Il 10 marzo 2022 si è tenuto un incontro tra i referenti dell’iniziativa OpenCoesione/ASOC e i rappresentanti ReSPA ed esperti dei dati aperti nelle Pubbliche Amministrazioni dei Balcani Occidentali nell'ambito dell'iniziativa Open Goverment Partnership. La sessione di lavoro ed in particolare gli interventi di OpenCoesione e ASOC sono stati dedicati alla presentazione delle iniziative come esempi di buone prassi in cui l’apertura dei dati si collega alla partecipazione e all’accountability, e quindi all’impatto civico.

1. 2nd Western Balkans Peer Exchange Meeting
OpenCoesione – Open data ensuring participation and accountability for making social impact
Simona De Luca | Gianmarco Guazzo

2. Agenda Layout
2nd Western Balkans Peer Exchange Meeting
01 Cohesion Policy: an overview
02 OpenCoesione initiative: concept and framework
03 The Italian national monitoring system
04 OpenCoesione: the web portal
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05 Reuse and Participation: At the School of OpenCohesion, Monithon

3. Cohesion Policy: an overview

4. Cohesion policy aims at reducing disparities
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In Italy and in Europe
All over Italy (although mostly in the
South) in many different policy
sectors in order to reduce
disparities, attract business and
enhance opportunities and the
quality of services
More developed regions
Transition regions
Less developed regions

5. Cohesion policy: 14 years of investments
Gross planned resources in Italy across programming periods
(EU and national budget)
• 2007-2013: 89 bill €
• 2014-2020: 140 bill € including agriculture and poverty
•Including CRII and CRII+ (Coronavirus Response Investment Initiatives)
•+ 15 bill € additional resources (REACT EU) to promote the overcoming of the negative effects of health crisis on the
economy, employment and social systems in the regions affected by the COVID-19 pandemic
• 2021-2027: more than 100 billion € (still on programming stage)
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6. OpenCoesione: concept and framework

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An open government strategy on cohesion policy
Since 2012 in Italy

8. OpenCoesione:
main goals and benefits of a project based on Open Data
• A more efficient, effective and transparent use of resources and destination of
funds consistent with people’s needs
• Improve decision making and policy design at different governative levels, also by
increasing access to and quality of information
• Increasing involvement of stakeholders and civic partners in knowing how the public
money is spent and pushing for results
• Broadening the opportunities for analyses and evaluations on relevant policy issues
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9. 2nd Western Balkans Peer Exchange Meeting | 10 March 2022 | 09 |
Adaptation of
Open government diagram
by Armel Le Coz and Cyril Lage
released under Creative Commons
Attribution terms

10. OpenCoesione: enabling factors
• Political insight on benefits of transparency: not a challenge but an
opportunity
• A national unitary monitoring system (available since 2007)
• A strong drive towards publication of open data... although OpenCoesione
is not just following the trend, but also a major communication operation
based on transparency that calls for participation by citizens and aims at
increasing the effectiveness of the policy.
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11. The Italian national monitoring system

12. National unitary monitoring system on cohesion policy
• Co-ordinated by State General
Accounting Department
• Federate architecture:
a system of systems
• Based on data exchange protocol
shared by all local systems
• A de-facto standard for data on public
investments in Italy
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National
unitary
monitoring
system
Ministry
Interior
Ministry
Education
University
and
Research
…
Veneto
Regional
Admin
Calabria
Regional
Admin
Marche
Regional
Admin
Ministry
Dev.t

13. Monitoring system: facts and figures
• Common set of information transferred unambiguously to a unitary national system,
available since 2007
• Common classifications adopted at the national level (Unique Project Code / Codice
Unico Progetto - CUP)
• Data can be transferred at any time, with bimonthly consolidation
• Documentation for a common language and higher quality/ coherence: glossary,
application protocol, quality controls on data document, monitoring vademecum
• More than 200 variables associated to each project
• Validation controls of coherence that may determine project rejection or warnings
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14. Monitoring System and OpenCoesione:
information structure
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Cohesion Policy National Monitoring System
OpenCoesione (.csv file - opendata)
Var1 ……………………………… Var M
Var1 ……………………………… Var K
Information belonging to the CUP database
Code + Classification
OC variables to enhance the reuse of some
of the Open Data original variables

