In connection with the launch of data.gov.uk, the new British government website offering free access to a huge amount of public-sector data for private or commercial reuse, the UK Guardian has published the World Government Data Search, a search engine that collects datasets and other open data services provided by governments around the world. At the moment the service searches across the UK, US, New Zealand and Australian governments’ data sites. The Guardian published also a gallery of the 10 best mash-ups built on top of government data provided in the United Kingdom and a similar gallery dedicated to the experiences promoted in US, New Zealand and Australia

A decalogue like a work in progress, to promote the idea and the principles of a new Public Administration more able to act and operate in the era of the Nets. This is the “Manifesto Amministrare 2.0”, conceived in draft version during the last edition of the Forum PA (an annual exhibition dedicated to the innovation in the public sector, who takes place in Rome), and currently under discussion, on and off line, for the realization of a 1.0 version of the document to present next year in the next edition of the Forum. The Manifesto was recently discussed at the Venezia Camp, event who took place in Venice at the end of October and who was participated by hundreds of innovators coming from enterprises, ONG and public administrations. Among them, also the Emilia-Romagna Region.

The Venetian event permitted to collect a lot of ideas and suggestions useful to the writing of the document. First of all, anyway, it was very important to understand that many italian Administrations, and inside them politicians, managers and civil servants, are strongly convinced that the Public Administration need to embrace, at least partially, that “web 2.0 philosophy” who is changing the web and, more important, the life of organizations, enterprises and millions of people.

The beta version draft of the “Manifesto Amministrare 2.0” can be read and discussed (in italian) at the following link. Here follow its ten key points and principles:

1. The role of politics
   Politicians must be able to take responsibility of their choices.
2. The organizational dimension
   Public Administrations must change their organization and their procedures, pursuing a new idea of relationship with citizens and abandoning the self-approach.
3. The Net as a right
   The access to the Net, specially to broadband, must be easy and cheap everywhere.
4. Beyond the cultural divide
   Citizens must be helped to develop a new digital culture.
5. The involvement of citizens
   There’s no Public Administration 2.0 without a strong intervention in favour of participation.
6. The multi-channel approach as opportunity
   Service are really tailored if there’s attention to the channels more appropriate for the different users’ target.
7. Disintermediation to better act
   To promote a Public Administration no more “one way” and finally “2.0” is important to foster a bigger disintermediation between institutions and citizens.
8. Re-start form the semantics of public contents
   The semantics presentation of public information, services and contents must be conceived with the final users and open to folksonomies.
9. Software as enabling factor
   Software used in public sector must be open and re-usable by other administrations.
10. Foster the development of active communities
    User groups and social networks must be considered as a fundamental stimulus to design public web services, starting from their desires and indications.

OIDP is open to all cities of the world, public administrations, organizations and research centers who try to know, compare e realize participative democracy’s experiences in local contexts.

The Conference will take place at the International Center for the Childhood “Loris Malaguzzi, in Reggio Emilia. It will be organized to analyze and foster the democratic participation of young people in local contexts. Another purpose is to innovate local governance’s policies promoting a bigger participation of social categories less represented in politic and institutions.

Italian and international best practices concerning political participation of young people will be presented at the conference. Debates and discussions in program will be dedicated to: youth policies and local governance’s systems; pedagocical methods and places for educational experiences; social policies and participation’s places for new generations.

More info (in italian) on: www.oidp.comune.re.it

ARGOS (Automatic & Remote GrandCanal Observation System)
ARGOS is a system designed to control navigation in Canal Grande. Several sensors, allocated alongside the canal, monitor position, speed and direction of every boat. ARGOS allows:

• a continuous and real time monitoring of boat’s traffic
• the immediate identification of critical situations (accidents, congestions), and the instantaneous intervention by the Municipality Police
• the detection of violations and illegal behaviours held by boat’s drivers, with a major possibility to contrast them
• a better organization of water traffic, with the consequent reduction of waves in very neuralgic city’s points

IRIS (Internet Reporting Information System)
Iris system, functioning since May 2008, allows to report need of urban maintenance. Citizen can report a problem, showing the place where it is on webmaps or taking pictures of the place and sending it to the website via MMS. In this way, the Municipality can give an immediate feedback, showing on the website the office who has to solve the problem and, at the same time, the progress of the solution’s interventions.

BARIS (Boat Areas Research Information System)
Since October 2008, a new system offer via web all data about occupation of water spaces in Venice and its estuary. The system is based on a cartography owned by the Municipality. Everybody can access to it and consult the map which shows the boats’ footprint and detailed data about concession (except, for privacy reasons, dealers’ names). The map shows all assigned place – at the moment around 8.000 – and indicates with a different colour the about 700 places who are now in insertion’s phase, or under contentious. People can search zooming the map in the points they want to see, using registry number, or the protocol concession number.

