The G7 Organizational Machine
Apart from the political agenda the importance of the political agenda, the Italian G7 Presidency is an impressive organizational challenge. The G7 Presidency will be an occasion to set our Country national image and international standing, to confirm its relations with her partners and her outreach to other countries. The Summit will be attended by over 20 Heads of State and of Government, more than 200 head of delegations will attend the 10 minister-level meetings. More than 50 high-level meetings have been scheduled, involving politicians or high-ranking officials. Overall presence is estimated at over 6,000 delegates and 4,000 journalists.
In order to address this major effort, the Italian Prime Minister’s Office has set up a specific Mission Structure: the “Delegation for the Organization of the G7 Presidency”. As a single central structure will procure all the goods and services associated with the Presidency, instead of spreading the process among several procurement hubs, overall rationalization and efficiency in the management of the budget will be achieved. “Delegation G7” is tasked with managing all the services associated with the Italian Presidency of the G7, (the Taormina Summit, the 10 Ministerial Meetings and more than 40 more technical-level meetings). Its responsibilities range from the organization, accreditation and hospitality services, down to transportation and logistics.
Costing and Funding: call for tenders
Delegation G7 has been allocated a budget of €37.5 million, which will be managed in full compliance with the current laws, especially with the new Public Procurement Code, without any form of waiver. Despite the distinctive features of such an exceptional event, Delegation G7 operates just like any other department in the Public Sector, and complies with all the guidelines for containing public expenditure (i.e. side events, service cars and phones, etc.) and internal purchases that have been recently issued to the Administration.
In an effort to ensure the utmost transparency and legitimacy of the procurement process, Delegation G7 has willingly agreed a Pre-emptive Oversight Protocol with the ANAC (the National Anti-Corruption Authority), which may be found on the ANAC website Analyzing cost structure in the detail, conference services have been awarded through a European call for tender managed by CONSIP S.p.A. (Central Purchasing Body for the Italian Administration) for a total amount of €25.3 million, divided into 4 lots: €12.4 million for the Summit €10.5 million for the ten Ministerial Meetings and other main political events €1.8 million for more than 40 technical-level meetings In addition to this, €600,000 has been earmarked for the platform handling the accreditation of all the official delegates, members of the media, technicians and security personnel. All information regarding the call for tenders is available on the CONSIP website.
For the first time, a Europe-wide call for tenders has been issued for the procurement of all goods and services needed for Italy G7 Presidency. In addition to the savings that will be obtained through genuine competitive bidding between contractors, putting framework contracts out to tender will ensure that the amounts tendered will operate as an effective expenditure ceiling. Also, payments to the contractors will be made on the basis of the services actually rendered, as periodically documented and invoiced. In the end, this can surely be stated as the best-effort at rationalizing overall spending on an very important item of the whole budget.