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
2014-2020
More 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.)
Unitary
Monitoring
System
….
Ministry
of
Interior
MISE
MIUR
…
Sicily
Region
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 practices
Solving problems
together
Publicity Collaboration. 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 Italy
www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2014/05/19/monithon-and-monitorial-citizenship-in-italy/
Monithon, a Government “Monitoring Marathon” in Italy
techpresident.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