Facebook
The Municipality offers and shares its institutional information and data also on the popular social network.

VEdemo
The website of the Municipality’s Council is realized with the software “VEdemo”. It was conceived, designed and realized by the Municipality, is based on a full open-source platform and is inspired by the principles of accessibility, interoperability, usability and re-use. The system allow the e-mail communication to the recipients and real time on line publication of:

• Council’s daily events (works calendar)
• Councilors’ acts (questions, motions, agendas)
• Executive’s official answers
• Acts and initiatives promoted by Council groups and Councilors, and, in the next future, also citizen’s interventions and comments
• activities of the Commissions Board (invitations, reports, minutes, tables present
• activities of district’s Councils (invitations, minutes, activity)

EleGI (Georeferenced Elections on Internet
EleGI is a system of georeferenced cartography. Citizen can use it to obtain information about the elections, from poll’s location to electoral constituency, from results of past elections to link, references and Faq.

Municipality’s Forum
Every citizen, if logged in and respecting the netiquette, can access to the Municipality’s Forum and participate to discussions about city’s life, sending message and proposal.

Click here for more info about the project “Amministrare 2.0”.

The project is promoted by the Emilia-Romagna Region in the framework of its Telematic Plan, and realized by the Municipalities of Bologna, Ferrara, Modena, Piacenza and Reggio Emilia. The aim of the project is to understand, both with studies and analysis, both with tests, how much and in which ways institutions can integrate web 2.0 tools in their official websites and portals. Leda Guidi, manager of the Bologna’s institutional civic net Iperbole and Power’s project manager, highlights goals, plans and early results of the project.

Leda Guidi, why this project?
Technologically, institutions are already able to change the way they communicate on line: a lot of good solutions are already available also for the public sector. The real problem is rather to understand opportunities, and above all limits, that could descend from choosing 2.0 models and directions. What happens, for instance, if a citizen posts an insult or a commercial message on an institutional website? We think that there are always legal but also political consequences for the institutions.

What did you already realize with Power?
We started collecting national and international case studies about use of web 2.0 by the institutions. Then we wrote a study about limits and critical factors concerning these scenarios and in the meantime we realized a software platform who allows to integrate some web 2.0 tools – as wiki, comment, rating and tagging mechanism, user generated content systems, multilingualism and geo-positioning – on the websites of the Municipalities taking part to the project.

Which kind of results came out from your study?
The main legal problems concern privacy, copyright and institutions’ responsibility for contents posted by others. We considered several scenarios: from the use of web 2.0 tools in institutional websites, till the presence of institutions on external platforms managed by ONG and social organizations. The result is that institutional risks get bigger the more they “bring web 2.0 home”, because there are rising bonds to consider and a lot of controls who cannot be underestimated. Anyway, we came to the conclusion that also “external solutions” present a lot of criticalities, specially by a political and corporate point of view. Obviously, we noticed also that there are a lot of big, positive opportunities descending from the use of web 2.0 in institutional contexts.

Did you collect these results?
We realized a set of guidelines, both theoretical both operative. In this second case they give functional, technical, editorial, organizational and methodological instructions to insert web 2.0 tools in institutional websites. We’ll share the guidelines with all public administrations in Emilia-Romagna who have intention to promote web 2.0 projects.

And what about the software platform. Is it ready?
Yes, it is. In May and June ’09 we programmed the first technical tests and then, from the autumn we’ll launch the first experimentations on our websites.

What are the experimentations programmed by the Municipality of Bologna?
We’ll launch three experimentations: users will have the possibility to comment and tag some informative pages and online services concerning the educational sector; we will realize some video interview with ancient people who took part to the so called “Resistenza” (the popular insurrection against nazi-fascism at the end of the II World War) and publish them in our Multimedia Resistenza’s Museum, and some pages of our portal will be translated in several languages with the direct contribution of the users.

And what is in program in the other Municipalities?
In Ferrara people will have the possibility to report architectural barriers via web using maps, and the Municipality will answer on the same website about their removal. In Modena users will have the possibility to comment and rate the quality of the contents published on the cultural portal and on a website dedicated to the regulation of timetables of offices and commercial activities in the town. The comments could be anonymous, but in this case limited to the expression of a rate, or textual, but only after the users’ identification via log-in. In Piacenza girls and boys will have new opportunities to post and share their original videoclips, songs and photos on the new portal dedicated to young artists. In Reggio Emilia there will be the prosecution and growth of a project started in 2008, who already allows young people to post videos, photos, and other multimedia contents via web or smartphone.

