In 2008, 1,404,664 employees worked in Italy's peripheral Public Administrations, while 1,970,667 worked in its central ones. Veneto accounts for 6.9% of Italy's Public Administration employees. The ratio between PA spending and regional GDP illustrates that Veneto is Italy's most virtuous region. In 2007, the public sector in Veneto spent 34.9% of its regional GDP, whereas the national average is around 46.5%.
Efficiency within the PA is definitely on the up thanks to the spread of technology and to online services. Internet use is fairly widespread in almost all of Italy's municipalities: 99.9% are connected to the network and of these 58.9% are equipped with a broadband connection.
Veneto has all of its municipalities connected to the Internet, and 69.3% of these have a broadband connection, a figure that places the region in seventh place in the national rankings.
In Italy in 2009, 38.8% of Internet users went online to garner information from PA institutional websites, a percentage that reaches 39.7% in Veneto.
Businesses use the Internet to access the services on PA websites more than private citizens. In 2008, 81% of businesses with more than 10 employees used these services. The figure for the North-East is around 82%.
Alongside the Public Administration stands the
external PA sector (Note 2) and these two sections make up the
wider public sector. They provide services for sale, which include energy and gas distribution, the collection and disposal of municipal waste, and the management of water resources; these services go by the name of
public utilities.
In 2008, Italy had a national electricity grid of more than 1.2 million km, more than 89,000 km of which cover Veneto.
Veneto is covered by 2,814 km of gas pipelines, i.e. 8.4% of the national total. The total volume of gas delivered in the region to its various consumers is equal to 8% of the national total.
In 2008, Veneto drew about 730 million cubic metres of water for potable use, 8% of the national total, or about 149.4 cubic metres per resident.
In 2007, Veneto was the second leading Italian region, after Trentino Alto Adige, for the amount of municipal waste collected separately, a figure that exceeded 51%.
On 30 September 2009, there were about 20,000 bank branches in North Italy, almost 58% of the branches in Italy, and they constituted a widespread network across the area. Veneto, with its 7.5 branches per 10,000 residents, is well above the average for North Italy.
(Chapter 15 in figures)