Since 2013, Monithon has been developing tools and methods for enabling the “civic monitoring” of public funding. Our “civic monitoring reports” include information on how the projects are developed, how they are progressing, and what is their impact from the point of view of the final beneficiaries, such as citizens and enterprises.
In 2020, 125 new reports were developed and published on our website. The reports mainly come from the students participating in the “At the School of OpenCohesion” (ASOC) initiative, a European educational best practice carried out by the Italian Government. Its goal is to stimulate public engagement thanks to the use of open government data published in the OpenCohesion portal. The ASOC project has been using the tools and methods from Monithon for its civic monitoring activities since the very beginning.
In this post, we present some of the main results of Monithon’s civic monitoring from 2013 to 2020.
But there is more. While our usual statistics on results are included in our complete infographics, we added new figures and cases on the actual impact of this civic monitoring in Italy. We asked ASOC students if and how they could reach the media and the policy makers, and what was the main result of these interactions. We also analyzed the interactions among all actors involved via Twitter.
We found that the monitoring teams were very good at creating connections with policy makers and the media. However, the actual impact on policymaking was limited to a few interesting cases.
Click here to download the complete infographics
The results of civic monitoring
Considering all civic monitoring reports since 2013, the total amount of public funding monitored increased from 7.35 in 2019 to 9.41 billion Euros in 2020. Most of these projects (about 70%) are large transportation infrastructures such as train or metro stations and railways. This is a pretty impressive figure, considering that the total value of the projects tracked in the OpenCohesion website is about 180 billion euros.
Overall, most of the projects that have been assessed obtained a positive evaluation. However, some projects were judged as ineffective (10%), blocked (8%), or in progress with some problems (15%). In particular, problems found were both administrative (11%) and technical (11%), while there were cases in which results did not match the expectations (2.8%), or the project was not effective without the necessary complementary interventions (3.2%).
Each report, of course, includes much more detailed information about different qualitative aspects of implementation. The projects were described from the final beneficiaries’ perspective, and assessed by considering their strengths, weaknesses, and future opportunities. Moreover, the civic monitors always added suggestions for improving the project or replicate it in other contexts. Here is a list of the reports published in 2020.
These results were disseminated using different means, with the aim of reaching out to the people responsible for programming and implementation of a specific policy, as well as to foster an informed debate in the media around the issues that were found.
Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook were the most used social media. In addition, students were suggested to organize local events, especially during the Italian “Open Data Week” (50% of the cases). It is interesting to note that about one-fifth of the projects managed to be formally audited by local public administrations to discuss their results.
The impact of civic monitoring
The media coverage of civic investigations could be considered one first measure of impact.
63% of the monitoring reports were somehow covered by the media. In particular, local TVs and newspapers were interested in giving attention to the research process and the results. Almost 50% of the teams that responded to our questionnaire stated that they were featured in the local press. Others were interviewed on the radio or featured in local web magazines.
The team Terra di Mezzo created their own web radio on Spotify called Radio Raid featuring interviews with political leaders and key people in the fight against the local mafia. The team told Monithon that “our broadcasting helped to involve not only the population but a wider national and international audience. It made the reuse of confiscated assets, a topic that the media do not usually cover, a symbol of the fight against ‘Ndrangheta in Isola di Capo Rizzuto”.
The students also described if and how they could reach policy makers. 76% made contact with local or national public agencies, responsible for programming or implementation of the monitored project. In some limited cases (7%), the administration did not respond to the requests at all. In other cases, more than one contact request was made to different agencies, with some agencies that responded and others did not (18%). In 2020, the COVID pandemic provided for additional barriers to civic monitoring.
The logo of the monitoring team “Terra di Mezzo” from Calabria
The type of responses also varied. The students received formal or generic replies to their requests (18%), or more specific promises (32%).
For example, the team Watershed from the 2018-2019 ASOC edition monitored the construction of a canal to prevent natural disasters in Palma di Montechiaro, Sicily. They got very concrete promises. “We noticed that the works, although completed, had several limitations. The sinkholes were full of weeds and debris that did not allow the water to enter the pipeline and then drain into the sea, and that some manholes have been stolen and then replaced with boulders that allowed debris to enter the canal. […] Following our suggestions, the Mayor signed a memorandum of understanding for the maintenance of the canal”.
In some limited cases, the suggestions from the civic monitoring were successfully implemented to improve the project’s effectiveness (8%).
The students of the team Panta Rei, who evaluated a set of water purifiers near Naples in 2020, told us that “Our inputs have helped to turn the spotlight on the issue of the project Regi Lagni, stimulating a series of initiatives that have multiplied in this period, […] such as the establishment of a “Special Investigation Commission on Water Pollution” by the Municipality of Castel Volturno (Naples).
In 2018, another monitoring team – Veni Vidi Vico – monitored a renovation project of their own school, the “Giambattista Vico” high school in Laterza, Puglia. “The works, which concerned the water and fire protection system, financed with European funds, were completed, but the fire certification was lacking because the electrical system was not in accordance with current regulations. […] Thanks to our continuous reminders to local authorities, the following year the electrical system was modified and certified”.