Finally, do you think there are chances to build an “institutional web 2.0”?
Web 2.0 and institutional point of view cannot totally overlap: there are rules and limits public administrations cannot exceed. Anyway, there are a lot of possibilities to mix these two models with very positive results. There’s only a great principle to consider: anybody has to do his specific job, we have to mix knowledge and skill, not roles and functions, these one must remain absolutely separate. Or, metaphorically: institutions cannot host in their offices free speech and dialogue, but sure they could contribute to the building of public places to enlarge and enrich discussions and citizens’ participation.

Summarising at the maximum level, two great issues came out from the seminar. The first concerns e-participation: there were really great expectations about this concept at the beginning of the Internet revolution; furthermore these expectations were hardly cooled by the events; but now, with the web 2.0 explosion and the Barack Obama’s digital exploit already echoing from overseas, the term e-participation seems not only “trendly” again, but also much more than just a good claim.

The second evidence is that if blogs, social networks, peer to peer and so on really propelled the hopes of people who trust the e-participation perspective, the e-democracy idea – and with the term we mean here the direct use of the nets by the institutions to enrich and enlarge decisional processes, especially in the local contexts – is at the moment not so “trendy” or expanding. It’s obvious that where people work hard, and public institutions are really interested by the potential of e-democracy, some good results can be obtained. This issued for instance by the interventions of Rolf Luehrs, Pep-Net’s coordinator, and Sabrina Franceschini, manager of the Emilia-Romagna Region’s e-democracy projects. At the same time anyway, nobody can deny that the web 2.0 wave swamped the “e-democracy little island”, and that institutions seems now really unsettled about the role they can really play in an universe, the Net, that becomes everyday more open, horizontal and participative.

But where’s the news, someone could right observe? If we remember, also in the early days of e-democracy, people produced a lot of good ideas, some interesting experiences, a great number of unfounded projects and so much disillusions. And to be honest, the 8th of April in Bologna, we had more times the feeling to hear new words to express well-known and widely assimilated ideas, at least among experts and practitioners of the matter. Just for instance: today we say that we need finally to reduce chaos, vivacity and complexity of Facebook or MySpace if we want to exploit their big potential also in the institutional contexts; and yesterday we told exactly the same, but referring to forum, newsgroups and the necessity to catch synthesis from so reach and “dense” environments. Obviously, these thoughts are valid also today, and it’s natural that they’re now synchronized to languages, tools and brand of the present. But it’s also obvious that the e-democracy itself, especially if we refer to its top-down expression, is characterized by some paradoxes and limits, and that this is maybe the main reason who makes so hard the processing of new ideas in this disciplinary context.

But if this is already problematic, at least for those who support the idea of e-democracy, maybe today, in the era of web 2.0, it’s even worse than yesterday. Ten, fifteen years ago people spoke a lot about the possibilities to use the net to reduce the distance between institutions and citizen and make these one a little bit more stakeholders and influential. But if this scenario materialize itself very few, for several years also the whole web, or at least the “mainstream” web, remained first of all vertical, informative and one-way, or maximum two-way only in a technical manner, with the development of e-commerce, home banking, ant e-government, for instance. Today, at the contrary, Facebook, Wikipedia, YouTube and their “brothers” make quite automatic the equation between web and participation (much more less that one between nets and marketing and control technologies, and this worrying aspect emerged several times during the seminar in Bologna), and it seems strange that the institutions, who are anyway the main warrantor of participation rights, are being overwhelmed by a so significant innovation. Or, summarising more: the feeling is that in a world in which anyone takes part, or at least has the illusion to do it, the only ones who don’t take part are exactly the institutions, which appear so even more distant and disconnected from common sense, than how they already appeared yesterday.

After collecting this kind of feelings, we anyway must go beyond, trying to understand how the institutions could be part again of this game, and how horizons and ambitions of the e-democracy could overlap, at least partially, those one in constant widening of the “e-participation 2.0”. And if we know the difficulty to find good answers, also because of the already mentioned limits of e-democracy, there are anyway concrete hypothesis about the way to follow, and some valid ideas emerged also during the seminar in Bologna. Starting from the apparently biggest issue, clearly highlighted from Anna Carola Freschi (University of Bergamo) at the end of the event: “exactly in Italy, one of our best academics, Stefano Rodotà, raised years ago the issue about the necessity to write a Constitution for the Internet. The idea was relaunched also in international forums, like the WISIS, and it’s absolutely fundamental for all the debate about the e-participation. Only a system of civil, social and political rights up to new technologies can further a democratic use of the Net and a not-manipulated participation, a real dialogue between citizen and institutions”.

