Social accountability in Italian regional governments: an empirical study. The social report of the “Regione Piemonte”

The level of information transparency required of public administrations regarding the actions they take, the policies they implement and the results they achieve has brought about a significant change, not only in accounting criteria and logic, but also in relation to the choice of communication tools, which can be used to close the wide information gap that currently characterizes the relationship between public administration and citizens-users. In an attempt to narrow this information and communication gap, public administrations have recently been making use of social accountability tools, not without encountering certain difficulties. This paper belongs to the field of social accountability studies and, in particular, sets out to look carefully at social communication issues in Italian regional authorities. The aim is that of highlighting, on the one hand, the value of adopting an accountability process and, on the other hand, the issues faced by regional authorities, both from a conceptual and from an application point of view. For the purposes of analysis, it was decided to study this topic in detail by making a critical examination of the social report published by the Piemonte regional authority in 2010