2010 | luigireggi.eu

14/09/10 Civic Technology

A chat with HAL VARIAN on Open Data and Gov 2.0

Professor Hal Varian is one of my personal idols. As a student, I studied microeconomics from his famous manual which is used in almost every University in the world. Recently, I usedMicroeconomic Analysis again in my own Economics course at La Sapienza University in Rome, and I rediscovered the clarity and rigor of this text.
But my life literally changed after reading Information Rules, a groundbreaking book he wrote with Carl Shapiro in 1999. This book led me to study innovation and technology and to make the study of innovation a profession.

Many of you might know he is now Chief Economist at Google, and his job is analyzing economic trends by exploiting the potential of Google Trends and the tons of queries people make every day. A very exiting job indeed. He is certainly the master of web 2.0 data.

Professor Varian is now touring Europe for a series of meetings that will culminate with the WTO Forum in Geneva tomorrow. Last Thursday he was over in Rome to meet the Italian Minister of Labour Maurizio Sacconi at a public meeting organized by the lobbying and media company Reti entitled “Web Economy: Internet for economic development”.
How could I have passed up the opportunity of being there and asking him a couple of questions about open data and gov 2.0?

Professor Varian, what do you think about this kind of global fever for open data and Gov 2.0? Is it all hype or does have a future?

I think that this model is very attractive. You can think of the government as the wholesaler of data, that puts it up in bulk form. Then this data can be downloaded, refined and improved for retail and distribution. There are a lot of reasons to think that that model might be attractive, because the role that the Government would play would be quite specifically defined: make the raw data available. Then people can extract from that what they want, and polish it, beautify it, crack it and a lot of other things. So that is a model which I think could be attractive to Italy, the US and the other Countries. The problem of managing the data from end to end is that it’s very expensive and a very big challenge. The most important step is to make the data available even if it’s in a raw and unfinished form.

Two days ago, at Gov 2.0 Summit 2010 in Washington DC Ellen Miller of Sunlight Foundation strongly criticized the availability and quality of the data published on USAspending.gov and Data.gov. It seems that this revolution is actually not happening yet.

Well, I think that in the Obama administration, for example, they are making a lot of more patent data available, FCC (Federal Communications Commission) data available, and so on. So it is happening, it’s just not as rapid as one might think, because it’s a difficult problem. But I think there’s enough momentum behind this effort, and we will see progress. As they say “pazienza”! (he laughs).

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09/09/10 Open Policy

Open data On Structural Funds at the european parliament – the long way towards transparency

A study presented at the European Parliament in July 2010 explores the open data on European Structural Funds made available in March 2009. The European Transparency Initiative is pushing the transparency agenda in most EU Countries.

As I wrote in one of my previous posts, European Cohesion Policy is well on its way towards greater transparency in managing Structural Funds. Member states and EU Regions are responsible for publishing data on the beneficiaries of the policy and the corresponding amount of public funding received.

Although the set of minimum information that the European Commission and Member States agreed on in the COCOF of 23rd April 2008 is still relatively small (it only includes the name of the beneficiary, the project and the amount of public funding), the European Transparency Initiative of the European Commission certainly represents a breakthrough innovation in the way most European Countries implement public policy. In the last few years the policy framework and strict regulation of Structural Funds have played a crucial role in pushing the transparency agenda in those areas of Europe where administrative culture and capacity is traditionally low.
A study on current availability of open data on Structural Funds was presented at the European Parliament during the public hearing Transparency in Structural Funds – recipients and beneficiaries held by the President of the Budget Control Committee, Luigi de Magistris (one of the aims of the hearing was to learn from the US website Recovery.gov, which was presented by Earl E. Devaney, Chairman of the US government’s Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board).
The report, entitled “The Data Transparency Initiative and its Impact on Cohesion Policy” (full report), evaluates the implementation of the European Transparency Initiative by providing some data and four case studies: Finland, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland. The study was carried out by the Centre for Industrial Studies (CSIL) in Milan, Italy and financed by the European Parliament’s Committee on Regional Development.
As stated in the blog Space for Transparency, the situation reported in the study “results in incomparable, often not machine readable and in some countries almost unusable data in different EU languages and different currencies”.

