64
NAŠE GOSPODARSTVO / OUR ECONOMY Vol. 68 No. 1 / March 2022
The Simplification of Public 
Administration: A Managerial 
Perspective
Guido Modugno
University of Trieste, Italy
guido.modugno@deams.units.it
Michele Bertoni
University of Trieste, Italy
michele.bertoni@deams.units.it
Bruno De Rosa
University of Trieste, Italy
bruno.derosa@deams.units.it
Abstract 
The paper addresses the issue of complexity in the administrative processes 
of public institutions: in particular, accounting routines and processes are 
examined. Back-office activities, although having a mere supporting role 
in the delivery of public services, absorb a relevant part of the resources 
of public institutions. The aim of the paper is to analyse the factors that 
contribute to the enhancement of complexity of these activities. The paper 
is based on an in-depth analysis of two Italian public organisations: a 
university and an ASP (agency for services to persons). Italy is an interesting 
context since simplification policies have been adopted in the country at 
central government level and in specific sectors of public administration, 
however, at the institutional level, simplification initiatives depend on the 
initiative of the single organisation. The cases described in this paper show 
that complexity stems from the need for inspectory controls (which is typical 
of the law) as well as from the volume of information requested (which is 
typical of management studies) for different stakeholders and at different, yet 
correlated, levels. The paper suggests that public management scholars have 
the opportunity and the burden of a contribution in this field.
Keywords: simplification, support activities, processes, public administration, 
stakeholders
Introduction and Purpose of the Paper
As a consequence of neoliberal policies, in many countries the direct intervention 
of public administration in the delivery of services to taxpayers has narrowed: 
public institutions have taken off the role of service providers, reserving themselves 
regulatory and coordination functions. A vision of an ’enabling state’ has emerged, 
where, at the central and local levels, the state plans and (at least partly) finances 
NAŠE GOSPODARSTVO
OUR ECONOMY
Vol. 68 No. 1 2022
pp. 64–76
ORIGINAL SCIENTIFIC PAPER
RECEIVED: JUNE 2021
REVISED: FEBRUARY 2022
ACCEPTED: FEBRUARY 2022
DOI: 10.2478/ngoe-2022-0006
UDK: 35:005.4(450)
JEL: M41, M48
Citation:  Modugno, G., Bertoni, M., & 
De Rosa, B.  (2022). The Simplification 
of Public Administration: A 
Managerial Perspective. Naše 
Gospodarstvo/Our Economy, 68(1), 
64-76. 
DOI: 10.2478/ngoe-2022-0006.
This work is licensed under a 
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-
Commercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 
International License.

65
 
Guido Modugno, Michele Bertoni, Bruno De Rosa: The Simplification of Public Administration: A Managerial Perspective
public services, but where provision is located within the 
independent sector – comprising both the voluntary and 
community sectors and the for-profit sector (Osborne & Mc 
Laughlin, 2005). With the rise in this model, the problem of 
efficiency in public organisations has shifted from the phase 
of service provision to administrative processes – the defini-
tion of rules and contracts – and so-called support activities 
(i.e. planning, budgeting, accounting and reporting, human 
resource management, procurement, and facility manage-
ment). Even in organisations that deliver services to citizens, 
such as hospitals and universities, support activities take up 
a considerable volume of resources. Thus, the legitimacy of 
public institutions in the eyes of stakeholders increasingly 
depends on efficiency and effectiveness in these activities. 
The issue of effectiveness has stimulated an important area 
of academic research in public management literature in the 
last 30 years, giving rise to the research stream on perfor-
mance measurement and management (Bouckaert & Peters, 
2002; Bouckaert & Halligan, 2007; V an Dooren et al., 2015). 
The debate on efficiency of public institutions has focused 
on cost measurement and on the need for a shift from cash to 
accrual accounting. This paper, however, considers that the 
choice of the accounting system does not exhaust the issue 
of efficiency: measuring the costs of public services does 
not necessarily make public institutions more efficient. As 
observed by Moore (1995, p.212): ‘to keep an organisation 
performing well, managers must use and adjust their admin-
istrative systems: their structures, policy-making processes, 
personnel systems and control mechanisms. Operational 
managers may have to make changes in these systems to 
increase productivity, improve the quality of reporting to 
overseers… Thus, managers must often make administrative 
innovations…’. Simplification of administrative processes 
is considered one of the most urgent directions of innova-
tion: the focus in this paper is on the factors that hinder sim-
plification to the detriment of efficiency and effectiveness. 
Consistent with vast amounts of literature in management 
and managerial accounting, it is considered that complexity 
implies the use of resources. When increased complexi-
ty does not translate into additional value creation for the 
customer or user, it is a source of inefficiencies (Kaplan & 
Anderson, 2007), and ineffectiveness. 
This paper explores the issue of simplification of support ac-
tivities, in particular, accounting routines at the institutional 
level. To date, public financial management literature has 
focused on the search for the best accounting system, mainly 
comparing the benefits and the downsides of two competing 
accounting systems – cash accounting and accrual account-
ing (Carlin TM, 2005; Paulsson G., 2006; Christensen M., 
2007; Lapsley et al. 2009; Agasisti et al. 2015; Cohen et al. 
2021). Moreover, the debate on efficiency in public man-
agement studies has often been described as an attempt to 
determine the most appropriate accounting system for cost 
control. The organisational dimension of the accounting 
system has thus not always received adequate consideration. 
In particular, there are still not have enough studies on the 
causes and effects of complexity in support activities. This 
aim of this paper is to fill this gap; therefore its focus is 
not on which accounting system better fits the purposes of 
public administration, but rather on what activities are nec-
essary to produce and use accounting information, and what 
their impact is on the organisation as a whole. To this end, 
two cases of complexity-driven inefficiencies are considered 
in two Italian public organisations. 
To date, researchers of administrative law have been the 
leading players in the debate surrounding the simplification 
of administration. From a different perspective, econometrics 
considers the overlapping issue of efficiency and effective-
ness of institutions (Agasisti, 2017; De Witte & Lopez Torres, 
2017). Both aspects have mainly been studied at the field 
level. This paper instead adopts a managerial perspective, 
examining the issue of simplification at the institutional level. 
The cases discussed in the paper allow light to be shed on 
the determinants and consequences of complexity. Moreover, 
it demonstrates that the simplification of administrative 
processes also affects the value received by different stake-
holders. In other words, simplification of support activities 
may also enhance effectiveness. The argument herein is ex-
ploratory and tentative: the paper represents a call for future 
research, more than a research report of an orthodox kind.
