Italy's one-stop business shops: Why 'innovation by law' is a car without wheels

Lean administrative procedures and One-Stop Shops are key drivers of bureaucratic simplification and to ease the administrative burdens on business and industry with the ultimate aim of making a country more competitive and of spurring its economic growth. The paper investigates the case of Italy’s One-Stop Business Services and Information Shops and why it has taken 15 years and a stream of legislation to get the municipalities to implement the concept. The paper assesses whether the Italian government’s One-Stop Business Shop (‘SUAP’) programme has effectively lightened the administrative load that weighs on the country’s enterprises and then analyzes its implementation. A critical discussion of the “innovation by law” approach taken by the Italian government to not only the setting up of the One-Stop Business Shops, but also to diffuse e-government (i.e., the National Action Plans for e-Government) seeks to shed light on the problems that continue to dog e-Government implementation in Italy.