1. OpenCoesione
Promoting transparency and civic monitoring on
Cohesion Policy
Center for Technology in Government
State University of New York at Albany
23rd September 2014
Carlo Amati, Simona De Luca, Aline Pennisi, Luigi Reggi

2. Open government and transparency on public funds
The main purposes of this initiative:
• more efficient and effective usage 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
opencoesione.gov.it

3. 807,536 projects funded
80,1 billion euro assigned
32,3 billion euro actually spent
over 80 thousand entities involved
all over Italy (although mostly on the South)
in many different policy sectors
to reduce disparties, attract business and enhance
opportunities and the quality of services
What is Eu and Italian Cohesion Policy about?
opencoesione.gov.it

4. farmsubsidy.org
Recovery.gov
eufunds.ftdata.co.uk
Inforegio
September 2014
Countries with
interactive portals
on Structural
Funds projects:
DK, F, H, NL, PL, IT
http://ec.europa.eu/reg
ional_policy/projects/
map/index_en.cfm
opencoesione.gov.it

5. OpenCoesione
published in Italy in July, 2012
2011 2012
Transparency on cohesion funds in Europe?
The transparency on the beneficiaries of Structural
Funds in Europe and Italy
L. Reggi, Materiali UVAL, Issue 27, 2012
Data in machine readable format
opencoesione.gov.it

6. What’s in OpenCoesione?
Information about projects undertaken for
implementing regional policies:
• description
• funding (amount and sources)
• locations
• thematic areas
• public/private subjects involved
• deployment timing
Highlights of data provided
Access to web portal since launch (July 17th 2012)
to September 18th 2014
2.193.718 pages visualizations, 526.098 visitors,
2 minutes average time on the site, 4,3% from
outside Italy
opencoesione.gov.it

7. 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)
Main contents: homepage
Highlights of data provided
Periodical insights
and short focuses
opencoesione.gov.it

8. 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
Main contents: homepage
Highlights of data provided
opencoesione.gov.it

9. Main contents: project search
E.g.: transportation infrastructures over 100.000 € in Naples
opencoesione.gov.it

10. 30.06.2014
Project at a glance
opencoesione.gov.it

11. 30.06.2014
Recepients at a glance

12. Enabling factors on various dimensions:
• awareness within a branch of administration of the
relevance of the data ordinarily produced to spend the
funds (but little used for directing the policy)
• political insight on benefits of transparency and citizens’
voice
• the availability of a national unitary monitoring system
(since 2007)
• the open government and open data discourse, which
helped combine the previous factors
How was OpenCoesione made possible?
A combination of factors ….
opencoesione.gov.it

13. National
unitary
monitoring
system
Marche
Regional
Admin
Calabria
Regional
Admin
…
Ministry
Dev.t
Ministry
Education
University
and
Research
Ministry
Interior
Veneto
Regional
Admin
National unitary monitoring system
• Federate architecture:
a system of systems
• Based on data
exchange protocol
shared by all systems
opencoesione.gov.it

14. • Data from monitoring systems 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.
• Data currently available on OpenCoesione is updated to June
30th 2014
• The set of published variables and web-portal default analyses
are in increasing over time, on the basis both of capacity to
inspect quality standards and of user demands
How often are OpenCoesione
data updated?
opencoesione.gov.it

15. Monitoring System
113 variables downloadable in CSV format
32 variables downloadable from project search on OC + APIs
classifications
by CUP system
Identification, classifications by NSRF,
funding, timing, locations, subjects
Var1 …………………… Var32
Var1 …………………… Var93
Var1 ……………………………… VarN
Available data on implemented projects
Different sets of variables
classifications
by CUP system
Identification, classifications by NSRF,
funding, timing, locations, subjects
opencoesione.gov.it

16. A user licence is granted in order to
support the re-use of published data.
The CC BY-SA 3.0 licence allows
users to reproduce, distribute and
communicate to the public data and
analysis, as well as to modify and
adapt or even use data for commercial
purposes.
Data to be re-used
User license agreement: CC BY-SA
opencoesione.gov.it