This paper is organised as follows: Section 2 considers the 
existing literature on simplification of administrative pro-
cesses and the method of the research. The methodology 
is described in Section 3, while the subsequent sections 
examine the case studies (4), discuss the findings, and draw 
conclusions (5).
Literature Review
The simplification of administrative processes is a multifac-
eted topic: it overlaps the broader theme of the ‘moderni-
sation’ of public administration, while also intersecting the 
issues of efficiency and effectiveness. The simplification 
of administration is by no means a new theme: for over a 
decade, it has been a keyword in terms of both to the evo-
lution of the legislative system and the relation between 
citizens and public administration. According to Ferrari 
(2018), simplification is ‘a kind of slogan that summaris-
es a series of trends all related to the democratic principle 
exalted by a new context of participation and translated 
into cooperative-contractual formulas and local autonomy, 
which varies in degree from country to country depending 

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NAŠE GOSPODARSTVO / OUR ECONOMY Vol. 68 No. 1 / March 2022
on the level of vertical separation of power, horizontal sub-
sidiarity (…), competition and the market, efficiency which 
is not just enterprise-oriented but is tempered by the need for 
forms of solidarity…’.
Given the multifaceted nature of the topic, it has been 
considered from various perspectives in several research 
fields. First, simplification has been analysed in extensive 
political science and law literature (i.e. administrative law 
and fiscal law). This depends on the fact that what is pre-
sented as ‘bureaucratic degeneration’ is, in reality, a mul-
tiplication of rules. From this perspective, simplification is 
meant as a ‘reduction of the rules’, aimed at producing both 
greater freedom of economic initiative and savings in public 
spending (Merloni & Pioggia, 2018). According to Travi 
(2018), the search for new tools that can reduce the impact 
of plentiful and not proportionate regulations on citizens 
has been dragging on for almost 20 years now. During this 
period, simplification measures both of general (i.e. referring 
to an indistinct number of administrative proceedings) and 
of punctual character (referring to individual proceedings) 
have been tried out. 
The OECD Regulatory Policy Division has been conducting 
work on the simplification of administration since 2002. Ac-
cording to the OECD analysis, excessive regulatory burdens 
limit initiative, create possibilities for corruption and encour-
age the growth of an informal economy. However, regulatory 
burdens have tended to grow in number and complexity: the 
quantitative targets of administrative burden defined by all 
27 EU member states and many other OECD countries have 
not been met. The increased complexity is attributed to the 
governments’ need to obtain more information to implement 
their policies and target their regulations and instruments on 
more specific issues and populations. Citizens and compa-
nies, meanwhile, demand regulations that are efficient and 
cost-effective in achieving their goals, easily accessible 
and easy to understand. Those that must comply with reg-
ulations must be able to obtain information and guidance 
on what they need to do to meet the compliance require-
ments imposed on them. (OECD, 2011). The most common 
examples of simplification policies are: procedural simplifi-
cation (Travi et al. 2018), in order to reduce fulfilments for 
citizens and businesses (e.g. the creation of one-stop shops 
(OSS)); managing the stock of legislation in order to make it 
more easily accessible; simplification of fiscal rules and tax 
obligations; a reduction in paper documents. Rixer (2015) 
made a catalogue of the simplification measures taken by the 
government in Hungary: according to his analysis, measures 
relating to the integration and accessibility of administrative 
bodies have been successful, while linguistic simplification 
has not. Khan (1989) considers administrative simplification 
in Pakistan. He finds that six types of strategy of administra-
tive simplification can be adopted: escapism (i.e. minimising 
governments’ involvement in social and economic matters) 
and reduction of the bureaucratic behaviour of public 
servants through simplification of rules, accountability, 
organisational design, technology, and a change in the atti-
tudes of members of administrative organisations. Regonini 
(2016) considers the factors that hinder the simplification of 
administration in Italy: she finds that the legal language, the 
priority given by officers to self-defence over the objectives 
of the organisation and the existence of conflicting interests 
between public institutions and the beneficiaries of simplifi-
cation are the main obstacles to effective simplification. 
Despite the popularity of administrative simplification and 
administrative burden reduction programmes among civil 
servants and politicians, the perception by those who should 
mainly benefit from such programmes, businesses and/or 
citizens is below expectations. 
This literature stream mainly considers the simplification 
of administration in regard to the relation of public admin-
istration with other subjects, i.e. citizens and businesses 
(Gobba, 2020). However, the daily experience of public 
servants shows that simplification also presents a significant 
issue within public institutions as well as in relations among 
public organisations. Among the reforms aimed at reducing 
complexity within the public sector are a reduction in the 
number of public bodies (e.g. a reduction in the number of 
municipalities in Greece, Denmark, Ireland, Albania) or of 
governmental levels (e.g. the case of ‘provinces’ in Italy). 
From this perspective, simplification stems from reforms of 
structural aspects of the public realm, thus implying differ-
ent distribution of power and functions. 
An interesting example of simplification policy at field level 
is the ‘Reduction of bureaucracy for public sector staff’ initi-
ative by the National Audit Office (NAO) in the UK (2009). 
The aim of the report was to provide an overview of the 
government’s approach to reducing bureaucracy generated 
by regulation through a range of measures ‘such as reporting 
against targets, complying with service standards, respond-
ing to data requests and receiving inspection visits’ (NAO, 
2009). The document highlights that excessive requests for 
data from central government and management at a local 
level give rise to inefficiency in front-line activities. Support 
activities such as accounting and HR management were not 
analysed. 
At an organisational level, simplification is still relative-
ly unexplored. Literature on public management does 
not consider simplification in itself, rather the focus is on 
methods to enhance and measure efficiency and effec-
tiveness such as business process reengineering (BPR), 
performance measurement, performance management and 
the accounting system. BPR is viewed as a comprehensive 

67
 
Guido Modugno, Michele Bertoni, Bruno De Rosa: The Simplification of Public Administration: A Managerial Perspective
and effective way for organisations to enhance efficiency 
(Rinaldi et al., 2014). Studies on BPR often adopt a norma-
tive approach and a technical point of view, with particular 
emphasis on the intensive use of ICT. However, re-engi-
neering is much more than this: it implies the reinventing of 
government by reforming bureaucracy through restructuring 
and revitalisation of government processes. Solutions that 
characterise the New Public Management rhetoric are also 
mentioned as constitutive elements of BPR initiatives in 
the public sector: the enhancement of government entrepre-
neurship, the introduction of competitive spirit and the im-
provement of performance measurement (Halachmi, 1995). 