Going further, institutions can sure make more, but it’s not here that we pretend to do the list of the possible steps. For this purpose we refer: again to the webpage who collects and summarize the issues dealt during the seminary (www.partecipa.net); obviously to the fresh and animated Pep-Net’s blog; and, more general, to the Net itself, which is naturally full of good ideas and proposals. Here we just collect a couple of suggestions emerged from the event which took place in Bologna. Te first is the idea, expressed by Sabrina Franceschini, that institutions could and should transform themselves, at least partially, from provider to enabler of e-participation. The other one, formulated by many speaker (among them, Brian Loader, Laura Sartori, Wainer Lusoli and Rolf Luehrs), is the thought that institutions, but also ONG, should promote more educational project in which people could grow a greater sense of civic and citizenship. These projects should be taken obviously also on line, and they should help people to understand what is the real nature of the nets and which kind of opportunities, but also risks, they could find using them.

Finally we refer a little bit ironically to a recent news, suggesting how one of the biggest weak point of institutions, their slowness, could become suddenly and paradoxically useful in a scenario that is probably sacrificing too much to the “real time imperative”. A recent study realized by the University of Southern California, reported form several news agencies, offers indeed an academic evidence to a feeling already spread in the Net, and also elsewhere. In Facebook and Twitter’s era, tell us the researcher, with times of action and reaction even more compressed, the possibilities that behaviour and choices could be wrong and immoral are becoming greater and greater. This because ethic and moral require long times, and also common sense is full of sentences who highlight the importance to be slow to make wise choices. So, if there are no doubts about that, and if it’s also undeniable the idea that institutions could never win the “speed race” against web 2.0 tool, maybe the institutions could play a new role injecting slowness and “stickiness” in the digital arteries. Should they do so, maybe sometime the “all and now” rule could be defeated by the “who slow goes, safe and far goes” rule. Safe and far going, much more better if with a lot of other people, participating, also on (and thanks to) the digital nets.

Participation is a complex and multifaceted issue. Why not improving participation processes by means of a participatory practice? This has been the approach adopted during “Parteci P.A., the Meeting of the Participatory Democracy”, which took place form 21th to 23th of January, in Modena, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. An Open Space Technology (OST) – a methodology for the design and organization of participatory events and meeting, through the direct contribution of the same participants – has been held as main method to debate about the future perspective of participatory policies.

Visions, hypothesis and concrete proposals about the possibility to improve participation processes has been shared among the participants. In an opening plenary session, more than one hundred people proposed the issues to deal during the rest of the day in specific workgroups, composed on a self-selection basis, and aiming to the production of thematic instant reports.

These are some of the topics which were debated: can nets, web 2.0 solutions and citizen journalism support and improve participatory experiences? How join together the tools of representative democracy with those of the so called “continue democracy”? How evaluate and measure the quality and the utility of participatory processes? How institutions can use communication and promotion strategies to ensure a better and larger participation? How involve difficult audiences like younger, immigrants and skeptics? How integrate participatory projects organized by different government degrees (from local scenarios till to European scale)? Is it possible to promote a new culture of participation within institutions, citizens and aggregated stakeholders, by means of specific educational programs? And – last but not least – should institutions promote only top down initiatives, must they at the contrary just facilitate bottom up experiences, or, better, could they shape hybrid formulas catching the best from both models? (The last issue will be discussed in the framework of an international meeting, promoted by Regione Emilia-Romagna with the support of Pep-Net, scheduled for the beginning of April in Bologna).

The results of every single discussion generated from these questions were finally summarized in a global meeting’s instant report, soon available (in Italian) here.

Much more details and insights about OST are available on Wikipedia and the other sites showed below; here we just list the principles and the rules characterizing this kind of meetings. Starting from the principles, they are:

1. Whoever comes is the right people: this alerts the participants attending a session class as “right” simply because they care to attend;
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have: this tells the attendees to pay attention to events of the moment, instead of worrying about what could possibly happen;
3. Whenever it starts is the right time: this clarifies the lack of any given schedule or structure, and emphasizes creativity and innovation;
4. When it’s over, it’s over: this encourages the participants not to waste time, but to move on to something else when the fruitful discussion ends.

If these are the main principles, the only rule to respect during OST meetings is the “Law of the Two Feet”: if at any time during our time together you find yourself in any situation where you are neither learning nor contributing, use your two feet and go to some other place where you may learn and contribute. A behavior which has nothing to share with rudeness. On the contrary: this is the only way to respect everyone’s inclinations, and, first of all, who’s really interested in participating to single sessions.

Finally, here follow the two ways you can use your feet in OST contexts: stopping them in a place, either proposing ideas and contributes, or just listening and catching cues; or using them to move yourself: “like a butterfly”, who flies from a meeting to another collecting moments, thoughts and sensations; or like a bumblebee, sowing during the route what collected in every single stage which composes it.

External references:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology
• www.openspaceworld.net
• www.openspaceworld.org
• www.openspaceworld.com