17. A long way to go on data …
• From EU Funds to all resources for cohesion policy in Italy
• The monitoring system collects indicators on actual targets
of individual projects (hopefully to be published in future)
• Too few data on actual beneficiaries/recipients of projects
and sub-awards
• integration with other data sources (register of public and
private bodies, procurement process, etc.)
opencoesione.gov.it

18. • Data Journalism Days are seminars for journalists, policy
analysts, researchers and students interested in using
information on investment projects funded by cohesion policy.
They are aimed at understanding what kind of data is available
and at promoting mashups between OpenCoesione data and
other sources in order to draft analyses, graphics, maps and tell
stories.
How to promote knowledge society
Actions to help the role of information intermediaries
opencoesione.gov.it

19. • Moni-thon (from mara-thon and hacka-thon) is a civic
monitoring marathon: groups of citizens map out the projects
funded by cohesion policy in their town or area, select a theme
or another specific feature and they go on the spot to see what
the project in really about and check on its realisation. The
evidence is uploaded into a common experimental platform.
Fostering civic monitoring
Actions to help citizens’ voice and dissemination
opencoesione.gov.it

20. Raising a new generation of civic awareness
Involvement of high schools in an experimental civic
monitoring that mixes civic education, digital competencies
and data journalism in order to understand and communicate,
with innovative methods, how cohesion policy affect our
neighbourhoods.
 Development of digital competencies (data skills, data
journalism skills)
 Implementation of a project work on storytelling about
projects funded by cohesion policy
 Providing feedback on results in a public event
www.ascuoladiopencoesione.it
opencoesione.gov.it

21. Slow pace in implementing
cohesion policy
Low absorption rates of the
funds
Understanding whether policy
is effective
Why should citizens be involved ?
opencoesione.gov.it

22. Moni-thon is an independent
initiative for Citizen monitoring
of Cohesion policy projects in
Italy based on
the Open Data from
www.opencoesione.gov.it
Citizen monitoring as a possible solution

23. A meso-level action - between
TOP-DOWN and BOTTOM-UP

24. Public
Agencies
Open Data
Portals
Citizen
monitoring
Administrative
data
Open Data +
visualizations
Evidence,
Ideas, suggestions
How citizen monitoring should work

25. Tools
1. Interactive map including
• user-generated Citizen
monitoring reports
• Relevant projects selected by
the community
2. Toolkit / Common
methodology
3. Storytelling
• Blog
• Tips&tricks
4. News on financed projects
Monithon.it

26. Involving civic communities
Shared methodology
Light organization and community
management
High heterogeneity: Different interests,
selected themes, geographical areas,
teams, etc.

27. Citizen
monitoring
reports
Local
communities
• 56 reports
• Some throughout
investigations
• 10+ local
communities involved
• Concentration in the
South

28. Monithon
Toolkit
+ Mailing list
(we do speak English! ☺)
monithon@googlegroups.com
The Toolkit

29. Projects selection
Monithon “ex-ante”
Crowdsourced ideas and suggestions
Monithon “in itinere”
Measuring progress
Monithon “ex post”
Measuring results
Monithon “ex post”
Measuring outcomes / impact
The phases of a Monithon

30. ILVA
production
site EU Projects
Areas near the ILVA
plant
Projects selection
The case of ILVA - Taranto @LinoCastrovilli @luigreggi @PaolaLilianaB

31. Monithon “ex ante”
The Palermo future metro track
• Project analysis
• Why is it stucked?
• What do people say?
• The experts’ opinion
• How the Municipality tell
this story to the public
• Suggestions from local
stakeholders
@giuliodichiara
&
friends

32. Monithon “in itinere”: Combating
organized crime through the re-use of
confiscated assets

33. Monithon “ex post” -
Live testing of local
transport systems
@PaolaLilianaB @chiaracio @cristinatogna
Qualitative &
Quantitative
Data collected

34. What kind of questions this initiative raises for us?
 Are we really meeting citizen expectations regarding
transparency on the use of funds
 How to deal with data quality problems, mainly on results of
the funded projects
 How to deal with privacy problems related to recipients
 How can we gain from (and promote) collaboration and
information sharing to improve government’s capabilities
 Making data interoperable in the global world (and first of
all in the EU!)
 How can we make better use of technology to engage
citizens
opencoesione.gov.it