Thus, re-engineering is a call for a change of perspective 
as opposed to process modification or improvement: this 
intrinsically groundbreaking nature of BPR may present an 
obstacle to its implementation in the public sector, consid-
ering the incremental nature of government policy-making. 
Another obstacle to the introduction of BPR in the public 
sector may derive from resistance to change among public 
servants: radical changes stimulated by BPR imply that em-
ployees learn new skills and are moved to new positions that 
require more flexibility and cross-functional competencies 
(Halachmi, 1995). This study is not specifically focused 
on taking stock of the findings of BPR studies in public 
administration, however, they at least have the merit of 
having focused attention on the pitfalls of acting according 
to well-rooted habits.
This aim of this paper is to contribute to the debate on 
simplification in public administration by considering this 
issue from a different perspective. Such literature focuses on 
frontline activities, considering that the main aim of simpli-
fication is to improve service provision and accessibility. In 
this paper, however, the authors have considered the routines 
that feed the accounting system, the latter being a support 
activity according to the value chain model (M.Porter, 
1985). Moreover, to date, simplification has mainly been 
considered at field and public sector levels, whereas this 
analysis covers the institutional level. 
To date, the topic of the simplification of accounting proce-
dures has not been considered at all in literature on the topic 
of public management. Instead, researchers’ attention has 
been catalysed by the shift from cash-based to accrual-based 
accounting propitiated by New Public Management (NP-
M)-inspired policies. Using a mostly technical approach, 
researchers have concentrated on the adequacy of accrual 
accounting for public institutions and in the move toward 
International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS) 
(Guthrie, 1998; Carlin,2005; Paulsson, 2006; Christensen 
M., 2007; Christiaens & Rommel, 2008; Lapsley et al. 2009; 
Jagalla et al. 2011; Agasisti et al. 2015; Cohen et al., 2021). 
In summary, there are three main advantages of moving 
from cash accounting to accrual accounting: increased 
transparency of information, better potential for resource 
allocation, and more efficiency, thanks to the possibility of 
being able to measure the cost of services (Carlin, 2005). 
However, the shift to accrual accounting per se does not 
improve efficiency, rather the complexity of accrual-based 
systems may give rise to complexity and inefficiencies. 
In contrast, in terms of routines and processes, accounting 
research has thus far focused on managerial accounting 
practices. An important body of literature considers the 
process of emergence and change of management account-
ing routines: in particular, the institutional theory (van der 
Steen, 2011) and the contingency theory have been adopted 
to explain how management accounting practices change. 
There is a lack of knowledge on how public organisations 
develop the routines and processes of the financial account-
ing system and how the resulting efficiency contributes to 
the creation of public value. This can be ascribed to the less 
discretional nature of financial accounting, which is strongly 
influenced by rules and principles. 
This paper considers the routines and processes adopted by 
two public institutions in their budgeting, accounting and 
reporting system. According to the value chain model (M. 
Porter, 1985), accounting is a support activity. Routines are 
interpreted as a set of recurrent, situated practices. Burns 
and Scapens (2000) define routines as ‘the way things are 
actually done’ and as ‘procedures habitually in use’. Thus, 
while a procedure may reflect the way a one-off activity is 
performed, routines are characterised by repetition. For the 
purposes of this paper, however, the concept of ‘procedure’ 
is used as a synonym for routine. The idea of procedure also 
somewhat overlaps with the concept of process; however, 
two aspects allow these concepts to be distinguished. Ac-
cording to ISO 9001 (2015), a process is ‘a set of related or 
interacting activities, which transform inputs into outputs’, 
while a procedure is ‘a specific way to carry out an activity 
or a process’. Thus, two main differences between proce-
dures and processes can be identified. First, procedures are 
based on rules that are either developed internally (i.e. by 
the organisation itself) or are imposed by third parties: these 
rules define how the process must be carried out. However, 
one process may be accomplished according to different 
procedures. Second, a procedure can be narrower than a 
process: in fact, a procedure can refer to a single activity, 
while a process is a set of related activities.
The functioning of the accounting system, regardless of 
whether it is cash- or accrual-based, implies the carrying out 
of activities (‘how things are actually done’). Activities give 
rise to costs. There is a lack of knowledge on what the sources 
of inefficiencies are in the support activities performed in 
public institutions as well as on the possible strategies to 
improve efficiency in this area. It can be assumed that there 

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NAŠE GOSPODARSTVO / OUR ECONOMY Vol. 68 No. 1 / March 2022
is a direct relation between the complexity of procedures 
and their cost: this assumption underlies a significant part of 
the research in the area of management accounting (Cooper 
and Kaplan, 1988). Thus, the simplification of processes and 
routines would reasonably enhance efficiency.
Notwithstanding the relevance attributed to simplification, 
the processes and the routines adopted in support activities 
have often become more and more complex: budgeting, ac-
counting, reporting and auditing activities reflect this trend. 
A recent study by the Policy Department for Structural and 
Cohesion Policies of the European Parliament on the sim-
plification of procedures within the European Structural and 
Investment Funds confirms that ‘the problem is essentially 
one of the costs incurred in the process of financial control 
and audit versus the benefits this produces’ and that ‘at the 
present moment, significant simplification has yet to be 
realised’ (Ferry & Polverari, 2018). The authors of this paper 
argue that researchers in public management may play an 
important role in the definition of simplification strategies 
for processes and routines at the institutional and infra-in-
stitutional level.
Methodology
The paper is based on an in-depth analysis of two Italian 
public organisations: a university and an ASP (agency for 
services to persons). 
Italy provides a favourable context for the analysis of the 
complexity of internal processes of public institutions: the 
country introduced several reforms inspired by New Public 
Management and laws aimed at simplifying public adminis-
tration. The results, however, are controversial. 
NPM-inspired reforms led to a marked increase in the 
adoption of contracting-out, the introduction of performance 
management systems (with legislative decrees No. 269/1999 
and No. 150/2009), and the adoption of accrual accounting in 
several sectors of public administration. Performance-linked 
rewards have also appeared in the management of human re-
sources (legislative decrees No. 150/2009 and No. 74/2017). 