Finally, we assessed the degree to which the students were able to form relations with the other actors through the analysis of their Twitter connections. The use of Twitter to document the different steps of the investigations, as well as the public encounters, was one of the requirements of the ASOC program. Therefore, the vast majority of the monitoring teams created a Twitter account and used it to post photos, videos, as well as to mention people and organizations.
We mapped the complex network of interactions among these accounts, each representing an individual or an organization that used the ASOC official hashtags such as #ASOC2021. We considered not only the students (civic monitoring teams) but also all different actors with different roles that participated or were interested in the ASOC program.
More than one thousand national and local actors created about five thousand connections. The two central nodes represent the two main official accounts of the ASOC team, that is @OpenCoesione and @ascuoladioc. We removed another big node in the center, our own @monithon, which systematically re-tweeted and mentions a large number of student teams. Some Europe Direct Centers and the Managing Authorities of the regional programmes from Southern Italy often act as hubs.
Apart from the ASOC team, the students were able to form Twitter relations also with the Policy Makers, including supporting regional authorities (445 connections), NGOs (268), and the media (132).
Increasing impact
We showed how monitoring teams and communities are usually very good at creating relations to conduct field analysis of the funded projects and disseminate their results both on social media and more traditional media.
The results of our questionnaire, which now is embedded in “step 3” of the civic monitoring report, also showed that the average impact of this monitoring on projects’ effectiveness is still limited. Nevertheless, we also received very interesting stories about the creation of real partnerships between the students (including their teachers and communities) and the administrations involved in project implementation.
We think it is crucial to multiply the opportunities for the establishment of such effective partnerships, both at the local and national levels. OpenCoesione, our biggest partner and one of the main open data providers for civic monitoring in Italy, could facilitate this process by further increasing the chances for the creation of new connections, as well as to promote the actual use of the input from the bottom-up in the policymaking cycle. For example, the ASOC team recently organized a series of meetings with selected monitoring teams and representatives of regional and national authorities programming or implementing Cohesion Policy in Italy, with the aim of discussing students’ suggestions for better policymaking. This initiative, called ASOC Talk – a dialogue with public institutions, seems to be perfectly in line with our suggestion.
In addition, we think that Italian NGOs, already involved in civic monitoring as authors of reports or supporters of the activities of ASOC students, could do more for advocating better EU policy and projects’ implementation based on the results of civic monitoring. Students and NGOs should find common topics and interests and form a strategic alliance. The creation of stable connections among interested actors, associated with policy mechanisms for real citizen engagement, could be the way to take civic monitoring to the next level.
From raw data to real impact: building accountability through collaboration in the Open Government Partnership
/0 Comments/in Ideas /by Luigi ReggiToday I had the opportunity to speak at the #OpenDataDay event at Puglia Region, Italy. My panel was entitled “Open Data: A Dialogue Between Public Administrations and Civil Society.” The event brought together government representatives, civil society organizations, and technical experts to discuss best practices and ongoing challenges in unlocking public data to foster transparency, accountability, and innovation. Our discussions ranged from exploring practical ways to share open data across various levels of government to finding innovative methods for ensuring these data sets are effectively used by local communities, the media, and academia.
I emphasized how data from publicly funded initiatives—such as Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) and European Cohesion Policy—reflect tangible human stories. Each investment, contract, or project carries the potential to transform neighborhoods, improve lives, and spur innovation within businesses. Monithon’s work relies on gathering highly granular details, often linking multiple administrative “silos,” to assess the effectiveness of these investments in the real world. By using the Codice Unico di Progetto (CUP- Unified Project ID), which is unique to Italy, it becomes possible to merge and analyze information from different sources: PNRR or cohesion funding, business grants through the RNA system, and public procurement data from ANAC. We then publish new open data on the actual results of these projects, creating an evidence base that both governmental bodies and the public can consult. Journalists from outlets like Il Sole 24 Ore and EU project AwareEU frequently leverage these insights, and universities are playing an increasingly active role as civic intermediaries, taking students to project sites to observe what is actually happening on the ground.
At the European level, the drive to harmonize and interconnect public data spans across borders. Tools such as OpenTender standardize procurement data in multiple countries, enabling comparisons and revealing trends that would otherwise remain buried in fragmented national databases. This kind of cross-country collaboration bolsters transparency and provides a much broader platform for monitoring public investments, thereby increasing accountability and ensuring that vital information is not siloed by geography.
The ongoing work of Italy’s C6 Open Government Partnership Working Group has fostered a climate of mutual trust among various stakeholders—technical specialists, civil society groups, and public administrators. This collaborative environment has yielded practical tools to reduce the technical barriers that still hinder many opendata initiatives. OnData, a key member of this group, has been instrumental in making critical datasets easier to access and use, so that anyone with an interest in public investments can visualize and interpret the numbers behind large-scale infrastructure, social programs, and economic development projects (see for example this vademecum on how to merge different government data on projects funded by the PNRR).
