Adequacy of controls

The 'risk based' methodology aims to adapt the checks to the complexity of the practice, the project and the business and allows resources to be concentrated on the essential elements with respect to the public purpose and on the situations most at risk, with objective and scientifically valid methodologies to achieve the objective of rationalising and simplifying checks on businesses.

Adopting and implementing controls that remove all risks (from food hygiene, environmental damage or accidents at work, but not only) is not possible.

Risk analysis and impact assessment methodologies are useful for targeting verification on the most important economic activities and practice variables, ensuring the best protection of the public interest.
In order to improve efficiency and effectiveness, regulation and related inspections and controls must be guided by the principle of proportionality, through an assessment of the nature and magnitude of the risks and impacts likely to occur, to focus where these are highest.

The province is developing these issues in cooperation with the OECD , in two European projects involving several services carrying out control activities.

The concept of risk and the risk-based approach

The idea behind the projects developed and the risk-based approach implies that the risk is, through the provision of appropriate criteria, identifiable and measurable/valuable: it is therefore proposed that data be exploited to develop a risk-based classification of control activities

The factors underlying the risk (the elements that determine the level of risk) are defined/identified based on the experience of the individual structures with which one works, and on the practices/evidence of other public administrations when available.
This 'qualitative' analysis can be accompanied by a phase of analysis of historical control data that allows the most relevant indicators/factors to be statistically highlighted, particularly for the probability component.
This analysis phase leads to the definition of a set of risk indicators/parameters (objective and subjective), and thus an algorithm, which allows a risk level to be attributed to each practice/case, based on objective parameters.
Controls can thus be directed to where the risk is greatest, maximising the effectiveness of public protection action.
This (so-called risk-based) approach is a technical-scientific method, which for a more motivated, widespread and convinced application must be linked to the legal-administrative dimension.

Implementation and objectives:

More specifically, the implementation of this approach makes it possible to

- define the obligations and fulfilments imposed on recipients and the elements to be checked (check lists), implementing a 'score' system that allows a dynamic risk assessment
- identify and assess the risks of violation of obligations and non-fulfilment of obligations;
- identify risk parameters and objective and/or subjective elements that may constitute warning factors, analysing historical data and linking them to the risk experienced;
- Identifying, through the application of the risk matrices drawn up, intervention hierarchies, also by means of machine learning techniques, with periodic examination and updating of data and weightings, and identification of any new elements for evaluation;
- scheduling of controls based on risk.

The use of these techniques offers enriched and articulated motivational support for public decisions to control more selectively. The approach is being tested as of 2019, by some provincial structures (A.P.P.A., U.O.P.S.A.L., Labour Service, A.P.A.G.) thus with structures that traditionally deal with inspections and on-the-spot controls.
An important reform potential is represented by the extension of this risk-based methodology to documentary controls, analysing the elements present in the requested documentation and placing them in a hierarchy of relevance and riskiness.

The benefits of the methodology are summarised below:

PAT Actions

To promote this approach, PAT has promoted the activation of innovative projects, also with the support of the European Commission and the Prime Minister's Office.
In particular, in 2019 the Province joined the RAC (Rating Audit Control) project financed by the European Union Structural Reform Fund, which ended in 2021.
At the end of the project, the Province joined its follow up, called "Reforming regulatory inspections in italy at regional and national level" (so-called RAC2), which in Trento will focus more specifically on documentary checks.