The "At the School of OpenCohesion" (ASOC) project is an innovative educational program that promotes civic engagement and data literacy among secondary school students and teachers in Italy and Europe. The program teaches students to monitor publicly-funded projects using open data and develop statistical analysis skills. Over 30,000 Italian students and 3,000 teachers have participated. The program is expanding to other European countries. The Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat) collaborates with ASOC by providing statistical data and training to help students with their project monitoring and analysis. Istat experts support students and teachers and provide learning modules to deepen teachers' statistical literacy.

1. Understanding the territory through data,
data journalism and civic engagement: the
Asoc project from Italy to Europe
Patrizia Collesi1
, Italian National Institute of Statistics, pcollesi@istat.it
Simona De Luca2
, Evaluation and Analysis Unit (NUVAP) of the Department for Cohesion Policies of the
Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers, sim.deluca@governo.it
Abstract
The paper presents the experience of the At the School of OpenCohesion (ASOC) project, which is an
innovative educational programme aimed at promoting and developing principles of active citizenship in secondary
schools.
The text will first focus on the Italian experience, with an in-depth contribution on the collaboration of Asoc with the
Italian Institute of statistics, and then move on to the European experience, which started as a pilot phase in some
countries in the 2019-2020 school year.
The Asoc project is an educational programme aimed at Italian schools with Open Data on projects funded by European
and Italian resources, by way of projects of civic monitoring and research of European and Italian public funding for
cohesion policies”.
It is intended for both secondary school students and teachers. For students it provides the opportunity to develop skills
in digital technologies, statistics and civics in order to help them understand and describe how cohesion polices impact
the communities in which they live. For teachers it is an opportunity for upskilling in several topics, as an official
recognized course for continuous learning.
ASOC has a working agreement with Istat, to foster the knowledge of the official statistics data and indicators to
“measure” the projects they are monitoring. The agreement has at its core activities for both teachers and students.
On the teachers’ side the agreement provides cooperation with Istat’s experts in learning modules to provide basic
statistical literacy competencies, on official statistics topics such as the data production process. The collaboration for
students is about training on techniques of quantitative and qualitative research, on how to interpret statistical data and
to build synthetic indicators and orientation on how and where to find official statistical data suitable for the monitored
projects.
Some data
ASOC was launched in 2013 as part of the OpenCoesione initiative, coordinated by the Evaluation and Analysis Unit
(NUVAP) of the Department for Cohesion Policies of the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers in collaboration
with the Italian Ministry of Education and Research and the Representatives of the European Commission in Italy.
The ASOC pilot project was carried on during the 2013-2014 school year. Until now, more than 20,000 students and
1,500 teachers have been involved. The project has been acclaimed by the Open Government Partnership as a best
practice to engage citizens in the policy process.
The 2019-2020 school year features the first international ASOC pilot with the support of the European Commission.
Keywords: civic monitoring; secondary-school students; teachers upskilling in statistical literacy; cohesion funds
projects; statistical literacy in territorial projects.
1
Patrizia Collesi is the author of paragraphs: 3 and 4
2
Simona De Luca is the author of paragraphs: 1 and 2

2. 1. “At the School of OpenCohesion”: an innovative Italian educational programme
At the School of OpenCohesion (ASOC) is an innovative interdisciplinary educational course
programme intended for all types of secondary school for promoting civic monitoring of public
finances through the use of open data and information and communication technologies.
Under a single educational programme, the ASOC course brings together civic education, acquisition
of digital, statistical skills and data journalism, transverse competencies such as developing critical
thinking, problem solving, group work, and interpersonal and communication skills, and integrates
them with ordinary study material.
Students are required to construct civic monitoring research using the data and information on
interventions financed by EU and national cohesion policies within their own territory, delivering the
results and actively involving citizens. Cohesion policy has the objective of reducing territorial
disparities by supporting job creation, business competitiveness, economic growth, sustainable
development and, eventually, improving citizens’ quality of life.
The educational programme is provided through project-based methods combining asynchronous
learning—typical of Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs)—with facilitation activities guided by
the teachers themselves (previously provided via webinars), group work, and online interactions with
the team behind the project. The course programme is structured into the following lessons or
modules over the course of a year:
- Planning and Collecting information (Lesson 1). Learning what civic monitoring is, choosing a
project to be monitored that was financed by public funds (under cohesion policies) in the student’s
territory, identifying a research question, forming the working groups in classes, dividing students
into roles, researching other information on the selected project, reconstructing the administrative
path and the public decisions leading to the project, identifying the public and private entities
involved in its fulfilment.
- Analysis (Lesson 2). Learning quantitative and qualitative research techniques, understanding what
open data is and researching data relating to the chosen topic, building an indicator with the data
collected, understanding the workflow of data journalism. For this lesson, the classes involved are
also asked to engage an open data expert from their territory during events for Open Gov Week
(www.opengovweek.org/) and International Open Data Day.
- Explore (Lesson 3). Exploring the progress of the chosen project via an on-site monitoring visit,
interviews with implementation entities, meetings with the institutions. Writing of a detailed civic
monitoring report.