The results of the study are indeed not so encouraging. Only 78% of the European Regions managing an ERDF Operational Programme provide the minimum information required. 19% provide a description of the operations, 41% a location of the projects, 27% the amount of national co-funding. Moreover, while 44% of EU Regions publish data on the total amount of funding, only 32% of available datasets specify the amount of public money actually paid out.  PDF is confirmed as the prevailing format in which data are released (52%), followed by XLS (27%) and HTML (21%); a situation that did not change one year later (March 2010). See the table I included in my post Open data and structural funds.
As expected, these different approaches seem to reflect differences both in administrative capacities and cultural administrative traditions. In addition, the report argues that centralization vs. decentralization issues play also a role. Obviously, a centrally managed Programme has the advantage that information flows are easier to manage and local actions are more easily coordinated.
The report draws some final recommendations:
• to provide additional essential information, such as contact details, localization, project summaries, description of project partners, etc.
• to make databases fully searchable and compatible, so as to make possible an EU-wide outlook of the data
• to describe the data in English and not only in the local language

Some personal remarks:
1) The study is the first attempt to evaluate the availability and quality of open data on Structural Funds provided by a diverse and complex set of National and Regional Authorities. The statistics provided are a useful starting point for any further research in the field. Moreover, the report provides a valuable contextualization and interpretation of results, along with a detailed description of the European Transparency Initiative.
2) The analysis dates back to March 2009 and should be updated. Since then the number of EU Regions providing at least a minimum set of information has grown and have now reached 100%, as reported in the map of InfoRegio website; though I guess the indicators on quality have not significantly improved.
3) The survey, which seems to be conducted starting from the links that were available on the InfoRegio map at the time, does not consider other important types of Operational Programmes such as the National Programmes and Interregional Programmes or the cross-border co-operation Programmes.
4) Data on quality of the open datasets are presented only in an aggregate way, so it is impossible to compare different nations or regions.

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07/08/10 Innovation Policy

Co-designing regional innovation policies – a new project for multi-level, bottom-up coordination

An ambitious project has been launched by the Italian Department for Development and Cohesion Policies, involving Italian national and regional policy makers. The aim: co-designing Innovation policies under EU Structural Funds for a multi-level coordination, in Gov 2.0 style.

The context: EU Regional Policy and Innovation

In many EU Countries, especially in the lagging areas of the East and the South of Europe, European Cohesion Policy is the main source of funding for Research and Innovation policies, and new Europe 2020 flagship initiative “Innovation Union” aims at strengthening and further developing the role of EU Structural Funds 2007-13 to support innovation. While the European Social Fund (ESF) is dedicated to the development of human capital, the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), as stated in the European Regulation No 1080/2006, contributes towards the financing of productive investment and infrastructures as well as the development of endogenous potential through measures which support regional and local development.
Each EU region inserts its policy objectives in its regional Operational Programmes or in a shared National or Interregional Programme. For each regional objective, the selection criteria of projects are set out by a dedicated Managing Authority.
In the case of Italy, with their ERFD regional Operational Programmes (OPs)
– all regions have programmed funding for research projects carried out by enterprises (in collaboration with research centres or other enterprises) and for innovation in enterprises; 13 OPs include actions for the creation of new businesses in the emerging sectors
– 19 regions intend to empower research infrastructures, equipment and instrumentation to support R&I supply, and to create clusters and structures for technological transfer (innovation poles, technological districts, competence centres)

The total amount of resources dedicated to Research, Innovation and Information Society by all Italian Operative Programmes 2007-2013 exceeds 20.7 billion Euros. 70% of these resources are concentrated in only 5 Regions of the South: Campania, Puglia, Sicilia, Calabria and Basilicata. This is the highest amount of money ever managed by those regional authorities for this particularly difficult kind of policy.