Despite this progress, challenges remain. Many different agencies and levels of government still track and define information in ways that do not automatically align. Harmonizing metadata standards and ensuring consistent definitions is essential for connecting one data set to another. There is also a pressing need to determine how best to measure the impact of the commitments. Publishing raw figures does not guarantee they will be used or that they will lead to improved policies or better public services. Meaningful accountability requires not only transparency but an active dialogue between public institutions and citizens, a commitment to share updates regularly, and a willingness to respond to the concerns and insights that emerge from civil society’s use of these data.
The PNRR has greatly increased the availability of public data, including important new details on funding allocations and payments. Yet the ultimate goal is to make sure these resources reach everyone, not just policymakers and researchers with specialized technical expertise. Data are only as powerful as the engagement and context that accompany them. Through continued collaboration, the open data community can expand the circle of people who have the ability and the tools to transform statistical insights into real improvements in communities across Italy—and, increasingly, across Europe as well.
Italian multi-stakeholder Open Government Partnership forum includes civic monitoring among strategic objectives
/0 Comments/in News /by MonithonThe Italian Open Government Forum (Forum Governo Aperto) has confirmed civic monitoring as one of the strategic objectives contained in the current version of the National Strategy for open government, within the framework of the Open Government Partnership, the international initiative that promotes transparency, citizen participation, the fight against corruption, and the use of new technologies to strengthen public governance.
The Forum, which replaces the Multi-Stakeholder Forum and is therefore composed of representatives from both public administrations and civil society, including Luigi Reggi from Monithon Europe, met last September 19th and 20th at the Department of Public Administration of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.
The objective on civic monitoring is part of the broader priority of “Implementing open government practices in areas of significant impact or for reducing inequalities, promoting social equity, and ensuring integrity.”
Here is the text of the objective:
The aim is therefore to invest in the publication of open data that enables civic monitoring activities by citizens and stakeholders (for example, data on the progress of public projects). Civic monitoring and evaluation focus both on how public decisions are made and on what has been achieved (results and impacts in terms of public value produced). Civic monitoring and evaluation are therefore considered key tools for improving the integrity and transparency of public policies.
Eurozine’s Article Highlights Challenges in EU Recovery Fund Transparency – Featuring Insights from Monithon
/0 Comments/in News /by MonithonA new article in Eurozine tackles the challenges surrounding the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) and its implementation across member states. It painstakingly explores critical issues such as transparency, fraud prevention, and the effectiveness of the RRF in achieving its intended goals. Key sources cited in the article are representatives of European institutions and civil society organizations such as the Open Spending EU Coalition.
The article also includes an interview with Dr. Luigi Reggi, co-founder of Monithon, who shares his insights on enhancing accountability and public oversight of EU funds. Dr. Reggi emphasized the importance of civic engagement and public oversight in promoting transparency and accountability. Monithon has been at the forefront of these efforts, working to involve citizens in monitoring EU-funded projects within their communities.
Dr. Reggi advocates for a practical solution that has been proposed by Monithon and other Italian civil society organizations in recent years, such as the umbrella-organization Osservatorio Civico PNRR: replicating the OpenCoesione model. This government platform, which is currently Italy’s national portal for the transparency of EU Cohesion Funds, allows for detailed, accessible data on project funding and progress. These data can be used by the public to monitor and evaluate the use of funds effectively.
Join the Conversation
We encourage you to learn more about Monithon’s ongoing efforts to promote transparency and civic engagement in the monitoring of EU funds by reading our news and projects. Stay tuned for more updates and insights from Monithon on social media!
iMonitor Project Presented at the G20 Anticorruption Working Group: Highlights from Panel Discussion
/0 Comments/in Events, iMonitor, News /by MonithonMonithon Europe had the privilege of being represented by its president Luigi Reggi at the recent G20 Anticorruption Working Group event “Just and Sustainable Procurement for People and Planet” held in Paris, France. This gathering saw key discussions on the role of public procurement and the monitoring of public spending through open data and digital technologies. These topics are central to the G20’s agenda leading up to the summit in Brazil in November 2024, where global commitments, including the recent resolution on digitization, data, and ICTs in procurement, will be finalized.
The event featured prominent panelists such as Sally Guyer and Kristen Robinson from the Open Contracting Partnership, Giuseppe Busia, president of ANAC [here his speech and presentation], and Mr. Henrique de Oliveira Andrade, Chief of Staff of the Secretariat of Internal Control, Office of the Comptroller General, Brazil. Their collective insights underscored the significance of transparency and technological advancements in fighting corruption.
The G20, as the primary platform for global economic cooperation, has played a crucial role in leading the global fight against corruption. G20 countries, accounting for 75% of world trade and 80% of global GDP, committed to ensure they have in place “systems of procurement based on transparency, competition and objective criteria in decision-making to prevent corruption” in 2014. They also approved G20 Principles for Promoting Integrity in Public Procurement in 2015 and a G20 Compendium of Good Practices for Promoting Integrity and Transparency in Infrastructure Development in 2019, emphasizing the need for openness and transparency of such procurement. The States parties to the United Nations Convention against Corruption also committed, in 2021, to “increasing transparency and accountability in the management of public finances and in government procurement, funding and contracting services to ensure transparency in government actions in the use of public funds and during the whole public procurement cycle” to fully implement article 9 of the Convention and approved a resolution entitled Promoting transparency and integrity in public procurement in support of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development last December.
