Historical expenditure: this is the amount actually spent by the authority in a year to provide  services to citizens (basic shares of expenditure possibly accounted for in other missions and including labour costs) excluding expenditure for natural disasters and off-balance sheet debts. In order to identify the historical expenditure of the Administration function, contributions to public finance have also been excluded. 
Standard needs: estimate the financial needs of a local authority based on its territorial characteristics, socio-demographic aspects of resident population and services offered. 
Determinants of Standard needs: measure, for each authority, the contribution of homogeneous groups of variables used to determine the overall standard need and the standard need  of each  individual service. These indicators, therefore, highlight which characteristics of the authority predominantly contribute to generating  its Standard needs. 
The current historical expenditure used for the determination of the Standard needs is taken from the SOGEI questionnaire. The overall Standard need is the sum of the Standard needs of each individual service. 
For the Equal Opportunities, Exclusive Metropolitan Cities and Exclusive Mountain Provinces functions, the Standard need is determined using deterministic/empirical approaches; therefore, the corresponding determinants are not available. 
Furthermore, for the Exclusive Metropolitan Cities and Exclusive Mountain Provinces functions, service levels and expenditure indicators are not reported, as the related service levels cannot be directly measured.