These reforms were also applied to Higher Education, a 
sector relevant to this research, due to one of the case studies 
that the authors have chosen to describe. In particular, there 
have been two relevant reforms in Higher Education, both 
inspired by NPM policies. The first consisted of the intro-
duction of new governance models for universities, the 
adoption of accrual accounting, and new rules for hiring pro-
fessors (law No. 240/2010). The second reform related to the 
adoption of a performance-based funding system that has 
remarkably increased the sector’s competitive dynamics. 
Simplification policies mainly relate to the organisation 
and functioning of the State: a reduction in the number of 
government cabinets, competencies being transferred from 
central to local governments, and rationalisation of adminis-
tration levels with the elimination of intermediate forms of 
local governments (known as ‘provinces’). One of the con-
sequences of the deep political crisis of the early 1990s was 
a marked swing towards decentralisation (‘decentramento’), 
both of a political and an administrative kind (Pollitt & 
Bouckaert, 2011). Invoking the principle of ‘subsidiarity’, 
many functions were transferred to the regional and local 
levels. This was reinforced by a new constitutional law 
in 2001. Moreover, simplification implied the creation of 
executive agencies that were supposed to operate through 
performance contracts and the widespread introduction of 
‘one-stop shops’ for businesses (Ongaro, 2004). 
Italy, however, has a long tradition of a formalistic and bu-
reaucratic approach to public administration: the above-men-
tioned reforms were introduced in an unfavourable context. 
The working environment of today’s government officials, 
even in the face of NPM, remains bureaucratic rather than 
‘post-bureaucratic’ (Parker and Bradley 2004). In this sense, 
Italy represents an interesting case. The central government 
level and specific sectors of public administration have 
shown interest in simplification policies, however, the imple-
mentation of such policies within single public institutions 
has not been solicited. The simplification process should not 
stop at the rationalisation of the political and administrative 
system of the country. Simplification should also involve 
the operating processes within organisations, however, in 
reality, to date there have been few investigations into this 
aspect. The aim of this paper is to study the complexity of 
the processes at the institutional level, therefore, the authors 
chose to consider routines related to support activities 
because they represent the prevailing activities performed 
by public institutions. 
The aim of this analysis is to investigate the causes of com-
plexity in support activities and their consequences on effi-
ciency and effectiveness. To this end, the authors decided 
to focus on accounting procedures, since the planning, 
accounting and reporting system of public institutions was 
(and still is) among those most involved in regulatory in-
terventions aimed at increasing efficiency and orientation 
to results. The aim of the reforms in this was to improve 
cost control, the transparency of financial reports, and the 
accountability of public managers through a comparison 
between the resources used and results. The reforms have 
mostly focused on technical aspects: contents and layout of 
the budget, base of the accounting system, layout of the fi-
nancial reports, methodology of defining and measuring ob-
jectives. The design of the procedures that feed the account-
ing system is left to the initiative of the individual entity. 

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Guido Modugno, Michele Bertoni, Bruno De Rosa: The Simplification of Public Administration: A Managerial Perspective
The accounting system represents a typical example of how 
the application of rules, inspired by the rhetoric of efficiency 
and effectiveness, is imposed in contexts characterised by 
attention to compliance with the rules. For the purposes of 
this paper, the authors decided to consider two institutions 
in two different sectors that are characterised by different 
accounting systems: the university adopts an accrual-based 
system, while the ASP (that provides welfare services) still 
uses commitment accounting. This aim of this choice is to 
avoid the risk of recognising elements of complexity that 
are particular to one specific sector or that depend on the 
adoption of a specific accounting base.  
The university involved was immediately available to provide 
evidence for the analysis, having started its own path of sim-
plification, therefore, the topic had already been raised within 
the institution. In November 2019 the university launched 
an initiative to simplify its internal procedures: a working 
group was set up with the participation of 11 members of the 
administrative staff and the authors. The working group met 
eight times between November 2019 and April 2020 and for-
mulated a proposal for the simplification of two procedures. 
The meetings lasted an average of two hours and minutes 
were drawn up for each meeting. The process was interrupted 
due to the COVID-19 pandemic and because the introduction 
of new accounting routines would have only been possible 
with a broader modification of the organisation’s adminis-
trative accounting regulation. This analysis is based on the 
participation at the meetings and the minutes produced by the 
administrative staff after each meeting. 
In the ASP, the authors conducted three interviews with 
the employees of the accounting department of the insti-
tution between July and September 2020, with the aim of 
gathering evidence of complexity and inefficiencies in the 
accounting routines. Each interview lasted about one hour. 
The interviews revealed that accounting routines quite often 
worsened relations with suppliers, sometimes also resulting 
in lawsuits. A final interview with the general director was 
conducted and registered in March 2021.
Case Studies
Even though technology today enables the collection and 
management of an increasing volume of data and informa-
tion, the complexity of support activities in public adminis-
tration has increased in recent decades. Complexity depends 
on the number of subjects involved in the processes and 
procedures, as well as on the volume of relations among 
them (Collison & Jay, 2012). Thus, a procedure that requires 
two signatures of different subjects working in different 
departments in order to authorise a transaction is more 
complex than a procedure where one subject can authorise 
the same transaction through a specific business application. 
The effects of complexity on the costs of support processes 
are plausibly negative: each adjunctive activity requires re-
sources, i.e. expenses. Moreover, when activities do not add 
value for the addressees, complexity gives rise to inefficien-
cy, i.e. the consumption of resources with no added value. 
This section describes some examples of processes and pro-
cedures that the authors had the opportunity to observe in the 
accounting departments of two public institutions.
As previously mentioned, the authors of this paper analysed 
some cases of complexity, as well as inefficiencies, in ac-
counting routines, and they looked into the organizational 
dimension of the accounting system. The first case considers 
an ASP, which is a unique form of a public institution in 
Italy: the aim of the ASP considered herein is to provide 
hospitality and care to visually impaired persons. The care 
services range from professional training to recreational 
activities, physiotherapy, visual re-education, improvement 
of personal autonomy and schooling support. Each of the 
visually impaired people involved receives customised 
services for their specific needs. The institution is relatively 
small: it has 120 clients and 60 employees. This ASP still 
uses commitment accounting, although two years ago a 
decision was made to shift to accrual accounting. The total 
income in the budget for the year 2020 amounted to EUR 
5.3 million. 