Monithon, created in 2013 as an independent initiative supporting citizens in the participatory assessment of the effectiveness of EU projects, has, since 2023, offered a specific methodology and a tool for gathering input on potential misuse of public funding to anyone. The input from local communities is primarily used to foster collaboration with local authorities responsible for local investments, but it can also be forwarded, if deemed relevant, to national anticorruption authorities.
Citizens can select relevant public tenders to monitor on the OpenTender portal, which gathers open government data on millions of contracts in the EU from different official sources and calculates corruption risk indicators for each tender. In Italy, citizens can also start the selection process by identifying an EU-funded project in their town or neighborhood through the Project Finder map, where projects are georeferenced with high precision based on the address. Once they find an interesting project for their community, they can look for related public tenders through the Unique Project Code, which all Italian public administrations use.
The panel discussion indeed highlighted the importance of including civic actors in the procurement process, by “giving stakeholders clear channels to turn insights from open data on public procurement into policy changes, better resource allocation, stronger contract negotiation and smarter more efficient delivery of goods, services and infrastructure”. For this to happen, citizens should be able to access sufficient training on technical matters. The discussion also focused on the crucial availability of high-quality and interoperable data, such as those connecting investment projects, public tenders, business registers, company ownership, and beneficial ownership. The AI application ALICE presented by the Brazilian government seems a very promising tool when based on the right data.
We extend our gratitude to the delegates of the G20 countries for their engaging questions and to the French government team for their excellent organization of the event. The outcomes of this session will be shared with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to support the implementation of CoSP resolution 10/9.
For more information about the iMonitor project, visit the iMonitor website.
We need more data on how Italian RRF projects are progressing
/0 Comments/in News /by MonithonThe Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) was approved by the European Council on 13 July 2021. Since then, a complex administrative machine has started with the aim of implementing such an ambitious and financially relevant plan. A machine that involved all levels of government, from national to local.
PNRR investments are made through projects. Each project is a piece of a jigsaw puzzle. For example, to achieve the objective of “increasing the educational offer in the 0-6 age group throughout the national territory” it is necessary to build or renovate 2550 nursery schools and create 150,000 new places. Every nursery is a project.
What is happening now is that this complex administrative machine is struggling to collect information. Some analysts, including those at the Openpolis foundation, have questioned whether the Government really has a clear picture of how PNRR projects are going, especially those managed at a local level.
One thing is certain. On the website of the official government portal Italia Domani, aimed at communicating the results of the PNRR, there has never been any trace of information on the progress of the projects. Since April 2023, we have known, for example, what projects are called, where they are, how much they cost, which administrations are responsible, and which public tenders are associated. The publication of that data was certainly a big step forward. But we still don’t know which projects are underway or completed, how much funding has been spent, or whether administrative procedures are progressing or blocked.
We promote “civic” monitoring of public funds, based precisely on the analysis of these individual pieces of the puzzle. Without this information, it is much more complicated for citizens to understand and control how the funds are spent, evaluate their effectiveness, and help make the infrastructures and services created more useful and closer to real needs. Reconstructing this information from the bottom up is not impossible, but it is necessary to contact each administration directly, with time and patience, and a response is not guaranteed.
We too therefore join, with the “Dati Bene Comune” campaign and the PNRR Civic Observatory , the Openpolis Foundation’s proposal to send a new #FOIA request on the data of the #PNRR projects and tenders . We ask the President of the Council of Ministers Giorgia Meloni and Minister Raffaele Fitto for full transparency on the Plan.
▶️ Learn more about the missing data on the PNRR on the OpenPolis website [in Italian]
▶️ Go to the “Dati Bene Comune” campaign on the PNRR [in Italian]
Monithon elected as member of the Italian Open Government Forum for 2024-2027 term
/0 Comments/in News /by MonithonFollowing the vote on March 4, 2024, the composition for the new mandate of the Italian Open Government Forum (FGA) for the term 2024/2027 has been officially approved. A total of 44 organizations from the Open Government Partnership Italy (OGPIT) community participated in the voting process, including 15 public administrations and 29 civil society organizations.
Monithon, as one of the newly elected civil society organizations, is honored to join the FGA. According to the regulation, the Forum plays a crucial role in governing the OGPIT community, which brings together stakeholders from both the public and civil sectors. The FGA acts as a platform for equal dialogue between organized civil society and institutional actors, with the mission of implementing public policies relevant to the strategy, implementation, and impact monitoring of the national strategy for open government.
Monithon, during its mandate, will act according to the principle of leading by example, contributing to the implementation of commitments in line with the national open government strategy.
Monithon looks forward to contributing to the advancement of open government principles and engaging in this significant collaborative effort to enhance transparency, collaboration, and participation in public governance.
Here is the complete list of the new members of the Open Government Forum.
Government Organizations
Civil Society Organizations
iMonitor, a civic monitoring network to prevent corruption, is launched: join us!
/0 Comments/in iMonitor, News, Projects /by MonithonDecember 9th is the International Day against Corruption, an opportunity to raise awareness of the consequences of this social, political, and economic phenomenon which affects all countries and deprives citizens of fundamental rights, slows down economic development, undermines the institutions, and the rule of law.
