capacity building via opencoesione, the italian open strategy on cohesion policy
TRANSCRIPT
Capacity building via OpenCoesione, the Italian open strategy on cohesion policy
EUPAN HRWG and IPSG MeetingsJoint session on enhancing institutional and administrative capacity buildingRome, 16-17 October 2014
Carlo Amati – Simona De Luca
Department for development and cohesion policy
OpenCoesione coordinators
~ 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 sectorsin order to reduce disparities, attract business and enhance opportunities and the quality of services
Key facts on Cohesion Policy in Italy
opencoesione.gov.it
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
opencoesione.gov.it
• Administrations and public servants
• Researchers and evaluators
• Citizens
• Journalists and media
• Enterpreneurs
A bottom-up cross-sectional approach to capacity building
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
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
Projects and funds (total or subets accoding to user’s queries)Interactive graphsfor immediate distributionof investment and number of projects by nature and policy theme
Interactive tableon 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 discoverthe number of projects undertaken,the amount of overall investments in the place and the list of projects
Top projects listingin home page (most recently completed and largest financially)
Periodical insights and short focuses opencoesione.gov.i
t
What’s in the web portal?
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
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
• 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
National unitary
monitoring system
MinistryInterior
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
• 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
• Citizen engagement is essential for open governmentand effective development, strengthening the qualityof policymaking and the "science" of service deliverywith improved social accountability
• It requires a committed and responsive government: there is often little discussion about to how to designand implement participatory processes that delivertheir 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
• 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
• 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
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
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: 19.2/304. 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