15. OpenCoesione: the web portal

16. The web portal: www.opencoesione.gov.it
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Information about projects
undertaken for implementing regional
policies:
• description
• funding (amount and sources)
• locations
• thematic areas
• public/private subjects involved
• deployment timing
200+ variables for each project in
open data section (CSV)
+ access via API
Open data licence
Data updated every two months
31 dec 2021: more than 1,7
million of projects for approx 200
billion of euros of public funds

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Dynamic section based on
monitoring data that
allows territorial,
thematic and typological
browsing of projects and
bodies
Editorial content and news
on the portal
Statistical data from
external source (National
Institute of Statistics)
At the School of OpenCohesion (ASOC):
reuse/citizens engagement initiative related
to OpenCoesione
Menus dedicated to programs
planning (resources, tools and
programs)
Menus related to data reuse
experiences and
participation/engagement
OpenCoesione web portal:
homepage contents

18. Homepage highlights
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Projects and funds
(total or subets according to
user’s query)
Interactive graphs
for immediate
distribution of
investment and
number of projects
by nature and policy
theme
Financing opportunities
Direct search of projects (also through
the official project’s code - CUP) or
public authorities related to projects,
or other recipients of projects
Direct access to locations (regions,
provinces, municipalities) 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
Slideshow of the latest news
Selection of projects based on progress

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Projects with most
funding
Implementing bodies
with most funding
Projects completed most recently
Dynamic graph on
developments in total
commitments and payments
Homepage highlights

20. Reuse and Participation: At the School of OpenCohesion project

21. At the School of OpenCohesion
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OPEN DATA, DATA JOURNALISM AND CIVIC MONITORING
ON COHESION POLICY FOR EUROPEAN STUDENTS
(since 2013)

22. ASOC: raising a new generation of aware citizens
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At the School of OpenCohesionl (ASOC) is an innovative
interdisciplinary educational project aimed at high school
students.
By working on a storytelling research based on cohesion
projects, they experience how cohesion policy affects their
territories.
ASOC engage High School students and teachers in civic monitoring researches to discover how
public money is spent.
The project promotes the principles of aware citizenship, encourages responsible use of ICT, including
open data, and social media, fosters civic monitoring of public funding, also aiming to implement and
transfer innovative practices at European level, strengthen the educational sector, build a community
of active and aware citizens, improve civic engagement, promote the acquisition of digital skills and
key competences among the students.
(Relevant partnership with European and National public institutions and selected civic society
organisations - “ASOC Friends”)

23. ASOC: the educational model
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• 4 Lesson reports, including Research Dossier,
Data Journalism Article, Infographics, Civic
Monitoring Report, Communication and
Multimedia material
• On-site civic monitoring visits
• Territorial events
• Dialogues with PA representatives
> Educational model ready to be reused and easily
adapted to further public policy issues

24. 2nd Western Balkans Peer Exchange Meeting | 10 March 2022 | 24 |
From the first pilot in Italy (2013) the project reached overall more than 30,000 secondary school students
from over 1,200 classes in civic monitoring activities on approx. 800 projects financed by cohesion policy and freely selected by
students, with the support of over 3,000 teachers and approx. 800 territorial networks.
In the school year 2020-2021 over 240 classes in Europe have been actively involved in the framework of the ASOC project.

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ASOC: contents available in 10 languages
The ASOC project contents are available in:
English, French, German, Italian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese
The translations (including the editing and voice-over of video pills) were supported directly by the European Commission
or by the individual Managing Authorities under the European Territorial Cooperation programmes.

26. ASOC: strength and opportunities of the project
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• Open access to the Cohesion Policy improved
• Commitment on Transparency and Open Gov
• Responsible use of Digital Communication tools
• Citizens’ Engagement on EU policies
• Involvement of local communities on individual projects funded by public
policies
• Ongoing dialogue between young people and public bodies at European,
National and Local level
• Soft Skills (teamwork, digital communication etc.)