Due to unpaid invoices, the institution has several ongoing 
legal disputes with suppliers. The decision not to pay the 
invoices was based on formal mistakes in documentation. 
The institution receives electronic invoices. In Italy, since 
2007 (law No. 244) all suppliers of public administration 
must use electronic invoicing, in compliance with the EU 
‘i2010’ strategic framework, which has been designed to 
facilitate digital convergence toward the Single European 
Information Space. The invoices are prepared as XML files 
according to a specific layout known as a ‘PA invoice’. 
Electronic invoices usually have four times the number of 
pages of a paper document and include several codes that 
identify, among others, the type of document, the public 
investment project (CUP), and the specific tender (CIG). 
Reading an electronic invoice is more complex than a paper 
document and the ASP had to download specific software in 
order to make the invoices ‘intelligible’. Suppliers transmit 
electronic invoices to the ‘Interchange System’ (IS) through 
accredited channels (i.e. file transfer protocol, web-services) 
or by certified electronic mail. The IS gets the e-invoices, 
check the files and feeds them into the institution’s book-
keeping system; in the meanwhile, the IS delivers the 
document to the Department of Treasury. After the feed has 
been accomplished, the invoices must go through the insti-
tution’s business process to be paid, however, the institution 

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can reject the invoices received. According to the general 
manager, there are four main reasons why an institution may 
not pay invoices: 
1. The absence of a CIG code, i.e. an alpha-numerical 
code that identifies the tender. The code is created 
by the public institution at the time of the request of 
supply. It has a two-fold purpose: to control public ad-
ministration’s financial flows and to support the Agency 
for the Control of Public Contracts in its anti-corrup-
tion activity. Suppliers that are not used to working for 
public institutions are often not aware of the importance 
of a CIG code and do not include it on the invoice. 
According to decree No. 66/2014, however, this code 
is compulsory and public organisations cannot pay 
invoices if this element is missing.
2. Wrong code of document identification: another code 
is requested to indicate whether the document is an 
invoice, a credit note, a debit note or any other sort of 
document.
3. Incorrect rounding up or down of the invoice total, 
hence the sum is larger than that agreed in the contract.
4. The supplier is not up to date in terms of payments to 
the national or sectorial agencies that manage retirement 
contributions, hence the public entities cannot pay the 
supplier. As a consequence, this rule further enhances 
the supplier’s financial distress and its inability to pay 
the contributions.
The administrative procedure adopted by the ASP provides 
that both the accountant and the head of the administrative 
department check that 30 conditions have been met in the 
invoice prior to proceeding with payment. This ‘dou-
ble-check’ routine has been adopted due to the fact that quite 
a high number of invoices lacked some elements or contained 
other kinds of mistakes. The great number of data that has to 
be included in the invoice has increased the complexity of 
this document, and suppliers do not always have the compe-
tencies to manage it. One should also consider that the ASP 
may benefit from delayed payments to the suppliers, since 
the time involved in collecting cash from some of the people 
being cared for, as well as from other public institutions (i.e. 
the region) is quite long, therefore, the ASP may not pay 
invoices even if any of the mistakes they contain are merely 
formal. There are two main consequences of non-payment: 
first, an increase in legal expenditure due to lawsuits with 
the suppliers. The second consequence relates to the pro-
viders of the service, e.g. due to non-payment, the supplier 
of the canteen service may lower the quality of meals, thus 
diminishing the value for the recipients. The authors of this 
paper were able to glean information about this effect as a 
result of the interview carried out with the administrative 
staff and the general director. 
The second case relates to the accounting procedures of 
an Italian university. This organisation differs from the 
previous one under different profiles: the main difference 
is the dimension of the institution. The university has more 
than 17,000 students, about 1,300 employees and its total 
income amounts to EUR 160 million. Compared to the ASP, 
this is a much more articulated organisation. Within the 
university, several organisational units use the accounting 
system: the central administration, which has several offices 
that deal with accounting, the management control system, 
asset management, taxation, and legal affairs, and the de-
partments, i.e. the structures that provide teaching services 
and develop research projects. Italian universities adopted 
accrual accounting. In 2010, law No. 240 made it compulso-
ry for the previously dominant commitment accounting to be 
substituted by accrual-based accounting. Implementing the 
reform took five years and required a great volume of finan-
cial and human resources. The main stimulus for introducing 
accrual accounting was cost control and the measurement of 
universities’ economic sustainability. Academics, however, 
consider the profit-inspired logic of accrual accounting as 
separate from the context of universities, instead they want 
to know the residual value of financial resources available 
for research projects. For most projects the economic per-
formance is simply not relevant, since research activities are 
not expected to generate profits. 
The introduction of accrual accounting should have allowed 
universities to focus more on the consumption of resourc-
es, i.e. cost control. However, very few universities have 
actually adopted managerial accounting and the cost of 
teaching or research programmes barely correlates to the 
outcomes of institutional activities (Busetti & Dente, 2014). 
In the university considered in this paper, the administra-
tive staff of the research and teaching departments (i.e. the 
faculties) are required to prepare an accrual-based budget 
for each research project submitted by academics to the 
financing institutions. This budget must be prepared follow-
ing a format defined by the administration of the university, 
which is different to the format required by the subjects that 
finance the research project. This routine was introduced 
as an ex-ante internal control to avoid an eventuality that 
had occurred, i.e. the incurrence of losses from research 
projects. Thus, the administrative staff of the departments 
must prepare two different budgets for each research project 
proposal: one requested by the external funder and another 
according to rules defined by an organisation’s central ad-
ministration. The second budget replicates the information 
requested by the funders using a different layout and cost 
classification; moreover, some additional data are requested. 
Of course, the budget prepared for the university’s central 
administration never complies with the budgeting rules set 
by the funders, thus, although on average only 10% of the 
submitted project proposals obtain a research grant, the staff 

71
 
Guido Modugno, Michele Bertoni, Bruno De Rosa: The Simplification of Public Administration: A Managerial Perspective
of the departments must prepare two different budgets for 
each application. This routine has meant a considerable 
burden on the workload of the administrative staff of the 
departments. The budgets of research projects prepared for 
internal use undergo a double check from two organisational 
units of the university’s central administration. On one hand, 
the research office verifies the suitability of all budgets, i.e. 
that at least 20% or the total income from the project is allo-
cated to cover general expenses of the university, while on 
the other, the financial accounting office checks compliance 
with the accounting internal regulation. Projects that do not 
meet all the conditions simply cannot be submitted. 
