Amministrazione performante e sistema dei controlli interni

Since the origins of post-unitary reform processes, analyses, and reconstructions aimed at deepening the needs and development paths for maximizing the functioning of the italian administration have directly or indirectly included the legal institutions of administrative control. Controls have progressively become an essential thematic axis in the characterization of the fundamental contents of the formation of the administrative state and the 'administrative question' of conformity in public organization and administrative activity to the principle of legality. They are seen as a specific legal institution, in which it is possible to interpret both the evolution of the state organization and the relationship between levels of government, as well as the implementing design of the constitutional promise of legality, impartiality, good governance, responsibility of the apparatuses and public employees, especially in the ongoing interpretation of the Constitution and the values and principles embodied in it. The most recent models of administrative control mark the definitive transition from a model of control over acts to a technically more complex and sophisticated system focused on the control of the overall activity of the Administration, considering results and impacts realized on the multidimensional living conditions of the citizens. These are controls related to the use of public resources and, above all, of special interest to this investigation, the highly articulated, multipurpose, and still incompletely explored regime of internal controls on performance. The enduring scientific interest in deepening the evolution of the system of internal controls on performance lies in the fact that it assumes an unprecedented, non-linear, and debated distinctive characterization. This provides an indispensable and rich conceptual field of inquiry to approach the evolutionary changes in the legal system of the Administration according to updated criteria that allow for a unified systematic perspective to frame and update: i) the definitive consolidation of the transition from a limited state to a responsible state, even in the most recent approaches that emphasize its managerial and promotional role in growth, development, cohesion, and thus the well-being of citizens; ii) the overcoming of the exclusive legal relevance of the (legitimate) administrative act in the authority-freedom relationship, and the legal relevance of the real and concrete effects resulting from administrative activity in terms of results - which project the function in the shift from bureaucratic control to managerial control, considering control as a guarantee of an operational composition of public interests and, above all, of the social characteristics of control and its social ends, in the fulfillment by the administration of the duty of good administration and the inescapable duties of solidarity.