3. - Describe (Lesson 4). Investigating communication techniques, planning and delivering an
awareness and involvement campaign to illustrate the results of the civic monitoring. Organising
a public event and involving the relevant community to continue monitoring of the selected
project.
Figure 1 - The structure of the ASOC course programme
From the first lesson on, students are divided into roles which reflect those of a project working team.
By the due date established by the project schedule and before the next lesson, students complete
different outputs on the lesson delivered, which structure and summarise the progress of their
research. The civic monitoring is the essential content that the class provides for the ASOC project
via its research. From the first lesson, the teacher and the class choose which project all of the class
will monitor within their territory from that point onwards. Each class will have the option to develop
a single civic monitoring project, which will comprise freely-selected creative content that
summarises the research carried out concisely (video, infographics, dedicated website) to be produced
at the end of Lesson 4 (final lesson), using the materials collected during the entire programme, with
the aim of:
- representing the results of the research carried out effectively and thoroughly, according to a
clearly-defined narrative and with the support of selected, analyzed and appropriately represented
statistical data;
- summarising the choices made, substantiating and defending them;
- involving the relevant community, also using communication tools and social networks;
- organisation of a final presentation event, inviting the press, representatives of institutions and the
relevant community.
Teachers who participate to the project are offered specific training programmes to foster and
strengthen specific skills, including those aimed at deepening statistics.
The ASOC project started in Italy with the name of “A Scuola di OpenCoesione” and it was developed
in the framework of the broader OpenCohesion initiative, a national open government programme on
cohesion policies, currently coordinated by the Evaluation unit of the Department for Cohesion

4. Policies of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. A Scuola di OpenCoesione was carried out in
collaboration with the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) and with
representation in Italy by the European Commission and it is financially supported by Cohesion
Funds.
The first pilot action of the Italian ASOC project was held in Italy from 2013–2014 in 7 secondary
education institutions located throughout the national territory. Subsequent editions have seen a
progressive growth of the schools involved with the notice issued at the beginning of each academic
year, with a provisional indication of a maximum of 200 classes. Overall, in the 9 editions currently
carried out in Italy the project involved 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.
Focusing on the Italian ASOC 2021-2021 edition, the next infographic offers details of the different
types of schools involved, of themes selected for civic monitoring research and with respect to the
methods of carrying out the project with respect to the provisions of the ordinary school year program.
Figure 2 - The Italian ASOC 2020-2021 edition: overall numbers
The transversality of the ASOC proposed method with respect to the different types of schools is
evident and it means that students who follow different study paths faced in-depth studies aimed at
using data, analyzing information, building statistics and carrying out in-depth researches on
individual projects in the territories.
The ASOC project is also based on partnerships to guarantee professional support to the teams of
students in order to elaborate their civic monitoring researches. In the Italian experience the ASOC
network includes:

