo Giacomelli, Partner at Lattanzio KIBS, went to Arianna Calderamo (Sapienza University of Rome) and Valentina Rigamonti (Bocconi University).
The ideas emerging from the theses and the discussions will continue to fuel the YouthinkPA community and the journey towards the second edition of the Award.

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