The document discusses civic monitoring initiatives in Italy, focusing on the open finance platforms Opencoesione and Monithon, which aim to enhance transparency in public spending and cohesion policy. It highlights the challenges faced in implementing policies, the absorption of EU funds, and provides insights into how data can be used to track projects and their impacts. The role of citizen engagement and monitoring is emphasized through tools and methodologies developed for collaborative oversight of public funds and projects.

1. Francesca De Chiara @Lebowskiana
Luigi Reggi @luigireggi
Bern, 21 Jan 2015
Civic Monitoring - the example of the
Italian open finance platforms
OpenCoesione and Monithon

2. Pompeii’s archaelogical site

3. Collapse of the House of Gladiators

4. Where did public money go before the
House of gladiators’ collapsed?
How to measure the progress of
interventions put in place to fix it?
How can you find data to monitor
how public money is spent?

5. 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?

6. • Slow pace in implementing
cohesion policy
• Low absorption rates of the
funds
• Difficult to answer to the
“So what?” question
EU Funding in Italy
European Cohesion Policy is
effective or not...?

7. Open Data can be used to to
monitor how public money is spent!

8. 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
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

9. 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

10. 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

11. Overview: Interactive browsing and visualizations
The Pompeii Example

12. A detailed view of each project
Information on a single project: what is funded, on which funds, who is involved

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

14. Moni-thon is an
independent initiative for
Citizen monitoring of
Cohesion policy projects in
Italy based on the Open
Data from OpenCoesione
Citizen monitoring as a possible solution

15. A meso-level action
top-down
bottom-up
meso-level
GOVERNMENT
CIVIL SOCIETY

16. Public
Agencies
Open Data
Portals
Citizen
monitoring
Administrative
data
Open Data +
visualizations
Evidence,
Ideas, suggestions
How citizen monitoring works

17. 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

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

19. Involving civic communities
Shared methodology
Organized as an hackathon, through
social media + Mailing List
High heterogeneity: Different interests,
selected themes, geographical areas,
teams, etc.

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

21. 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

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

23. 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

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

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

26. International activities & awards of the
OpenCoesione + Monithon partnership
• Included in the G8 Italy Open Data Charter
• Open Government Partnership – Italian Action Plan
• Open Governement Awards 2014 focused on Civic
Participation: 4th place
• UK Open Data Institute (ODI) Award 2014 – Shortlisted
• Selected for the EU Hackathon 2014 in Brussels
• Ongoing ollaboration with
- MIT – Center for Civic Media
- New York University – GovLab Project
- Center for Technology in Government – University
at Albany, State University of New York

27. • How do we move from deliberation to collaboration?
• How do we also move from crowdsourcing widely to
crowdsourcing wisely?
1. Citizen engagement
How to measure the impact of public projects on the ground?
How to combine on-line and off-line tools to engage citizens?
“Continuous monitoring” or in-depth investigations?
2. Policy side
How to integrate crowdsourced data coming from local level to
improve policy planning?
Improving (open) data quality
Open Government as a game with 2 players – citizens… and
governments. How to realize this?
Open Questions
Behind citizen monitoring

28. Papers, articles and reports
Section with on line resources (ITA & EN)
http://www.dps.mef.gov.it/opencoesione/analisi_e_documenti.asp
Transparency on Structural Funds' Beneficiaries in Italy and Europe
Issue 27 (Analisi e Studi), 2012
Monithon and monitorial citizenship in Italy
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2014/05/19/monithon-and-monitorial-citizenship-in-italy/
Monithon, a Government “Monitoring Marathon” in Italy
http://techpresident.com/news/wegov/25011/monithon-monitoring-marathon-citizens
Why should we all become monitorial citizens?
http://www.monithon.it/blog/2013/10/30/why-should-we-all-become-monitorial-citizens-2/
www.monithon.it

29. OpenCoesione
www.opencoesione.gov.it @OpenCoesione
Carlo Amati
Simona De Luca
Luigi Reggi
Monithon
www.monithon.it @Monithon
Paola Liliana Buttiglione
Chiara Ciociola
Francesca De Chiara
Chiara Ricci