Opencoesione is an Italian initiative aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of cohesion policy by improving resource usage, stakeholder involvement, and access to open data. The program promotes capacity building among various groups, including public servants and citizens, to foster transparency and civic engagement in monitoring funded projects. It also encourages innovative practices like civic monitoring and the integration of data journalism to strengthen accountability and participation in public governance.

1. Capacity building via OpenCoesione,
the Italian open strategy on
cohesion policy
EUPAN HRWG and IPSG Meetings
Joint session on enhancing institutional and administrative capacity building
Rome, 16-17 October 2014
Carlo Amati – Simona De Luca
Department for development and cohesion policy
OpenCoesione coordinators

2. ~ 1/3 EU budget
~ 100 billion euros in Italy
in 2007-2013 programming period
(27 billion euro EU funds)
over 80K entities involved
All over Italy (although mostly on the South)
in many different policy sectors
in order to reduce disparities, attract business and
enhance opportunities and the quality of services
Key facts on Cohesion Policy in Italy
opencoesione.gov.it

3. An open strategy on Cohesion Policy
The main purposes of the Italian 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
All of the above require capacity building
opencoesione.gov.it

4. opencoesione.gov.it
• Administrations and public servants
• Researchers and evaluators
• Citizens
• Journalists and media
• Enterpreneurs
A bottom-up cross-sectional approach to capacity building

5. 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?
opencoesione.gov.it

7. opencoesione.gov.it
Information about
projects undertaken for
implementing regional
policies:
• description
• funding (amount and
sources)
• locations
• thematic areas
• public/private
subjects involved
• deployment timing
The web portal
Open data licence to support re-use

8. 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
opencoesione.gov.it
What’s in the web portal?

9. 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

10. Inforegio
(September 2014)
Countries with
interactive portals on
Structural Funds
projects:
- Denmark
- France
- Hungary
- Netherlands
- Poland
- Italy
ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/projects/map/index_en.cfm
Openness and transparency: a priority in Italy and Europe
cohesiondata.ec.europa.eu/
The transparency on the beneficiaries of Structural
Funds in Europe and Italy
L. Reggi, Materiali UVAL, Issue 27, 2012

12. • Within the Administrations committee of the 2007-2013 National
Strategic Framework, a «Technical Group» was established in
order to improve, disseminate and reuse data and information on
implemented projects
• Composed by delegates of all Managing Authorities of EU and
national funds directly involved on monitoring + communication
officers of OPs
• Plenary and bilateral meetings to deal with general
and specific issues on data quality based on detailed analyses
www.opencoesione.gov.it/gruppo-tecnico/
Technical group on data quality and transparency

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

14. • 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

16. • 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 is the base to
successfully build transparency, increase accountability and
overcome a long history of mistrust in many different
development projects all around the world
From transparency to participation

17. • 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
opencoesione.gov.it

18. • 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
opencoesione.gov.it

19. 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
Raising a new generation of civic awareness

20. OpenCoesione – Monithon scores
1. Credibility of partnerships: 24.4/30 (top initiative)
2. Evidence of results: 22.0/30 (top initiative)
3. Depth of engagement: 19.2/30
4. Sustainability: 19.9/30
The final ranking
Open Government Partnership asked participating
countries to nominate initiatives that expand and
sustain “citizen engagement” to improve government
policies and services.
OpenCoesione-Monithon in 4th place

21. Thank you for your attention!
www.opencoesione.gov.it
opencoesione@dps.gov.it