OpenCoesione

The Italian open government strategy on cohesion policy

Webinar: Cohesion policy national portals 2014-2020

Discover different approaches to the creation of the national Cohesion policy portal

from France, Italy and Poland

6 February 2015

Carlo Amati – Simona De Luca – Luigi Reggi

OpenCoesione Steering Committee

Italian Constitution (art. 119):

“In order to promote economic development and cohesion …

the State shall allocate additional resources …”.

Italy: some key facts

Italy is the third largest

contributor to the EU budget

after Germany and France

Large regional disparities

GDP per capita Youth unemployment rate

Less developed

Transition

More developed

Relative poverty index

2007-2013

Total ~100 bn€ (27 from EU)

800.000+ projects

80.000+ bodies

Cohesion policy in Italy: some key facts

All over Italy (although mostly in the South)

in many different policy sectors

in order to reduce disparities, attract business and

enhance opportunities and the quality of services

EU funds + national cohesion fund

ERDF

ESF

2014-2020More developed regions

Transition regions

Less developed regions

+ 20 bn€ national cofinancing

+ national cohesion fund

~31 bn

from EU

An open government strategy on Cohesion Policy for:

• a more efficient and effective use of resources and

destination of funds consistent with people’s needs

• improve decision making and policy design, also by

increasing access to and quality of information

• increasing involvement of stakeholders and civic partners

• broadening the opportunities for analyses and evaluations

on relevant policy issues

• encouraging the creation of new tools and services

revolving around the availability of open data

• Profound awareness within administration of benefits of open

data (pre-existing examples)

• Political insight on benefits of transparency: not a challenge but

an opportunity

• Quick responsiveness of administration to political input

• A national unitary monitoring system (available since 2007)

A strong drive towards publication of open data, but

OpenCoesione is not just following the trend:

it is a major communication operation based on transparency that

calls for participation by citizens and aims at increasing the

effectiveness of cohesion policy.

Enabling factors

Open government paradigm

Information about

projects undertaken for

implementing regional

policies:

• title

• funding (amount and

sources)

• locations

• thematic areas

• public/private subjects

involved

• deployment timing

100+ variables for each

project in open data

section (CSV)

+ access via API

The web portal

Open data licence to support re-use opencoesione.gov.it

Widget

Widget

List of operations

(Art. 115 Gen. Reg.)

UnitaryMonitoring

System

….

Ministryof

Interior

MISE

MIUR

…

SicilyRegion

Emilia Romagna

Region

Veneto Region

Compliance to requirements for standardization

and completeness of information with licence for reuse

Cohesion policy + agriculture & fisheries

• Beneficiary name;

• operation name;

• operation summary;

• operation start date;

• operation end date (expected

date for physical completion or

full implementation of the

operation);

• total eligible expenditure

allocated to the operation;

• Union co-financing rate, as per

priority axis;

• operation postcode; or other

appropriate location indicator;

• country;

• name of category of intervention

for the operation;

• date of last update of the list of

operations.

In 2014-2020

List of operations

(Art. 115 Gen. Reg.)

opencoesione.gov.it

Projects and funds (total

or subets accoding to

user’s queries)

Interactive graphs

for immediate distribution

of investment and number of

projects by nature and

policy theme

Interactive table

on investment by

nature and policy

theme

Direct search of public

authorities in charge for

programming and other

recipients of projects

Direct access to locations

through interactive maps

and search to discover

the number of projects

undertaken,

the amount of overall

investments in the place

and the list of projects

Top projects listing

in home page (most

recently completed and

largest financially)

Periodical insights

and short focuses

What is in the web portal?

opencoesione.gov.it

For each policy theme a selection of

territorial indicators on the social

and economic context of each region

Highlighted indicators assure

comparable information among

regions

The idea is to invite the user to

make connections between

projects and the issues they should

impact on

opencoesione.gov.it

Highlights of other data provided

Main contents: project search

opencoesione.gov.it

31.08.2014

opencoesione.gov.it

Main contents: project at a glance

2014

Main contents: recipients at a glance

opencoesione.gov.it

Some contents available in English

In the footer, available throughout the

portal, links to contents in English:

• About OpenCoesione

• Complete FAQs

Soon bilingual, for now…

• Data from the monitoring system are updated every two

months by the Administrations in charge of managing the

funds, and are made available in OpenCoesione

approximately three months after the reference date.

• The set of published variables and web-portal default analyses

are increasing over time, on the basis both of capacity to

inspect quality standards and of user demands

How often are data updated?