27. From Open Data to dialogues and events with relevant institutions
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28. ASOC: latest international initiatives
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Within the ASOC framework and with the support of the INTERACT
Programme and the Managing Authorities of Interreg
Programmes of Italy-Croatia, Italy-France Maritime, Italy-
Austria, Italy-Switzerland, the project staff implemented a new
experimentation called “ASOC ETC”, to invite students and
teachers of selected high-schools based in the countries involved in
the CBC programmes to carry on civic monitoring research by
observing CBC projects with different points of view and verify their
impact in the territories.

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“At the School of OpenCohesion should be spread
all over the EU Countries to improve citizen engagement”
Sanjay Pradhan – CEO, Open Government Partnership
High Level Conference on Good Governance in Cohesion Policy, Brussels, 6th February 2020

30. Reuse and Participation: Monithon

31. Monithon
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Monithon.eu

32. Monithon: objectives
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❖ Monithon comes from «Monitoring Marathon». It’s an
independent and non-profit initiative created in Italy
in 2013
❖ Develops methods and tools for the civic monitoring
of public policies by local communities and the final
beneficiaries of the interventions.
❖ Offers specific training and support on public policy
analysis, use of available data, and fieldwork
investigation
❖ Facilitates the collaboration between governments
and citizens through the co-production and co-
assessment of services and policies
❖ Produces evidence and suggestions to improve the
effectiveness of public policies on the ground.

33. Monithon: results
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❖ Civic monitoring reports published by students and
national + local associations in 5 EU countries
❖ Monitored projects for over € 10 billion of public
investments
❖ 62% of the projects judged positively
❖ Cases of collaboration with the responsible subjects
have led to an improvement of the projects
❖ Impact on public administration and media

34. The phases of civic monitoring
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PICK A
PROJECT
CALL YOUR
FRIENDS
DESK
ANALYSIS
GO
EXPLORING
CREATE YOUR
REPORT
SHARE YOUR
RESULTS
Choose one EU-funded
projects
Participate in a civic monitoring
group or create a new one
Learn everything you need about
administrative procedures
Contact the media and the
public administrations
Complete a civic monitoring report
with your judgment and ideas
Visit the project and interview
people responsibile
EVALUATE YOUR
IMPACT
How your civic monitoring
went? Was any problem solved?
Monithon Europe E.T.S.

35. Different methods for different project’s statuses
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Project selection:
Suggestions on needs
and local opporutnities
Project not yet started:
“ex-ante” analysis
Crowdsourced ideas and
suggestions
Project in progress:
“in itinere” analysis
Monitoring progress and
identifying bottlenecks
Project completed:
“ex post” analysis, measuring
results and effectiveness
Project being
finished for a long
time:
Measuring
outcomes / impact
STATUS OF THE PROJECT
MONITORED
Monithon Europe E.T.S.

36. Monithon: benefits for civil society
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❖ Useful for overseeing public investments and
with direct consequences for the environment and
people's lives
❖ Effectiveness depends on the implementation of
thousands of projects at the local level
❖ Important actors can reinforce direct action in
the territories
❖ Smaller actors have a better chance of
acquiring skills and establishing a dialogue
with local governments
Monithon Europe E.T.S.

37. Monithon: benefits for Public Administrations
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❖ Giving concrete application to the EU Code of
Conduct for Partnership
❖ Immediately deploying the expertise already present
in the territories for the most urgent challenges
❖ Accessing a wealth of judgments and suggestions on
the effectiveness of individual projects to strengthen
the quality of policies
❖ Overcoming one-way communication: telling how the
problems were solved together with the beneficiaries
and citizens
Monithon Europe E.T.S.

38. Thank you for attention
Simona De Luca | Gianmarco Guazzo
sim.deluca@governo.it | gianmarco.guazzo@opencoesione.team
2nd Western Balkans Peer Exchange Meeting