There has been no positive response to the strong objections put forward immediately in the press (including articles by such authoritative figures as Galli della Loggia, who spoke of “feudalism”, in the Corriere della Sera on 5 August and Claudio Pavone in La Repubblica on 26 August) and the appeals addressed to the Minister for Cultural Heritage by the ANAI, numerous contemporary historians (including F. Perfetti) and the Italian Society for the Study of Contemporary History (SISSCO).

The ANAI and the SISSCO therefore organized a meeting and conference (“Inizio o fine degli archivi?”) on 21 October at the Rome Chamber of Commerce to address the creation of the separate historical archives for the PdC and the downgrading of the other archives. The participants included the SISSCO president Tommaso Detti, Paola Carucci, Senator Luigi Compagna, Linda Giuva (for the council of teachers of archival science), Elio Lodolini, Claudio Pavone and Isabella Zanni Rosiello.

Prof. Detti drew attention in particular to the impoverishment of the role of the Central State Archives, an institution of the highest scholarly and professional standards that is generally esteemed by both Italian and foreign researchers and offers efficient services of access, information and consultation. All these advantages would obviously be turned into serious disadvantages if the fonds were split up over different archives governed by different systems and with different levels of efficiency. Other speakers also pointed out that the system envisaged by the law offers no guarantee of homogeneity of access or of transparency in the future management of the new archives, and attention was drawn in various ways to the adverse effect this would have not only on the rights of access of citizens and scholars but also on Italy’s image as a civilized, modern, democratic country. Senator Compagna, who put forward an amendment to abolish the law, also called for joint efforts to formulate a bill for organic reorganization of the state archives and declared his readiness to support such a measure.

It appears, however, that the most important institutions, which lavish substantial economic resources on their own separate archives, have no interest whatsoever in making the other state archives function more efficiently. This “privilege” has the effect of emphasizing by contrast, in a way regarded as odious by all the participants, a general situation of abandonment and neglect of the state archives. The salient factors include a series of cumulative budgetary cuts that have brought them below the minimal threshold of survival in 2006, the lack of any renewal of technical staff for decades, the reduction of management-level personnel in favour of the central bureaucracy of the ministry, failure to prepare effective legislative and organizational tools for the preservation of the electronic records of government bodies, and finally the Ministry’s recent introduction of measures downgrading the Central State Archives, which can be regarded as paving the way for the provision discussed here. We have asked the PdC itself and above all the political parties represented in Parliament not only to revise the law and abolish the relevant provisions but also to rethink the entire question of the archives of public bodies and institutions in a unified, organic way so as to ensure the homogeneous general application of the rules set forth in the Cultural Heritage Code and eliminate all discretionary powers, or at least prevent their proliferation. We have asked for adequate resources to be allocated and for the Central State Archives and the archival sector as a whole to be given back their general role of ensuring the transparent preservation of government records and their availability for the purposes of research. An attempt was made to abolish the law in question in Parliament by asking senators from different political groups with an awareness of the problem to put forward suitable amendments to the 2006 finance bill (Compagna, D’Andrea, Monticone, Franco and others). These were, however, resolutely rejected by the government and no more has been heard on the subject so far.

The ANAI endeavoured during the subsequent discussion of the 2006 finance bill to draw attention to the severe impairment of the functioning of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and worked with other parties to organize a demonstration similar to the one held in November at the Teatro Argentina for culture and entertainment, but with no success. Equally unsuccessful was the reiterated presentation we obtained of amendments to the 2006 finance bill for initial financing of the “distinct discipline” of “technical-scientific and research personnel” provided for by the Bassanini law and then by law 229 of 2003 (article 14) and expressly including archivists, analogous to the amendment introduced in the finance bill for what was referred to as “vice-management”, clearing the path of obstacles to its effective institution, also in juridical terms, in the contract for the period 2006-2009. We must indeed give Senator Saporito, the undersecretary for public administration, credit for considering the problem and adopting the unusually frank approach of telephoning in person to inform us that he had encountered insurmountable opposition to any such measure within the government (i.e. from the Ministry of the Economy).

