civic monitoring - the example of the italian open finance platforms opencoesione and monithon
TRANSCRIPT
Francesca De Chiara @LebowskianaLuigi Reggi @luigireggi
Bern, 21 Jan 2015
Civic Monitoring - the example of the Italian open finance platforms OpenCoesione and Monithon
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?
807,536 projects funded
80,1 billion euro assigned32,3 billion euro actually spent
over80 thousand entities involved
all over Italy (although mostly on the South)
in many different policy sectorsto reduce disparties, attract business and enhance
opportunities and the quality of services
What is Eu and Italian Cohesion Policy about?
• 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...?
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
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: homepageHighlights of data provided
Periodical insights
and short focuses 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
Main contents: homepageHighlights of data provided
A detailed view of each projectInformation on a single project: what is funded, on which funds, who is involved
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
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
Public Agencies
Open Data Portals
Citizen monitoring
Administrative data
Open Data +visualizations
Evidence,Ideas, suggestions
How citizen monitoring works
Tools1. 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
Citizen monitoring reports
Local communities
• 60 reports• Some throughout
investigations • 10+ local
communities involved• Concentration in the
South
Involving civic communities
Shared methodology
Organized as an hackathon, through social media + Mailing List
High heterogeneity: Different interests, selected themes, geographical areas, teams, etc.
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
ILVA production site EU Projects
Areas near the ILVAplant
Projects selectionThe case of ILVA - Taranto
@LinoCastrovilli @luigreggi @PaolaLilianaB
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
Monithon “ex post” -Live testing of local transport systems
@PaolaLilianaB @chiaracio @cristinatogna
Qualitative &QuantitativeData collected
International activities & awards of theOpenCoesione + 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
• 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 sideHow to integrate crowdsourced data coming from local level to improve policy planning?Improving (open) data qualityOpen Government as a game with 2 players – citizens… and governments. How to realize this?
Open QuestionsBehind citizen monitoring
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 EuropeIssue 27 (Analisi e Studi), 2012
Monithon and monitorial citizenship in Italyhttp://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2014/05/19/monithon-and-monitorial-citizenship-in-italy/
Monithon, a Government “Monitoring Marathon” in Italyhttp://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