Research

Here is the abstract of my paper “Are EU regional digital strategies evidence-based? An analysis of the allocation of 2007–13 Structural Funds” with Sergio Scicchitano, which was published yesterday in Telecommunications Policy.

The ambitious goals of the European “Digital Agenda” need active involvement by regional innovation systems. Effective regional “digital strategies” should be both consistent with the European framework and based on available evidence on the needs and opportunities of local contexts. Such evidence should be used to balance the different components of the Information Society development (e.g. eServices vs. infrastructures; ICT supply and demand), so as to ensure that they can all unleash their full potential. Therefore, EU regions should spend more money to overcome regional weaknesses than to improve existing assets. In this paper we explore the different strategies of the EU's lagging regions through the analysis of the allocation of 2007–13 Structural Funds. Then, we verify whether such strategies respond to territorial conditions by comparing strategic choices made with the actual characteristics of local contexts. Results show that EU regions tend to invest more resources in those aspects in which they already demonstrate good relative performances. Possible causes of this unbalanced strategic approach are discussed, including the lack of sound analysis of the regional context and the path dependence of policy choices.

You can download an earlier (full) version of the paper, presented at the Regional Innovation and Competitiveness Policy Workshop, UK-Innovation Research Centre – University of Cambridge in 2012.

EU Regions and national agencies managing EU Structural Funds are forced by a common Regulation to publish at least a minimum set of information on the projects and recipients that are funded with public money. This data is crucial to fight corruption and, more importantly, understand how the money is being used and what kind of results the policy has achieved.

While some Regions haven’t released much more information than the name of the beneficiary and the total value of the project, more and more public authorities in Europe are taking current regulations as an opportunity to manage EU funds more transparently.
Two years ago I blogged about three different open data strategies that public authorities were pursuing back in 2010.

1. The first implied the release of high-quality data in machine-readable format
2. The second was focused on data visualization and interactive search in order to include non-technically oriented citizens in open data re-use and understanding
3. The third was about NOT being open. Little detail, little quality, lots of PDFs.

New data collected in October 2012 on the availability and quality of open data on EU Cohesion Policy tell quite a different story. From October 2010 to October 2012 the strategies have evolved, leaving room for more speculation about what kind of supply of policy data we can expect for the future. More precisely, data suggests that the two proactive strategies have become one.

According to a nonlinear multivariate analysis of 8 indicators on the openness and transparency of 434 Operational Programmes in Europe, it is not easy to clearly distinguish a strategy based on re-usable formats and detailed information from a strategy focused on letting users browse through data and diagrams.

For example, in 2010 a machine-readable format was associated with highly detailed financial data on project implementation or with proper metadata and projects’ description, while the presence of a map or of advanced search capabilities was likely where data were presented directly in a HTML page. Now the two formats are highly correlated. This implies that some national or regional portals – just like Italy’s national portal OpenCoesione – now let the users both download the data in bulk and surf through the data right on the website.

Obviously, this is good news for researchers, data journalists and ordinary citizens. Data providers seem to be more aware that the usefulness and stewardship principles are complementary. Most public agencies, though, keep following the same strategy of NOT being open and offer data in PDF with little information.
The variables showed in the two graphs below relate to:
• the format (PDF, XLS or CSV, HTML)
• the way the data is presented (GEO = maps & graphs; RIC = search functions)
• the datail of the content (CONT) and the financial data in particular (FIN). The variable QUAL represents data quality features such as the presence of metadata, english version of the fields, update frequency.