We take this opportunity to announce Monithon’s participation in the iMonitor project network, which has been active for a few months in 4 European countries (Italy, Spain, Romania, Lithuania).
Combining the analysis of public procurement data and the results of civic monitoring to help improve the efficiency of the fight against corruption: this is the key objective of the project coordinated by the Government Transparency Institute, financed by the Internal Security Fund and supported by the Italian national anticorruption authority (ANAC).
Starting from the Opentender platform, which has made public procurement data and corruption risk indicators available, and using Monithon’s reporting tool for citizens dedicated to monitoring public spending, iMonitor will, on the one hand, try to provide useful information authorities to address corruption and fraud in public procurement, on the other hand, to promote civil society networks for ongoing anti-corruption efforts in the 4 European countries/regions involved.
To date, the iMonitor network is finalizing a common monitoring reporting template in Spain, Italy, Lithuania, and Romania, and a methodology to engage civic communities in this delicate activity.
The monitoring activities will begin in 2024, and will involve groups of interested citizens with civic monitoring laboratories.
iMonitor brings together Monithon, Oficina Antifrau de Catalunya (Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia), Transparency International Lithuanian Chapter , Romanian Academic Society, National Integrity Agency / Agenția Națională de Integritate (Romania), Collegi de Professionals de la Ciència Política i de la Sociologia de Catalunya (COLPIS, Spain).
If want to participate, shoot us a message at info@monithon.eu!
Italian government releases open data on Recovery projects
/0 Comments/in News /by MonithonThis is one of the most awaited news by Italian transparency advocates, journalists, and researchers. Two years after the launch of the Italian Recovery Plan (PNRR) and countless calls for transparency, it is now possible to access the information contained in the monitoring system of the Ministry of Economy and Finance on the individual projects financed (“REGIS”).
The data is updated to 1 March 2023 and concerns over 50 thousand validated projects , therefore 10 times more than those published in the last release. The total number of projects, including those not yet validated, is almost 140,000.
Data are published in the Open Data section of the national RRF portal “Italia Domani”. The following tables are available:
Our first impression
In the coming days, we will analyze this data to verify its completeness and quality. We aim at contributing to a wider analysis involving content and technical aspects in collaboration with other civil society initiatives such as the Dati Bene Comune transparency campaign.
In the meantime, this data release looks like a big step forward in terms of transparency and accountability of the RRF. Knowing exactly which projects are financed and where, on which topics and with which objectives, it is possible for interested citizens and organizations to verify the progress and the effects of RFF funding on the ground. While other public datasets like OpenCUP contain information about projects only potentially funded by the Recovery Plan, these new data allow to identify which projects are actually being funded by the RRF. Through the Unique Project Identifier (CUP) it is easy for tech-savvy citizens to match RRF data with other existing Italian datasets such as ANAC, Servizio Contratti Pubblici, or OpenBDAP.
Also, information about the location of the projects is included, allowing interesting spatial analyses. The link to the related tenders makes it easier for the users to access the data from the National Anticorruption Authority. Finally, data are accompanied by a minimal set of metadata, briefly explaining the meaning of each variable.
Of course, there is room for improvement. A few initial examples:
We look forward to using these new datasets in our civic monitoring of the Recovery Plan!
Environmental monitoring in Salento
/0 Comments/in Ambiente, Progetto Civic Monitoring for EU /by MonithonThe long work of the Mobius Circle APS – Precious Plastic Salento association concluded yesterday, which used the Monithon method for its first work of civic monitoring of public projects. A work that began last year thanks to the European project Civic Monitoring for the future of Europe , for which Monithon provided a specialized training course on the civic monitoring of European funds.
The monitoring report – the first of a series in various European countries, which we will publish in the coming weeks – deals with the renovation of an ancient rainwater collection channel in the naturalistic oasis of the Canale della Lacrima (financed with the Funds for POR FESR 2014-2020) in the municipality of Campi Salentina. The intervention also involves the strengthening of the surrounding riparian vegetation, in order to reconstitute a woodland nucleus, starting from some very rare specimens of Virgilian oaks found on site.
The monitoring process lasted about a year and was developed with data collection and analysis activities, starting from the information available on the Open Coesione website in the resolutions published on the website of the Municipality of Campi Salentina. Public debates, working groups, inspections, and interviews which also involved a group of students, active protagonists of the monitoring activities, completed the activities.
The outcome of the research highlighted that it is a useful project which, however, could have been developed in a more complete way, especially since a management plan for the area was not foreseen.
Italian civil society asks the Government for data on the projects funded by the Recovery Plan
/0 Comments/in News /by MonithonOn November 30th, 2022, more than 60 Italian civil society entities (here is the full list, updated daily) representing citizens, associations, groups, movements, universities, and research centers, sent an open letter to the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and to the Minister for the European Affairs, Cohesion Policies and the RRF, Raffaele Fitto, denouncing the serious delay in making available the data that are essential for monitoring the progress of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. The campaign is called “Italy Tomorrow, Data Today”, inspired by the name of the government website ItaliaDomani (“Italy for Tomorrow”).
