OpenCoesioneTransparency and civic monitoring on Cohesion Policy

Simona De LucaEvaluation Unit – Department of Development and Economic Cohesion (DPS), Italy

Evaluation Network Meeting Brussels, 22-23 November 2012

Open Data on public funds

Availability of Open Data (machine-readable) on projects funded by public resources helps in:

• fostering transparency in the use of funds • improving decision making and policy design

• encouraging the creation of new tools and services for citizens

• increasing involvement of stakeholders in ensuring efficient and effective use of funds

Is Europe ready?

farmsubsidy.org

Recovery.gov

eufunds.ftdata.co.ukInforegio

Newsroom23 October 2012

Countries with interactive portals on Structural Funds projects: DK, F, H, NL, PL, IT

http://ec.europa.eu/

regional_policy/projects/map/index_en.cfm

Eu rules on transparency & Open Data

2007-2013, Art. 7 Reg 1828/2006 – Three mandatory fields for online publication: name of the project, name of the beneficiary, total value of the project Hundreds of Managing Authorities are free to decide how much information is to be published and the format of the downloadable datasets

European Transparency Initiative (2008) – Suggestion of some useful details to be published: public payments to beneficiaries at the end of the project, final year of payment, date of last update

2014-2020, Art. 105 General Regulation Proposal - Machine-readable Format (CSV, XML), National Centralized System, User Licence, mandatory fields for online publication (headings & name of the projects to be provided in at least one other official EU language):- name of the project, name of the beneficiary, total value of the

project (as in 2007-2013)- summary of the project, start date, end date, EU eligible

expenditure, postcode of the location of the project, country, category of intervention of the project, date of last update (newly introduced).

OpenCoesione published in Italy in July,

2012

2011

2012

Machine-readable format ?

The transparency on the beneficiaries of Structural Funds in Europe and Italy L. Reggi, Materiali UVAL, Issue 27, 2012

What’s in OpenCoesione?

Information about projects undertaken for implementing regional policies:

• description

• funding (amount and sources)

• locations

• thematic areas

• public/private subjects involved

• deployment timing

Highlights of data provided

Access to web portal since launch (July 17th) to October 31st :

64,000 visits, 50,000 unique visitors, 3+ minutes average time on the site, 8% from outside Italy

What’s NOW in OpenCoesione?

ALL projectsfinanced by cohesion policy

monitoring date: 30.6.2012

EU structural funds + domestic resources for regional policy

549,705# of projects

52.4billion Euros - Financing

16.9billion Euros - Payments

Surfing OpenCoesione (LIVE DEMO)

Total projects and funds by overall cohesion policy or within user’s queries

Interactive graphs for immediate distribution of investments and number of projects by topic, location area, typology of intervention

Easy overview of distribution of investments by topic and typology of intervention

Direct search of public authorities in charge for programming and other subjects involved in the deployment 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

Projects at a glanceDetails included in a single page (available only in Italian)

Civic monitoringCitizens and organizations get involved

Uploading user-generated contents

From navigation to raw dataMore information for specifically skilled users

Monitoring Data are updated every 2 months by Managing Authorities and are made available in OpenCoesione approximately 3 months after the reference date

User license Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC BY-SA)

Improving the quality of information available to national

community when making decisions

Promoting citizens’ voice and getting civic partners involved

in the decision making process

Expected result & impactBetter monitoring towards better spending & better evaluations

Better spending: efficient and effective usage of resources and destination of funds consistent

with people’s needs

Better evaluations: broad range of analyses and evaluations based

on public data on projects

Thank you for your attention

www.opencoesione.gov.it www.dps.tesoro.it/opencoesione

dps.opencoesione@tesoro.it