The departments are also calling for a simplification of the 
rules in the phase of realisation of research projects. In par-
ticular, the central administration offices do not allow depart-
ments to spend 100% of the funds of a research grant. This 
rule also aims to prevent the risk of losses being incurred. 
In particular, a loss may arise when the funder considers 
that some of the expenses already reported in the research 
project are not eligible. In this situation, actual income from 
the research project is lower than expected, thus, if 100% of 
the resources have been used, the project generates a loss. 
Consequently, the accounting procedure states that depart-
ments cannot use funds until the end of the project for a 
value corresponding to the portion of the research grant that 
is expected to cover the general expenses. This share is far 
from negligible: it often reaches 20% of the whole grant. 
The administrative staff of the departments claim that this 
rule hinders the development of research activities: ineligi-
ble expenses are seldom reported and are usually, for very 
small amounts. Thus, the impossibility of using a portion of 
the research grant destined for general expenses for alterna-
tive purposes (e.g. co-financing of new research projects) 
presents a serious hindrance. Departments have proposed an 
alternative rule: charging a fixed percentage risk provision 
of the research grant, which, in their view, would allow the 
avoidance of any possible incurrence of losses while main-
taining almost the whole research grant.  
A third important measure of simplification relates to the 
financial reporting phase of research projects. The research 
office of the university’s central administration requests that 
academic staff prepare a timesheet for each research project, 
even when not requested by external funders. The timesheet 
includes a daily record of the number of hours spent on a 
research project and the kind of activities performed. Com-
pilation of the timesheet is a condition that each member of 
a research team must accomplish and that accountants must 
verify in order to conclude the financial reporting phase of a 
project. The completion of a timesheet is also necessary to 
remunerate the researchers and the administrative staff who 
took part in the research project. The research team usually 
agrees upon the remuneration – at least approximately – of 
each member of the group in the budgeting phase, depend-
ing on the value of the project and on each member’s role in 
the project. The number of hours each employee is expected 
to spend on a project is another factor considered, although 
not the most important. Both the administrative staff of the 
departments and the academic staff consider completion 
of timesheets – when not requested by an external funder 
- as a useless and time-consuming burden. Moreover, the 
timesheet for internal use is not subject to any form of 
control. Therefore, it may be prepared inaccurately (when 
not arbitrarily) by the researchers and does not necessarily 
report what they actually did, rather, it complies with the 
initial decisions about the remuneration within the research 
team. Since researchers consider this as a bureaucratic 
burden, they are reluctant to comply with the task, there-
fore, collecting all the timesheets from researchers is often 
takes quite a lengthy process, which results in a delay in 
the payment of remuneration to the personnel involved in 
the project. The departments’ administrative staff proposed 
that this phase is simplified by substituting the timesheet 
with a self-declaration signed by researchers stating the total 
number of hours spent on the project.
Discussion and Conclusions
The debate on the simplification of public administration 
dates back to the 1950s when Kidneigh (1954) linked it 
to efficiency and effectiveness. At that time, the solution 
proposed was ‘the use of scientific method and logical 
thought-ways in the process of translating objectives 
(policy) into services’ and ‘standardising operations through 
agreed upon uniformities in policy and procedure that can 
be articulated and communicated through a manual.’ From a 
bureaucratic perspective, ‘the standardisation of operations 
provided opportunities for simplifying the administrative 
process through job and duty analysis that can serve to 
reduce the number of steps to be taken in carrying out the 
work. This inevitably implies the division of labour in such 
a way as to provide for specialisation of workers with a 
reduction in the scope of responsibility for given workers 
assigned to given phases of the process.’
 However, the fragmentation of tasks and responsibility did 
not produce the expected effects in terms of efficiency, ef-
fectiveness and accountability, rather, it demotivated civil 
servants, stimulated compliance with rules and procedures 
and scarce attention to results, and enhanced the complexity 
of processes. The need to overcome the complexity gener-
ated by the bureaucratic approach suggested the introduc-
tion of policies labelled with the general term ‘New Public 
Management’: hands-on professional management, explicit 
standards and measures of performance, emphasis on 

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NAŠE GOSPODARSTVO / OUR ECONOMY Vol. 68 No. 1 / March 2022
output control, disaggregation of units in the public sector, 
orientation toward market mechanism, private sector man-
agement practices and parsimony in resource use (Hood, 
1991). Simplification has become a central issue in research 
programmes on the relationship between public institutions 
and other subjects (namely: citizens and businesses) as well 
as on the simplification of the administrative and the fiscal 
legal systems. The main focus has been on system and field 
levels. At the institutional level, simplification has been 
studied with reference to front-office activities (NAO,2009; 
Rinaldi, 2015).
This paper considers the simplification of public administra-
tion from a different perspective: it deals with back-office 
procedures at the institutional level. In particular, the authors 
analysed support activities that represent the organisational 
dimension of the accounting system. The analysis was de-
veloped as a result of the daily experience of public servants 
in some organisational units dealing with the financial man-
agement of two Italian public institutions. Adopting this 
perspective, the author suggest that simplification must also 
take place within public organisations and in the relations 
with other categories of stakeholders. 
The case of the ASP clearly shows that the complexity of 
the documents that feed the accounting system negatively 
affects relationships with suppliers. The ASP considered 
here is a small organisation: only three employees work in 
the accounting department. During the interviews it became 
apparent that elements of complexity occur in procedures 
that involve different stakeholders. Three factors give rise to 
complexity issues.
The first cause of complexity stems from the interaction 
between procedures at different levels. Electronic invoicing 
presented a radical change in the accounting procedures: it 
was introduced by law No. 244/2007 to enhance controls 
on public accounts, fight tax evasion, improve transparency 
and to ease the filing of the accounting documents. All these 
aspects were of concern for the Italian Ministry of Finance. 
Since 6 June 2014, it has been mandatory to electronically 
invoice Italian public administrations and to include a CIG 
code in the document as well as a code for the identification 
of the document. E-invoicing clearly simplifies the process 
of consolidation of public accounts at the level of the public 
sector as a whole; after seven years, however, this innovation 
is still having negative effects on the procedures at the insti-
tutional level due to the complexity of preparing e-invoic-
es. The Italian Tax Agency has published a 150-page-long 
guide containing ‘suggestions for completing an e-invoice’. 