As this legislature draws to a close, some information is emerging about the section devoted to cultural heritage in the draft electoral programme of the opposition coalition, which promises significant change. With a view to indicating possible solutions to the most serious problems in the field of cultural heritage and archives, we sent the committee responsible for drawing up this section under the chairmanship of Senator Franco a document of proposals (published to November on the ANAI site), the general part of which was similar to the documents presented by other associations (Assotecnici, Bianchi Bandinelli, AIB). We asked above all for radical reorganization of the now irremediably bureaucratic and inefficient Ministry and the transformation of the system responsible for protection (general directorates for the different sectors and central and local bodies) into an independent public body of explicitly technical character and structure, as proposed in 1965 by the Franceschini committee. These proposals have not been accepted and we do not even know whether they were taken in consideration, as the committee has declined to give us a hearing. The impression is that the technical-organizational requests, aimed at separating the political level clearly from the technical and executive, would clash with the objective of establishing political-institutional control over the sector and partitioning it, which emerges from certain revealing sections of the document. Shall we ever witness the miracle of politicians truly willing to relinquish direct interference in the administrative structure and the allocation of its resources? (Nowadays even the make of a public office’s telephonic switchboard is decided upon by its political rulers.)

The points of the program and our observations are briefly recapitulated below (also available on http://www.patrimoniosos.it/interventi e recensioni/07.02.2006). The 274-page programme devotes only 7 to the general problems of culture and the cultural heritage. The title of this chapter (“The Wealth of Culture”) already appears to afford a glimpse of a weakness shared by the centre-left, as Settis notes, for an “economistic” view of cultural heritage whereby public involvement can only be justified on the grounds that wealth is produced. This is a view that inevitably tends to marginalize sectors such as the archival, which have far less potential than others to “stimulate” economic activities. We instead share the view repeatedly stressed by the Constitutional Court and the President of the Republic that the historical and artistic heritage is assigned a public cultural role in the Constitution that “must prevail over any consideration of its possible economic value”. We believe that this should constitute the primary cornerstone of any sound policy for cultural heritage. The first corollary would be that the organization responsible for performing this function should also rest on a cultural foundation, namely the technical and scientific nature of its tasks. It must be pointed out, however, that while the document does not follow up this generic ideological tribute with wholehearted commitment to the economistic vision, nor does it fully embrace what we shall call the “constitutional” approach, thus remaining wholly nebulous. Apart from vague calls for “loyal” collaboration, the other axis of coordinates—stretching from statism on the one hand to “devolution” at the regional and local level on the other—again shows no basic decision as to the point of balance to be attained and no indication of concrete processes for implementation. The document combines implicitly contradictory conceptions as though they were readily compatible and avoids committing itself as regards their hierarchical relationship or proposing any concrete synthesis, offering an unduly vague and ambiguous juxtaposition of points in which the two conflicting approaches predominate alternately.

Many points put forward in the programme are, however, fully acceptable and in line with the expectations developed in the world of culture during the recent period of severe crisis as regards resources and the political marginalization of the sector. First and foremost, there is a correct list of the deluge of negative or incongruous provisions and dysfunctions of the last few years and a fundamental pledge to strengthen structures and operations in the cultural sector by increasing public funding from 0.5% to 1% of GDP, the average for European countries, which certainly do not possess a heritage equal to the Italian. (It should be noted, however, that this increase would correspond to no less than 6.5 billion euros.) If resources are to be identified on a definite and coherent basis, however, it would certainly be necessary to propose the abolition of the Arcus corporation—a political entity created to manage large-scale parallel projects outside the control and planning constraints of the technical structures—and allocate its resources to the bodies responsible for preserving the cultural heritage, as requested by the associations.

