Presentation at the Workshop on Open Finance and Participatory Budgeting. University of Bern,
Haus der Universität Bern, Schlösslistrasse 5, Bern, Switzerland, 21 Jan 2015
http://www.iwi.unibe.ch/content/digitale_nachhaltigkeit/veranstaltungen/workshop_on_open_finance_and_participatory_budgeting/index_ger.html
Civic Monitoring - the example of the Italian open finance platforms OpenCoesione and Monithon
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
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
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
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
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.
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