Simplification of the procedure of consolidating accounts at 
the public sector level led to an increase in the complexi-
ty of procedures at the institutional level. This complexity 
particularly related to the relationships with the suppliers 
and resulted in public entities purchasing a lower quality of 
services, increased costs of legal disputes and a reduction in 
the services offered to those requiring care. 
The second cause of complexity partially overlaps the first, 
albeit it relates to the involvement of different subjects in the 
same procedure instead of the interaction of procedures at 
different levels. The dematerialisation of documents clearly 
simplifies administrative processes, however, the obligation 
to state particular alphanumerical codes on invoices, as 
requested by the Ministry of Finance, makes the invoicing 
process more complex for suppliers. Enabling the central 
government’s achievements has resulted in an increase of 
complexity for suppliers. Electronic invoicing generates 
advantages for the superordinate institution, however, what 
represents a simplification for this stakeholder is not nec-
essarily such for other subjects. This case clearly shows 
that simplification policies adopted to the advantage of 
one subject may cause an increase in complexity for other 
subjects: simplification has different facets and has to be 
considered from different perspectives. Therefore, it is not 
just a question of ‘how procedures should be simplified’ but 
also ‘in whose favour should procedures be simplified?’ This 
suggests that simplification only generates efficiency and ef-
fectiveness when it produces benefits for all the stakeholders 
involved in a process. As highlighted by the OECD (2011), 
those that must comply with regulations must be able to 
obtain information and guidance on what they need to do to 
meet the compliance requirements imposed on them. In this 
specific case, simplification may be achieved by making it 
mandatory for public institutions to send an invoice proposal 
that the supplier would then accept. 
As specified above, the administrative procedure of the 
ASP requires the general director and person responsible 
for the accounting function to double-check the invoice. 
This check of more than 30 different items in the invoice 
cannot be performed on the electronic version, because the 
format of e-invoices is too long and difficult to read. For 
this reason, the invoice is converted into another format 
and then printed out. All these activities are performed with 
the aim of avoiding the risk of paying a supplier in cases 
where it is prohibited by law. From the perspective of the 
organisation that adopted this procedure, the additional time 
necessary in which to perform this activity is preferable 
to the risk of unlawfully paying a supplier. In this sense, 
risk-reduction activities can produce negative effects on the 
complexity of the procedures. In fact, the general director is 
held accountable more for complying with the law than for 
keeping fair relations with the suppliers, thus minimising 
the costs of legal action and offering users a better service. 
Bureaucratic control based on adherence to the letter of the 
law still prevails in managerial controls. Several analysts 
see an inherent tension between basic private management 

73
 
Guido Modugno, Michele Bertoni, Bruno De Rosa: The Simplification of Public Administration: A Managerial Perspective
techniques involving competition, speed, efficiency, indi-
vidual accountability and responsiveness to consumers, 
and the slow, detailed, egalitarian and equitable approach 
inherent in administrative law (Guyomarch, 1999). This 
tension implies that even if each organisation tends to 
design internal procedures considering both aspects, in the 
event of conflict between them the management needs to 
decide which one should be given priority. In this specific 
case, the general director of the institution is not assessed on 
the basis of clear goals in terms of a reduction in legal costs 
or an improvement in the quality of acquired services (e.g. 
catering services). The bureaucratic perspective instead 
prevails, and strict adherence to the norm is considered 
preferable, because this is considered more in line with the 
expectations of the main stakeholder, i.e. the Ministry of 
Finance. The negative effects related to the complexity in-
troduced by electronic invoicing could only be reduced by 
formally setting performance goals related to the quality of 
the relationship with suppliers. In other words, it would be 
necessary to create incentives to abide to both logics (i.e. 
management efficiency and administrative law).
The indirect consequences of complexity should be also 
considered: a reduction in the quality of the service provided 
to those in need of care is an example of this. This effect 
depends on the progressive worsening of relations with the 
suppliers: this is the most remarkable outcome of complexi-
ty in this specific case. 
The second institution considered in the paper, i.e. the 
university, is much bigger and more articulated. Internal 
procedures are more complex because of the greater 
number of subjects involved in the accounting system. In 
this public organisation, accounting procedures are still 
influenced by well-rooted habits that were established 
prior to the reform of the Higher Education sector and of 
universities’ accounting systems. Prior to 2010, university 
departments (i.e. the organisational units where teaching 
and research activities are developed) enjoyed financial 
and accounting autonomy, and approved their own budget 
and financial statements. In the reform, the budget refers to 
the university as a whole, as does the financial statements. 
Nevertheless, the departments have tended to preserve 
their autonomy; they see the central administration of the 
university as an external subject with different objectives. 
In the university observed here, there is a deep contrast 
between the departments and the central administration: 
the latter performs control functions of the former. In the 
accounting procedure for the opening and the financial 
management of research projects, the departments accuse 
the research office of assuming the role of an inspector of 
their activities, rather than a role of a promoter of research 
activities and of providing support to the faculty for the 
preparation of research grants applications.
The complexity of the accounting procedure designed for 
the research projects can be first ascribed to the frequent 
controls by the central administration of the departments 
for the purpose of verifying the economic sustainability of 
the projects and on the researchers’ activity (timesheets). 
According to the managers working in the central admin-
istration, controls are necessary, since in the past some 
research projects generated losses due to mistakes made by 
the research teams or the administrative staff in the depart-
ments. Losses incurred in one department had to be covered 
by the university as a whole, thus, research projects with 
a bad financial performance in one department led to other 
departments being deprived of resources.
Even after the reform of the Italian university system, which 
was introduced in 2010 and was markedly inspired by NPM, 
control activities performed by the central administration on 
the departments were not removed. The reform imposed a 
shift from commitment accounting to accrual accounting, 
consistent with the main tenets of NPM. The adoption of the 
new accounting system led to a radically different way of 
reporting transactions, however, the organisational dimen-
sion of the accounting system, i.e. its procedures, remained 
largely unchanged. In the case examined in this paper, 
the numerous accounting errors at the department level 
convinced the central administration to intensify its controls, 
thus reducing the autonomy and accountability of the depart-
ments. While NPM calls for more accountability of results, 
and less attention to the way processes are executed, the case 
described in this paper highlights how it can instead lead to 
opposite effects being produced. During the meetings of the 
working-group it became apparent the requests for simplifi-
cation came from the administrative staff of the departments, 
who had seen their workload increase due to carrying out 
activities, such as the duplication of the budget of research 
projects, which they considered as ‘non-value-added activ-
ities’. The particularly prudent accounting routine stemmed 
from a managerial imperative: to avoid negative margins 
on projects. This consideration is consistent with the man-
agerial logic insinuated in Higher Education institutions by 
the reform in 2010. However, a bureaucratic approach was 
adopted to avoid the losses: instead of making the staff of 
the departments accountable for measurable financial goals 
of the research activities, the central administration of the 
institution preferred to set up a control procedure with the 
aim of protecting the organisation from incurring losses.