5. - Europe Direct/EDC [European Documentation Centre] Information Centres;
- Local NGOs active in Cohesion Policy issues;
- Local branches of National statistics institutes, to promote the dissemination of statistical culture
with the aim of strengthening the role of statistical analysis in the elaboration of the civic
monitoring researches.
The activities that involve the different ASOC partners consist of:
- Remote learning with the ASOC coordination team via participation in dedicated webinars
- Project mentoring and tutoring
- Support for coordination between school and external entities
- Support for communication of activities and for the organisation of events
In the paragraph 3 of this paper, the activities that directly involve the Italian national Statistical
Institute are deeply described.
The importance given in the ASOC project to the public availability of data in open data format
should also be emphasized. In Italy, the information base on the progress of the projects being
implemented in territories is represented by what is published on the OpenCoesione portal3
where
every two months over 200 variables of administrative source on the individual financed projects are
made available in open data.
2. The ASOC EU project: from a national to an international perspective
During the years the ASOC project has become widely, nationally and internationally recognised as
best practice and received specific acknowledgements as part of the Open Government Partnership,
as an exemplary initiative for the involvement of citizens in policy processes
In 2019 the European Commission - DG REGIO launched a Call for expression of interest addressed
to the Member States to start an experiment in order to transfer the Italian model to the Higher
Education Institutes of other countries. Then the first international dissemination of the approach, the
tools, and the content of At the School of OpenCohesion (ASOC) project, took place in the following
Member States and Regions: Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece (Peloponnese, Thessaly, Ionian Islands),
Portugal (Alentejo Region), Spain (Catalunya), which took part in the pilot project with 32 schools -
participating teams. In the school year 2021-2022 over 240 classes in Europe have been actively
involved in the framework of the ASOC project.
3
www.opencoesione.gov.it/en

6. Figure 3 - European Member States participating in the “At the School of OpenCohesion”
project
The At the School of OpenCohesion educational path is now available, in addition to Italian, also in
English, French, German, Bulgarian, Croatian, Catalan, Greek, Portuguese and Spanish4
.
Figure 4 - ASOC EU 2019-2021: overall numbers
4
https://www.ascuoladiopencoesione.it/en/lessons

7. 3. Istat collaboration with the Italian ASOC educational programme
Within the scope of the activities devoted to the development of statistical literacy Istat signed in
2018 an agreement with the Department of Social Cohesion of the Italian Presidency of Ministry for
collaborating in the Italian At the School of Open Cohesion project, the agreement was subsequently
renewed in 2020. The specific contribution Istat was intended to give regarded a first approach with
statistical literacy: i.e. the training and support on official statistical data at two levels, the first as
practical support and the second as training modules.
As explained in the previous paragraph, the ASOC school educational programme consists in the
civic monitoring of projects based on European and national funds for cohesion policy by secondary
school teams. Each project chosen for monitoring by the teams should be based in the territory where
students live. Consequently, Istat data at the territorial level are of great benefit since they can give
the full context to better understand the relevance of the project for the community living in the
territory. It is also important that data for the context are official since the projects are funded by EU
projects. Most probably those very data were also used for the funding of the project so it is quite
logic and relevant that they are also used for the monitoring phase.
4. The phases of Istat collaboration within the Italian ASOC project
Practically speaking, the phases of the collaboration supporting ASOC projects are planned as
follows:
In the first part of the learning project, specifically in lesson 2 “Analyze”, statisticians support
teachers and students in the analysis of the project chosen. Practically, they manage a series of actions
enabling the target group (students) to find statistical data and understanding their value for their task.
Statisticians provide data upon request or guide teachers and teams of students to find them in the
official websites; guide to download and customize statistical tables from the corporate website; help
to build simple statistical indicators and how to interpret them; prepare lessons explaining Istat
website, and its thematic sections as well as other official websites. The put into practicewhat we, at
Istat intend for statisticians in the school projects, ths is “supporting agent”, helping and training
teachers as intermediaries. They “take care of the training on quantitative and qualitative research
with basic techniques, on how to understand statistical data”, as is stated in the working agreement.
The partnership started in 2018 with the specific purpose to contribute to the research of school teams
with statistical data and with on line contributions on statistical literacy.

8. Practically speaking, starting from 2018/2019 school year about 60 experts at territorial level have
been working on the project, coordinated by a central staff. They actively work with the school teams
supporting them with data and participating in live events, such as the Europe day in May 9 or the
Open Government Week.
As from the 2019/2020 school year another contribution by Istat was added, consisting of learning
modules, called Cultura statistica+ (Statistical literacy+), specifically devoted to teachers who have
already experienced the ASOC project for at least one year, and have received basic training on the
programme.
Each module is formed by four lessons to go in-depth with statistical themes explained in plain
language. Among them, for the courses held in the last three school years there are: “How to plan and
conduct an official statistical survey”, “The Italian national statistical system”, “The sources of
official statistics”, “Infographics and visualizations: How to communicate and visualise images with
statistical data”, “Environmental data”, “Territorial statistics”, “Find and narrate data. New forms of
communication to tell data in a coherent framework”, “Communicate official statistical data with
social media”, “Plan events with official data”. For each of them a staff member of communication
or a statistician prepare the lesson and learning materials are available on both websites: Asoc and
Istat.