As regards the Ministry, the document proposes on the one hand to strengthen the central bodies and superintendencies, granting them forms of organizational and financial autonomy, and to increase the powers and authority of the superintendents and scientific personnel (pp. 264-65), which are unquestionably key aims. On the other, it recognizes that the recent reforms have made the Ministry “elephantine (with 3 departments and no fewer than 41 general directors), bureaucratic and ineffective”, and that it should simply become “more streamlined” (p. 265). The Ministry is now, however, half-paralysed as a result not only of mismanagement made worse by the reform of 2004 (not to mention the politicization of the upper echelons through the application of a spoils system) but also and above all the “typical” irrational and rigid budgetary procedures laid down for ministries, which cause delay and hence backlogs, preventing any organizational flexibility. It is therefore necessary to acknowledge the failure of the “ministry” as a model for the centralized organization of the preservation system.

The programme, which suggests the need for a “streamlined ministry” (a wildly unrealistic oxymoron), does not, however, address the problem of how to make it so. In other words, it does not explicitly propose—and still less specify—any effective process of radical reform. The vague promise of scientific and organizational autonomy again fails to recognize the simple fact that this is already provided for by article 9 of the Veltroni legislative decree 368/98 (including the archival superintendencies), which is still awaiting implementation eight years later. Why? Our view is simply that this autonomy must be general, must be put into effect at once through definite procedures and with a definite schedule (not only envisaged as a mere future possibility), and must start at the top. As experience has shown, the very presence of a politicized and bureaucratized upper echelon such as now exists, stretching from the ministerial cabinet to the regional directorates, has a deeply rooted strength of inertia and resistance that will emerge unscathed from countless partial modifications and suffice to thwart any plans for autonomy, as it has over the last few years. This vague and contradictory promise of reform in the sector is thus still largely lacking in credibility.

Most of the present-day “regional directorates” have also become bureaucratic organisms run in many cases by directors that have no technical qualifications or are in any case political appointees. These figures have introduced centralization at the regional level and made action more cumbersome, e.g. by seeking direct control over technical projects and tenders. In accordance with the line adopted in previous ANAI meetings, we have therefore proposed that the regional directorates should be abolished and that regional technical committees representing the bodies concerned should be made responsible for coordination of the state agencies presents in the region (restricted exclusively to the necessary relations with the regional authorities and other bodies and institutions in connection with intersectorial projects and their funding. We have also proposed that the Ministry’s scientific personnel, in urgent need of renewal by means of a multiyear recruitment plan after decades of standstill, could serve to form a national “corps” of highly specialized heritage conservators, along the lines of the French model, responsible for ensuring the competence and homogeneity of protective activities with respect not only to the state machinery but also to the other public bodies involved.

As regards the “functions of protection” hitherto performed exclusively by the state, the document simply asserts that they must be “extended” at the level of “territorial government”, a vague and ambiguous expression indiscriminately encompassing all local bodies. It is not clear whether the “extension” means a duplication of the state’s responsibilities by assigning them also to other bodies, a redistribution of some responsibilities and not of others, or simply the more or less wholesale transfer of all responsibilities. In particular, if the idea were to transfer responsibility for the direct protection of items of cultural heritage from the state to the regions—a proposal repeatedly put forward by various parties (and clearly incompatible with the above-mentioned intention to “strengthen” the state organization of protection)—this would leave wholly unsolved the thorny problem both of ensuring effective homogeneity in the implementation of protective measures throughout national territory (given the presence of numerous regions incapable of performing such functions effectively, especially in the central and southern areas) and of ensuring the central coordination of certain activities at the national level (e.g. information networks) and the interregional (e.g. the transfer of assets). The document clarifies nothing in this connection. If a precise decision is not taken in this sense, however, the result will be an unacceptable system in which all the bodies have overlapping powers to safeguard everything, thus leading to easily imaginable conflicts and dysfunctions.

The document is affected in this connection by the disingenuous general confusion in political language as regards the very concepts of “protection” and its relations with “management” and “promotion”. This consists in regarding protection as a primarily bureaucratic activity (involving no more than restrictions and prohibition) rather than a technical activity requiring specialized scientific skills and hence thinking that it can be carried out by any type of organization, forgetting that every activity in the management and promotion of cultural heritage must take place under the responsibility of an independent and competent body. On this view, powers can be assigned light-heartedly to one body or another just like a game of Monopoly. But what are the relations and respective roles supposed to be between the various bodies to which the function of protection is to be “extended”? If the proposal were serious, it would be necessary in accordance with the most elementary dictates of public organization to define them explicitly and provide for mechanisms to resolve possible conflict, something that the document takes great care to avoid.

