1) The document discusses OpenCoesione, an Italian initiative for open government and transparency on Cohesion Policy funding from the EU. It aims to increase efficient use of funds, public access to information, stakeholder involvement, and analysis of policy issues. 2) The OpenCoesione web portal provides open data and details on funded projects, including descriptions, locations, funding amounts, and involved public/private entities. It allows users to search for and visualize information. 3) The initiative also promotes civic monitoring of funded projects and involvement of high schools to increase civic awareness and data skills among youth regarding Cohesion Policy impacts.

1. OpenCoesione: open government
on Cohesion Policy in Italy
Open days 2014
Cohesion Policy and Open Data: boosting
transparency, performance and engagement
Brussels, 8th October 2014
Carlo Amati – Simona De Luca – Luigi Reggi

2. ~ 1/3 EU budget
approx. 100 billion euro in Italy
in 2007-2013 programming period
(27 billion euro EU funds)
over 80 thousand entities involved
all over Italy (although mostly on the South)
in many different policy sectors
to reduce disparities, attract business and enhance
opportunities and the quality of services
What is Eu and Italian Cohesion Policy about?
opencoesione.gov.it

3. Open government and transparency 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
opencoesione.gov.it

4. 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

5. 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?

6. 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

7. Inforegio September
2014
Countries with
interactive portals on
Structural Funds
projects: DK, F, H,
NL, PL, IT
http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/projects/map/index_en.cfm
Openness and transparency: a priority in Italy and Europe

8. https://cohesiondata.ec.europa.eu/
Openness and transparency: a priority in Italy and Europe

9. OpenCoesione
published in Italy in July, 2012
2011 2012
How is 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

10. Recovery.gov
opencoesione.gov.it
Transparency on Cohesion Funds: a web based survey
Indices of openness and transparency of lists of beneficiaries of EU Structural Funds
6 different scores to each Operational Programme, one for each key aspect
of data publication. The scores are based on the availability of selected key
characteristics of the data, such as format, completeness of information,
availability of tools to browse effectively through the data, and so on.

11. Recovery.gov
opencoesione.gov.it
EU27 2007-2013 OPs average level of compliance with the requirements
set by the 2007-2013 COCOF and 2014-2020 Regulation
year 2013
100%
88%
82%
44%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
COCOF Reg. 2014-2020

12. • 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
The Italian initiative: actions to help citizens’ voice
opencoesione.gov.it

13. The Italian initiative: 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

14. 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.

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