A specific action for inter-regional coordination in Italy

In 2008, the Department for Development and Cohesion Policies (DPS) of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development – responsible for Structural Funds in Italy – launched a technical assistance project dedicated to the Italian Regions of the Convergence objective (the five regions mentioned above) and aimed at sharing good practices of policy implementation in the field of Research and Innovation. In particular, academic support was offered to tackle critical issues, such as empowering strategic design capability and project selections, in itinere and ex post evaluation, the efficient use of conditionality and result-driven funding. Eight working groups were created, involving more than 100 representatives of regional administrations plus the central ministries and agencies responsible for national innovation policies.  I dedicated a post to some of the high-level conclusions the final report of the first phase of the project (2008-09), in which you can also find not only regional data on structural funds in Italy, but also methodological advice and examples of good practices.
A new phase of the project has just been launched: “Sostegno alle politiche di ricerca e innovazione delle Regioni” (“Support to regional Research and Innovation policies”). The new wave is promising more in-depth analysis of current trends of regional policy for Research and Innovation. Moreover, central and local policy-makers are actively involved in order to co-design policies, to share implementation practices and to draft policy documents and templates ready to be used in day-to-day activities. It’s up to a few thematic working groups to produce drafts of grants, strategies, evaluation studies, implementation processes, etc. in true ‘Gov 2.0’ style, e.g. through the use of tools for on line collaboration.
To date, four working groups, coordinated by high level experts and practitioners, have been focusing on at least six policy issues:
1. Technological foresight and regional policy
2. Selection and criteria for research projects
3. Conditionality and funding of projects
4. Pre-commercial Public procurement
5. In itinere evaluation indicators
6. Ex post evaluation indicators
You can download the powerpoint presentations of the project on the website of the National Agency for Innovation (Agenzia per la diffusione delle tecnologie per l’Innovazione), in Italian.

Innovation policy needs multi-level coordination

But the scope of these activities could not be limited to national boundaries. The ‘secret agenda’ of Andrea Bonaccorsi, professor of Economics at the University of Pisa and coordinator of the project, is to connect Italian regional authorities to the European regional network, and import innovative ideas from the most advanced EU regions.
The rationale is clear. From a regional point of view, it is useless and dangerous to let national or EU plans identify long-term regional policy goals and research priorities by simply ‘copying’ the most fashionable EU or national ideas into local strategies and plans. For example, it is evident that focusing on biotechnology, ICT or nanotechnology may not be the best strategy for all European regions; but this seems to be the case if you take a look at regional policy documents. Instead, Prof Bonaccorsi suggests to apply the ‘smart specialization’ approach to regional priority setting. The effort should be concentrated on specific sectors and niches of application by combining General Purpose Technologies such as ICT with locally generated competencies.  In other words, regions must find their true vocation, and the experience of other advanced European territories might prove fundamental. The increasing interest toward territory-based innovation policies is demonstrated by the growing regional percentage of public expenditure for Research and Innovation in most OECD countries, especially in those countries where regional governments have greater autonomy (see figure above).
The concept of smart specialization was first introduced by Dominique Foray, Paul A. David and Bronwyn Hall – experts of the Knowledge for Growth group (K4G) working for the President of the European Commission – and then embedded in Europe 2020 strategy. Regional specialization implies a multi-level governance to coordinate different, place-based policies at national and regional level. An on-going research project by the OECD and the European Commission identifies some of the main barriers to a seamless policy-making process at national level:
– low political and technical capabilities of local institutions,
– duplication of competencies and plans and
– the presence of policy gaps (policy areas not covered).

Towards a bottom-up approach to policy coordination

Now, how to realize multi-level coordination? While multi-level governance can be improved trough political agreements or the creation of dedicated agencies, the value of this kind of projects is to provide good examples of a bottom-up approach. People involved in policy implementation from different regions – along with national technical bodies – are given the chance to meet their peers and share knowledge, as happens in a true community of practice. I can’t wait to see the results.

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A chat with HAL VARIAN on Open Data and Gov 2.0

Open data On Structural Funds at the european parliament – the long way towards transparency

A study presented at the European Parliament in July 2010 explores the open data on European Structural Funds made available in March 2009. The European Transparency Initiative is pushing the transparency agenda in most EU Countries.

Co-designing regional innovation policies – a new project for multi-level, bottom-up coordination

An ambitious project has been launched by the Italian Department for Development and Cohesion Policies, involving Italian national and regional policy makers. The aim: co-designing Innovation policies under EU Structural Funds for a multi-level coordination, in Gov 2.0 style.

The context: EU Regional Policy and Innovation

A specific action for inter-regional coordination in Italy

Innovation policy needs multi-level coordination

Towards a bottom-up approach to policy coordination

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