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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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From Gov 1.0 to Gov 2.0: A change in users, too

A study based on Eurostat data on ICT usage among individuals in Italy demonstrates that current Web 2.0 users are not interested in eGovernment, while eGovernment users are reluctant to be involved in Gov 2.0 initiatives. A change of paradigm is needed to evolve from Gov 2.0 for policy wonks to large scale participation.

p class=”paragraph_style_5″>The figure below summarizes one of the main findings of the Report on Digital Divide among households in Italy commissioned by the Italian Parliament and co-funded by all the major telecom companies operating in the country (see this Abstract of Chapter 2 in English, or the full report in Italian). Using data from Eurostat (year 2008), the study classifies the users according to a number of Internet activities that they had performed in the last 3 months.  Users tend to cluster into three main groups:

• the first group (in light green) tends to carry out quite traditional web activities, such as on-line banking, information search or eGovernment
• the second (in darker green) tries out new technologies mainly devoted to communication and the web 2.0, i.e. blogging, social networks, on-line gaming, listening to streaming music, etc.
• the third (in red) is composed of occasional users who did not do any of the activities considered in the last 3 months

Looking at the personal characteristics of the people belonging to the various groups, the data shows that age still plays a very important role, following a pattern that could be thought of as a ‘digital circle of life’ (purple line). Internet users, while starting this virtual cycle among the occasional users when very young, tend to move to the innovation adopters group at 16 to 25 years old, and then join the traditional group once they reach middle age. The circle is eventually closed by virtue of the fact that senior people belong to the occasional users group. As expected, the level of education (blue line) is also positively correlated to the use of the Internet, but the arrows are pointing right to center of the web 1.0 cluster.

Today, who is Gov 2.0 for?
Once again data shows that, on average, digital natives seem to maintain the monopoly of web 2.0, while traditional and bureaucratic on line services are generally used by completely different people, namely well-educated persons in their 30s or 40s.
The difference from 1.0 and 2.0 users is even more dramatic considering e-government services. People who download public forms or use advanced on line services (“sending filled in forms”, in Eurostat vocabulary) are represented in the chart at the exact opposite of blogs creators. They are different users, having different habits and showing completely different ways to use the Internet. Gov 1.0 users do on-line banking, read newspapers on line, etc. Maybe they have responsibilities, have to pay taxes, find a new job and so on, but are probably not used to Twitter, Ning or Second Life. On the contrary, Web 2.0 people are younger and just want to communicate and play.
A tremendous change in service design is necessary to meet the needs of web 2.0 people without leaving traditional users behind; a change of paradigm in fact. New services have to be co-designed with 2.0 kind of users, and a hacker mentality has to be promoted to loose the boundaries between institutional bodies and society.
But today who is Gov 2.0 really for? David Osimo thinks that the existing initiatives are just for elitists – designed, he says quoting the New York Times, for Lisa Simpson, not for Bart – and that new tools are needed in order to involve him, i.e. to enable large-scale participation. Using the Simpsons to interpret the Eurostat data, Bart would be – well… he actually is! – a teenager probably just not interested in political participation and eGovernment services, or at least not yet. He would know how to use 2.0 tools to interact with Government, but he prefers to “play networked games with others” or to download illegal content on peer-to-peer networks. And Lisa, where is she in the chart? Data shows what is happening on average, and Lisa is therefore not considered. In fact, she is absolutely an exception: she is politically involved, she cares about policies (a policy wonk, someone said), while having the media literacy to be 2.0.
Time is probably going to help this. It is reasonable to expect that, as the digital natives get older and new commodities and tools such as the iPad spread, more Barts are going be turned into Lisas, and the hacker/wonk mentality will eventually become more widespread. In the meantime, as Alberto points out, it is better to be ruled by a few Lisas than by Mr. Burns.

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Notes on Civic Technology and Open Development 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.

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

From Gov 1.0 to Gov 2.0: A change in users, too

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