Var1 …………………… VarN

opencoesione.gov.it

Access to the web portal

• 2.6 million page views

• 800K sessions

• 630K new visitors

• 4.4% from abroad

• 2 minutes: average time of the visit

30 months of operation (July 2012)

opencoesione.gov.it

• Reinforced link between centre and managing authorities,

based on greater awareness of monitoring importance

• Stronger motivation for managing authorities to enhance

high-quality data from local implementing bodies, as their

commitment to improve regularly quality of information

provided to the system is crucial in order to achieve better

spending

• From multiple requests of data at different public entities to

public availability in a single access point

First outcomes

opencoesione.gov.it

opencoesione.gov.it

EU27 2007-2013 OPs average level of compliance with the requirements

set by the 2007-2013 COCOF and 2014-2020 Regulation

Source: Italian survey “Transparency on the beneficiaries of Structural Funds in Europe” (2013)

Easier compliance to regulations

From transparency to

participation and collaboration

• Citizen engagement is essential for open government and

effective development, strengthening the quality of

policymaking and the “science” of service delivery with

improved social accountability

• It requires a committed and responsive government. There

is often little discussion about to how to design and implement

participatory processes that deliver their expected benefits

Availability of open data on public spending and ICT

innovations are working to successfully build transparency,

increase accountability and overcome a long history of mistrust

in many different development projects all around the world.

Monithon: a meso-level action

top-down

bottom-up

meso-level

GOVERNMENT

CIVIL SOCIETY

Monithon is an independent initiative for Citizen monitoring of Cohesion policy projects in Italy based on the Open Data from OpenCoesione

www.monithon.it

Citizen monitoring

Government

Open Data Portals

Citizen monitoring

Administrative

data

Open Data +

visualizations

Evidence,

Ideas,

suggestions

Media

Citizen monitoring on Cohesion Policy

in Italy

Managing Authorities

Citizen monitorin

g

Monitoring

data

APIs

Citizen

Monitoring

Reports

Media

Monithon website

1. Interactive map including:

• “Citizen monitoring

reports”

• Campaigns: Set of relevant

projects selected by the

communities

2. Toolkit / Common

methodology

3. Storytelling

• Blog

• Tips&tricks

4. News on financed projects

Monithon: the tools

Citizen monitoring reports

Local communities

January 2015:• 60 reports• In-depth investigations • 10+ local communities• 500+ people involved + thousands of high-school students

OpenCoesione School

Open Data

Data Journalism

Civic Monitoring

Launched in 2013

≈ 80 schools

selected

≈ 2500 students

On the map:

2014/2015 school year

SCHOOLS

ASSOCIATIONS

High school students as

civic reporters

Students monitor the time

schedule of local trains

Sicily’s regional agency

opens up the transport

data for all!

Local transportation in Palermo:

from citizen monitoring to open data

The association “Libera”

promotes citizen

monitoring of the projects

aimed at re-using

buildings previously

owned by the mafia for

social purposes

A working group of central

and local administrations

is active to use the data to

design specific actions

Deciding together how to re-use mafia

assets now confiscated

The community “Monithon Piemonte” is watching the

progress of the renovation of the museum

The Director has met the crew and has implemented

some the suggestions received

Now working on a documentary on the improvements

realized through the EU funding

Monitoring the progress of the renovation of

the Egyptian museum in Turin

A different way of communicating

Uni-directional Multi-directional

(processing feedback)

The authority

tells the story

The citizens

tell the story

Selecting

good practicesSolving problems

together

PublicityCollaboration. Involving

local communities

Aggregated

facts & figures

Going into the details:

Engendering trust

through real openness

What a Managing

Authority can do:

Ideas from the

1. Collect and open up relevant data: detail, detail, detail on

each project (coordinates / addresses, results, contact

details…)

1. QR codes on the projects signs => link to the data

1. A unique EU code for each project financed by ESI funds

International activities & awards of the

OpenCoesione + Monithon partnership

• Included in:

• Italy’s G8 Open Data Charter Plan

• Open Government Partnership Italian Action Plan

• Open Government Awards 2014 focused on

Civic Participation: 4th place, Silver Award!

• UK Open Data Institute (ODI) Award 2014 – Shortlisted

• EU Hackathon 2014 in Brussels – Selected

• Ongoing collaborations and connections with:

• MIT – Center for Civic Media

• Center for Technology in Goverrment – University at

Albany, State University of New York

• New York University – GovLab Project

Papers, articles and reports

Section with on line resources (IT & EN)

www.opencoesione.gov.it/scopri/

Transparency on Structural Funds' Beneficiaries in Italy and Europe

Materiali UVAL, Issue 27 (Analyses and studies), 2012

Monithon and monitorial citizenship in Italywww.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2014/05/19/monithon-and-monitorial-citizenship-in-italy/

Monithon, a Government “Monitoring Marathon” in Italytechpresident.com/news/wegov/25011/monithon-monitoring-marathon-citizens

Why should we all become monitorial citizens?www.monithon.it/blog/2013/10/30/why-should-we-all-become-monitorial-citizens-2/

Thank you for your attention!

www.opencoesione.gov.it

opencoesione@dps.gov.it