Monithon has been advocating for years for better data on the planning and implementation of EU funding, including, more recently, on the Recovery and Resilience facility. Detailed and high-quality data are essential for allowing citizens to increase awareness of the use of public funding and collect new information on the individual projects funded through interviews or questionnaires. Have a look at our civic monitoring reports in Italy and other EU Countries.
According to Italian civil society, information on the National Recovery and Resilience Plan and its management remains scarce and inadequate. The national government website ItaliaDomani does not yet contain information on the funds actually spent. A the moment, only 4 tender procedures and around 5,000 projects are listed. This data is updated to May 2022 and concerns only 1 billion euros.
In short, there is no single and easily accessible place in which to find what projects are funded, where, and how they are progressing.
The following is the complete text of the open letter (here is the original Italian version, which we have translated into English – sorry for any inaccuracies).
Civil society asks for transparency on the Recovery Plan with a letter to the Prime Minister
Despite the continuous promises from the Government and Parliament, information on the National Recovery and Resilience Plan and its management is still very scarce and inadequate. For citizens, associations, groups, movements, universities, and research centers it is not yet possible to monitor the progress of a project and assess its impact.
The budget law for 2021 committed the Government to detect the financial, physical, and procedural implementation data relating to each project of the PNRR and to make them available in an open format, but there is still very little evidence of all this. Currently, published data do not show the state of implementation, or provide any evidence of the impact at the local level.
In the open data catalog ItaliaDomani, the national portal of the PNRR launched by the Government in August 2021 has the goal of allowing citizens to monitor the implementation of the plan and the progress of each investment. However, at the moment there is no available information on the funds actually spent.
According to the second report to Parliament on the state of implementation of the Plan, sent to the Italian Parliament on October 6th, 73,000 projects should have been uploaded to the REGIS system, a national information system for the monitoring of the Plan. However, in the ItaliaDomani portal we can only find:
Furthermore, there is no single and easily accessible place where it is possible to access project documents or files, which is essential to understand the projects’ goals and context.
Obtaining this information, which is essential for citizens to be able to fully exercise their role of control over the work of the public administration, has so far been delegated to the ability or goodwill of individual local administrations, resulting in unequal access to information in different areas of our Country.
As if that were not enough, the absence of information and data accessible to citizens seems to reflect a general lack of reliable data and information also for the decision-makers themselves, who have a duty to guarantee the correct implementation of the plan and to report on it.
For some time, civil society organizations have been calling for a greater and constant commitment to ensuring transparency in the implementation of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. Most of these requests have so far gone unheeded.
We therefore ask the new Government for a concrete commitment to publish:
The RRF represents an unprecedented opportunity and a challenge for our Country, which involves a substantial commitment and enormous responsibility, considering that a large portion of the funds involves public debt that will concern our generation and future ones. This challenge needs all parties are fully involved, starting with citizens. Transparency and availability of data are the conditions for guaranteeing citizens the possibility of promoting debate and carrying out civic monitoring actions, as well as intervening to avoid waste of public money and wrong public decisions.
Let’s talk about open data and education at The State of Open Data Roundtables
/0 Comments/in News /by MonithonMonithon will participate in the second round of The State of Open Data Roundtables taking place between November 2-4 to gather perspectives regarding the use and impact of open data. The Data for Development Network will convene experts to discuss recent developments around Education, Corporate Ownership, Crime and Justice, Agriculture, and Land Ownership.
Our own Luigi Reggi will discuss perspectives on the use and impact of open data on education in the session “State of Open Data: Education“, hosted by Javiera Atenas, Principal Researcher at ILDA. The panel includes Marwan Tarazi, Director of “Design and Innovation” at the Center for Continuing Education (CCE), Dr. Victoria Marín, Senior Research Fellow at the University of Lleida (Spain), and Priscila Gonsales, Co-founder at Instituto Educadigital.
You can find some background on Open Data and Education in the latest version of the State of Open Data Report.
The session will begin on Wednesday, November 2 at 02:00 pm (CET). Please register here!
The event will also be streamed on YouTube.
Welcome Kohesio, the new tool for discovering projects for territorial cohesion throughout Europe
/0 Comments/in News /by MonithonWell done European Commission! Kohesio – the online platform that collects data and information on over 1.5 million projects financed by Cohesion Policy all over Europe – was launched earlier today by Commissioner Elisa Ferreira, after being published in beta version for a while.
We at Monithon had a look at Kohesio’s contents, which at the moment are only in English, but will be available in all EU languages. On the homepage, Kohesio presents a map that allows you to easily and intuitively discover the European projects active in your territory. The projects can then be further filtered by theme; Research and Innovation, Social Inclusion, Public Administration Efficiency, Climate Change and Risk Prevention are just some of the categories used on the platform.
Kohesio’s source for Italian projects is OpenCoesione, to which Kohesio adds nothing in terms of data quality, georeferencing (projects are displayed on the map at the municipal level), or information return. However, the real value is the opportunity to compare projects funded in all EU countries! Through the project search interface, you can navigate between similar projects in all countries through filters and keyword research. It is also possible to search by funding recipients (beneficiaries). The data can be downloaded in CSV or XLSX format for each country, as separate files for beneficiaries and projects.