The second factor of complexity in the case of the uni-
versity relates to the volume of data requested for internal 
purposes. The requests for data often go beyond real needs: 
the timesheets are just an example of this. Due to this con-
tinuous activity of data gathering, the departments’ staff del-
egitimise all requests for new data. Although this aspect was 
not analysed in the previous section, during the meetings of 

74
NAŠE GOSPODARSTVO / OUR ECONOMY Vol. 68 No. 1 / March 2022
the working group it became apparent that the obligation 
to collect information for the managerial control system, 
social and sustainability reports, inclusivity reporting and 
for the consolidated financial statements of the university 
imposes heavy burdens on the activities of the administra-
tive offices. On the one hand, the departments’ staff undergo 
controls by the central administration, albeit they question 
their usefulness, while on the other, the staff working in the 
central administration must gather data for several (new) 
kinds of reports, often without having confirmation of their 
usefulness. Further research is needed to explore the effects 
of this form of complexity on employees’ stress and moti-
vation. The growing mass of information required from the 
accounting and managerial control systems has contributed 
to an increase in complexity. The same factor of complexity 
has been observed in other sectors of the Italian public ad-
ministration, with almost no appreciable effects on political 
and managerial decisions (Caccia & Steccolini, 2006). This 
suggests the need for further empirical research into the use-
fulness for politicians, managers and citizens of imposing 
the production of a huge volume of data through highly 
complex accounting systems. 
The cases described in the paper show that the complexity 
of procedures stems from the need for inspective controls 
(which is typical of law) and from the volume of informa-
tion requested to manage organisations (which is typical 
of management studies). The authors examined two case 
studies based on the Italian context, however, the issue of 
the tension between legal control and efficiency also extends 
to other legal systems; presumably, different approaches are 
adopted in different contexts to manage this conflict, thus 
suggesting the need for comparative research. According to 
the authors’ analysis, administrative controls are required 
by internally defined routines, or by hierarchically super-
ordinate entities. These kinds of inspective controls are 
supposed to generate public value by preventing errors, 
opportunistic behaviour and incorrect decisions. However, 
little consideration has been given to the costs generated by 
administrative controls; the same can be said with reference 
to the proliferation of data that accounting systems have 
to produce. In managerial accounting literature, inspective 
controls are classified as boundary systems (Simons, 1995); 
their effects on the efficiency of public administration 
deserve more analysis. At least three main effects should 
be considered: a) the consequences of inspective controls 
and requests for new information on the efficiency of an 
organisation: each control as well each piece of information 
required takes time and human resources, lengthens pro-
cesses and delays the achievement of the expected results; 
b) staff motivation: the case of the university’s routine 
clearly shows that controls on research project budgets de-
motivate the administrative staff of the departments and fuel 
a long-lasting conflict between the departments and central 
administrative offices; c) the effects that inspective controls 
and adjunctive information have on the stakeholders: what 
is supposed to generate value for hierarchically superordi-
nate institutions may produce negative consequences for 
other subjects (as is demonstrated by the case of the ASP) 
or may increase costs with no noticeable benefits.
The juridical-administrative analysis is not sufficient to 
approach the problem of public administration efficiency 
and neither is the managerial approach. The cases dis-
cussed in this paper suggest that the setting of administra-
tive procedures must consider the fairness and correctness 
of activities, as well as their efficiency and effectiveness. 
This analysis suggests the need to start an interdisciplinary 
dialogue to develop solutions that balance opposing needs. 
The stakeholder theory (Mitchell et al., 1997) may represent 
a common ground for researchers in management as well 
as those in administrative law to analyse the effects of pro-
cesses and procedures on different groups of stakeholders 
and to observe how public organisations react to opposing 
pressures exerted by them.
This paper suggests that public management scholars have 
the opportunity and the burden of a contribution in this field. 
Different questions that are strictly connected with the work 
of many civil servants deserve an answer: what factors boost 
complexity in administrative routines? What factors enable 
(or hinder) the simplification of process and routines? Is it 
possible to assess the cost of complexity in administrative 
processes and routines? Is there a relationship between the 
complexity of routines and organisational well-being? What 
role do interactive control systems (Simons, 1995) and 
process re-engineering (Ongaro, 2004) play in the simplifi-
cation of processes and procedures? What are the effects of 
different institutional pressures on the design of administra-
tive routines? Do public managers consider simplification of 
procedures a priority for public institutions?
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Poenostavitev javne uprave: menedžmentska perspektiva
Izvleček
Prispevek obravnava vprašanje kompleksnosti upravnih procesov javnih ustanov: preučujejo se zlasti računovodske rutine in 
procesi. Dejavnost zalednih pisarn, čeprav imajo pri zagotavljanju javnih storitev samo podporno vlogo, absorbira pomemben 
del sredstev javnih ustanov. Cilj prispevka je analizirati dejavnike, ki prispevajo k izboljšanju kompleksnosti teh dejavnosti. 
Delo temelji na poglobljeni analizi dveh italijanskih javnih organizacij: univerze in ASP (agencije za storitve osebam). Italija 
predstavlja zanimiv kontekst, saj so bile v državi politike poenostavitve sprejete na ravni centralne vlade in tudi v določenih 
sektorjih javne uprave, vendar pa so na institucionalni ravni pobude za poenostavitev odvisne od pobude ene same 
organizacije. Iz primerov, opisanih v prispevku, je razvidno, da kompleksnost izhaja iz potrebe po inšpekcijskem nadzoru (kar 
je značilno za pravo) in iz obsega zahtevanih informacij (kar je značilno za študije menedžmenta) za različne deležnike in na 
različnih, vendar povezanih ravneh. Prispevek nakazuje, da imajo znanstveniki s področja javnega menedžmenta priložnost 
in dolžnost prispevati na tem področju.
Ključne besede: poenostavitev, podporne dejavnosti, procesi, javna uprava, deležniki