As regards the archival sector, the document confines itself to proposing “action to revitalize and promote public and private libraries and historical archives by means of tax incentives and investments in training and technological innovation”. We are of course all in favour of “revitalization” and then, as is known, archives (which are surely all “historical” by definition) and libraries are all the same thing and their problems can all be solved with a simple formula, above all the offer of tax incentives (for whom?). Such a crude and distorted “simplification” on the part of a political formation that declares itself competent to handle the problems of cultural heritage affords an objective and very serious glimpse of the intention to marginalize these sectors in real terms.

It is not our intention here to list yet again the serious problems facing archives, which have been repeatedly reported and ignored. A substantial number of the difficulties regarding the state archives (total lack of resources, premises, and the renewal of scientific personnel) are in fact largely shared by other sectors of the Ministry for Cultural Heritage, as discussed above. We only express our surprise that the political forces which opposed the damaging creation of a separate historical archives for the PdC in Parliament have not done as we asked and included explicit provisions in their programme for action in this connection.

The committee, however, also ignores the fact that under the terms of the Code—as we have pointed out—the current and non-current records of government bodies also come under the category of items of cultural heritage to be fully protected, including those created on or transferred to electronic media, and we are still very far from the adoption of a valid technical and organizational solution at the general level for their long-term future preservation. Given the emergency of incalculable scale created by the absolutely certain risk of losing all the records of our present in the future due to the rapid technical obsolescence of the media, it is essential—as we have requested—to undertake a strong and clear commitment, which is wholly lacking in the programme. If this is a programme that might actually be implemented, it is very discouraging indeed to realize that the problems of the archives will be wholly ignored for another legislature.

The programme of the government coalition was presented a few days ago. Given its brevity (23 pages), there can obviously be no question of it even mentioning the archival sector. It does, however, refer to cultural heritage in point 7 (p. 10): “We shall continue (...) our efforts to promote the cultural heritage as the foundation of our identity and driving force of economic development.” Let us take this natural pledge to continue the action already undertaken, the nature of which is known and has already been commented on in these pages, together with the commitment in point 10 to cut the costs of government. The fact that all doubts are cleared up in this case by the things that have already been done or not done means that we at least know with a more reasonable degree of certainty what is to be expected from the implementation of such a programme in terms of further budgetary cuts, if nothing else.

Meanwhile the General Directorate for Archives has set up a committee to formulate an assessment and possible counter-proposals as regards a proposal for reform of the archives administration personally submitted by a director of archives to the undersecretary Mr Bono. The proposal in question includes abolishing the superintendencies, transferring their functions to the state archives, and amalgamating the latter to form inter-provincial and inter-regional administrative “districts”. The director general Fallace has also appointed an ANAI representative to serve on this committee. Given the approach more particularly in line with the present legislative framework and with suggestions for the administrative reorganization of archives at the local level, the ANAI—which in any case intends to formulate further and more general proposals independently as regards the legislative reform of the ministry and the archival sector, as mentioned above—has adopted the position developed in previous general meetings in which this issue was discussed and already expressed in a letter to the undersecretary. We are opposed to the abolition of the archival superintendencies, which should instead be strengthened, and to the amalgamation of state archives, which we see as dismantling and abandoning the system of conservation and access in place throughout national territory. The committee itself expressed a unanimous view in this connection, stressing that we should not take for granted the assumption that the network of archives must necessarily be dismantled and reduced due to the well-known and contingent problems as regards resources. We shall report on the alternative proposals now under discussion as soon as they have been formulated. We ourselves also advocate a more structured and rational form of reorganization—above all as regards the functions connected with electronic records assigned to the Ministry by the code of digital administration—of the central organs of the sector (department, directorate and central archives) with clearer definition of their respective roles of general coordination and management in administrative, financial and technical terms, which prove partially confused or uncertain at present.