We will be testing these tools in our civic monitoring activities during the coming weeks, by focusing on data quality. In the meantime, we suggest the Kohesio’s team at the European Commission to publish APIs: it will be much easier for civic initiatives like ours to access data (only the ones they need), interpret them, and add value.
Edit 9PM: We asked for APIs, but it turns out that a super helpful EU Knowledge graph endpoint is in fact available, which also includes data from Kohesio. Can’t wait to play with it! https://query.linkedopendata.eu
Monithon meets the New York Public Library
/0 Comments/in News /by MonithonYesterday we had the honor to have a conversation with brilliant Daphna Blatt and Caitlyn Colman-McGaw from the New York Public Library (NYPL) about future applications of civic monitoring in New York City.
Daphna Blatt, who is Director of Strategic Research & Analytics at the NYPL, learned about us in the book Mistrust by our friend Professor Ethan Zuckerman, a well-known media scholar and Internet activist, former director of the MIT Media Lab and now an associate professor of public policy, communication and information at the University of Massachusetts.
Public libraries have a key role in promoting citizen engagement in “smart city” initiatives and cultivating civic impact. In particular, the NYPL is recognized as one of the world’s most innovative institutions and a real beacon of legitimacy and identity in New York. NYPL’s programs combine exceptional expertise in data and information with the ability to act as a facilitator of civic initiatives for public accountability and for increasing trust in public institutions. Have a look at the NYC Open Data portal.
We were impressed by their interest in both Monithon’s method and the At the School of OpenCohesion application. Caitlyn Colman-McGaw, Manager of Young Adult Educational Programming, asked about the emotional response of high-school students when exposed to controversial public issues – a response that eventually leads to creative suggestions for improving public policies.
Our own Luigi Reggi also mentioned EU policies and initiatives for reducing inequality and promoting social inclusion, which are particularly interesting in the context of New York City.
A final recommendation from the NYPL was to collect more detailed information about the civic impact of our monitoring, for example by assessing civic skills and awareness before and after the monitoring activities.
Stay tuned for future developments 🙂
Civic monitoring of EU policy in Turin shows both positive and negative aspects of funded projects
/0 Comments/in News /by Cristina ScarasciulloOn May 21, the student laboratory of the University of Turin – one of the activities of the project “A civic monitoring network for the civic monitoring of the European funds for the environment, promoted by Monithon and Lunaria and co-financed by the European Commission – delivered its results. The event was organized with the support of the Metropolitan City of Turin, Europe Direct Turin and the OpenCoesione initiative of the Department for Cohesion of the Presidency of the Council. The discussion was designed for the students to meet the authorities and hear their positions on the possibilities offered by monitoring.
A training experience not only for the students – involved in monitoring six projects funded by the European Union in the Turin area – but also for the administrators who attended the final event during which the students presented the results of their monitoring, highlighting the shortcomings.
The monitoring activity allowed the students to conduct fieldwork activities and check the progress of the projects – selected through the interactive Project Finder map made available by Monithon -, which also allowed them to meet the recipients of the funded projects, and therefore see the real impact they have on citizens’ lives. What basically emerged during the project was that, although useful and well-realized, the users of the services complain of shortcomings, not only due to the lack of maintenance, but also to the implementation of the interventions, which do not always exactly meet the needs of the beneficiaries of the projects.
After the first phase of “inspection”, the students then contacted the public managers responsible for the National Programme “Metropolitan Cities” to ask for clarification regarding the shortcomings they found. This has therefore made it possible to open a round table with the European Commission and the City of Turin not only on the issue of civic monitoring – a very useful tool in monitoring the management of funds – but also on the importance of involving citizens in all phases of the project for a better success of the project itself.
Read the civic monitoring reports [IN ITALIAN]
Cristina Scarasciullo
Contributor
164 teams from “At School of OpenCohesion” have completed their civic monitoring!
/0 Comments/in News /by MonithonWe want to congratulate the students, teachers, and the “At School of OpenCohesion” team for completing the long civic monitoring program in such a difficult year.
164 monitoring groups – two-thirds of those that started in October last year – have reached the end of the course and are ready to participate in the final selection for finding out which groups will emerge as winners in this edition.
It is an extraordinary result obtained also thanks to the partners and territorial networks that have supported the groups and facilitated the interviews with the subjects responsible for the projects financed by the Cohesion Policies.
Our editorial team supported the groups and commented on the civic monitoring reports that were developed in the third phase of the educational path. The overall quality of the reports is very good, with about 50 reports that resulted particularly effective thanks to their critical analysis, in-depth information, communicative capacity, and the ability to reach a wide audience of subjects in their investigations. About 45% of the reports published on our site received specific comments from our editorial team on the various sections of the report, which guided the development of the research and greatly improved the final result.
READ ALL THE REPORTS HERE, starting with the last one sent.
In such a particular year, it was hard to physically visit the projects, but the students were great at interviewing the responsible parties remotely. To all the teams that have not yet been able to send their Monithon civic monitoring report, we remind you that there is no deadline for sending the report to us!
