Ministry of Environment and Formez
(with the cooperation of Planning Studies Centre)

The Planning Studies Centre has assumed the role of coordinating and directing the international Seminar in question, promoted by the Ministry of Environment and Formez , in the frame of a programme that the same Ministry has entrusted to Formez concerning the management of a vast educational activity supported by the structural bases of the European Union, and directed by Prof. Antonio Saturnino, the manager of Formez.

Formez is, in fact, an Italian institution that has as mission the formation of Public Administration operators at a regional and local level. Prof Franco Archibugi, the director of the Planning Studies Centre, was – over the duration of two days – in charge of the organisation of the Seminar. The Centre assisted with the specification and selection of the American participants by Prof Joseph S. Wholey of the University of Southern California and consultant of the US GAO (which is the federal agency – employed by the Congress and not the White House – which presides over the control of the “implementation” of the American act of 1993 with which Strategic Planning has been introduced in the system of federal public expenditures in the US).

Formez has decided, therefore, to enlarge and share its vision of the educational field through an international panorama of analyses and experiences inviting some scholars and active managers in the field of formation to compare their respective experiences. In brief, Formez – and thus also of the Planning Studies Centre – aimed at exploring to what extent the incipient applications of Strategic Planning at the federal American scale developed from the results to be taken into account in the field of expenditures for “environmental” protection. Thus the encounter was conceived between some “torch-bearers“ of those most directly engaged in the American experience and a selection of scholars, either of other concrete experiences or of those theoretical or academic of Strategic Planning, not to exclude voices of dissent based on differences in position or experience.

Therefore it was envisioned that three types of expert could be invited:

•  experts who represent the point of view of official, international institutions in order to show the results of the application at the European and national scale, from the objectives of Agenda 21, on the one side, and from the implementation of strategic public management and planning in the OECD countries on the other.

•  experts from federal EPA and GAO on the implementation of the strategic plan and the performance plan of EPA and other possible federal agencies connected with environmental issues.

•  “independent” experts on the subject of planning and evaluation methods in the environmental field, selected for their scientific production and national and local experience of which they could be an expression.

The Seminar has involved no more than 20 special experts invited and has been held in one unique, plenary session of two days. An undefined number of others invited were to attend the Seminar, especially managers and experts of supporting agencies and participants in other, ongoing, educational Formez initiatives.

Every invited special expert orally presented a paper to the Seminar (of around 20 pages) on the basis of a discussed and agreed start-up with the director of the Seminar, Prof. Franco Archibugi.

The Seminar, after the Rome meeting, has kept a network activity through a website, and, furthermore, it has provided for the possibility of collecting its papers in an edited book, with a Publishing House (edited by Prof. Franco Archibugi, Antonio Saturnino and Joseph S. Wholey).

There was stated a certain interest for the reproduction of the background paper of the Seminar, to which its works have been oriented, as well as the list of experts and papers contributed to this Seminar. (See also pictures)