There is always time to continue monitoring, and we are here to support you.
There is a new app in town: Monithon Project Finder helps you discover EU-funded project in your city
/0 Comments/in News, Scegli il progetto /by MonithonOn Friday 16 April was presented to the public the “Monithon Project Finder” – a new web application created by Monithon in collaboration with the designers and developers of Sheldon Studio, starting from the open data published by OpenCoesione, which helps to locate the projects financed in the environmental sector from European funds 2014-2020.
An interactive map allows to perform a search related to funded projects in Italy per municipality and districts: each pin on the map calls out a project. There are over 7 thousand projects displayed, for an amount of approximately 8.9 billion euros, which can be filtered by Municipality, theme, project category, budget, starting year, and implementation progress. The map displays projects financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in the 2014-2020 programming period, as classified by OpenCoesione in the following “synthetic themes”: Environment, Energy, Culture, and Tourism. The data update is as of 31st December 2020.
Among the projects, there are all those relating to energy efficiency of public buildings and enterprises, sustainable mobility, prevention and mitigation of hydrogeological risk and climate change, management of the waste cycle, modernization of water networks, wastewater treatment, protection of biodiversity, enhancement of the environmental and natural heritage.
By the means of the Project Finder, the user can select the most interesting projects to evaluate. Once the project has been identified, anyone can start their civic monitoring activities by clicking on the button contained in the description of the selected project. The civic monitor will automatically access the Monithon work area, where she will be guided step by step in the development of the Civic Monitoring Report thanks to the online guide MoniTutor.
4 steps for finding the projects near you and starting the civic monitoring
The map can be navigated freely, although we recommend that you follow the steps below.
1. Locate your municipality
From projectfinder.monithon.eu, the first step is to look for a municipality to start from (top left). The map will focus on the chosen municipality: each dot corresponds to a project, and the color depends on the thematic area (e.g. sustainable mobility or environment). By moving the distance indicator just below right and left, you can establish the size of the radius starting from the center of the municipality, for example to consider only the municipal area, neighboring municipalities or the entire province or metropolitan area.
2. Filter the projects to find something interesting
At the bottom, you can raise the green panel to select the projects: you can filter by “category” (there are 28 and they distinguish the projects on the basis of the main activity carried out), or by budget, year of start, progress and presence of civic monitoring reports on the project, indicating that the same project has already been monitored in the past.
3. Pick a project from the list
To see the resulting list of projects, you need to click on the white panel, bottom right. The projects can be sorted by distance, theme, financial value or starting year.
4. Start monitoring!
By clicking on each project, you access a summary sheet that contains the essential data on the progress and description of the project. From here you can start monitoring: by clicking on the button at the bottom right of the card you will be accompanied immediately (if you are not logged in, just log in) on our work area for creating the report and access all the information and suggestions of the MoniTutor. Of course, you can also access the project sheet by simply clicking on each dot!
“Monithon Project Finder” was created to accompany the activities of the project “A national network for civic monitoring of European funds for the environment and sustainable development”, implemented by Lunaria and Monithon – and co-funded by the Directorate General for Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission.
Let’s learn how to monitor the EU funding for the environment!
/0 Comments/in Events, News, REMO /by MonithonWe are happy to invite you to two free online training events (in Italian) on the civic monitoring of EU funding for the environment in Italy on April 16 and May 21. On the second day, we will launch a national civic monitoring network. Here you can find the program and all the info to participate.
If you are interested in participating or collaborating with us, please send us an email at retemonitoraggiocivico@gmail.com!
Two online events, free and open to all, are scheduled for next Friday 16 April and Friday 21 May, from 2.00 pm to 5.00 pm, organized in collaboration with the Sbilanciamoci! Campaign, with the laboratory “European cohesion policies and territorial communication strategies” (Prof. Alba Garavet), and the course “Communicating Europe: institutions, representations and public opinion” of the University of Turin (Prof. Marinella Belluati). What are the environmental projects financed in Italy by the European Union through the resources of the European Cohesion Policy? Where exactly are they located, and what kind of interventions do they envisage? How much are the resources allocated to them, and who manages them in our country? How to monitor their progress and evaluate the real impact on beneficiaries and territories? These are the questions to be answered in the two initiatives in April and May, thanks to the participation of experts, activists from Italian environmental organizations and networks, students, institutional representatives.
This training is co-funded by the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission thanks to the project “A national network for civic monitoring of European funds for the environment and sustainable development”, created by the NGOs Lunaria and Monithon. The project is supported by the Sbilanciamoci! Campaign, the OpenCoesione initiative of the Department for Cohesion of the Presidency of the Council and the Department of Culture, Politics and Society of the University of Turin, the Metropolitan City of Turin, and the Europe Direct Turin.
Download the complete program of the two events on April 16th and May 21st (in Italian)
In particular, the afternoon of Friday 16 April will open with a session aimed at providing – thanks to the interventions of Anguel Beremliysky (Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission) and Francesca De Lucia (expert in environmental issues) – an overview on the EU Cohesion Policy and European funds for the environment in Italy. Following, the best practices of civic monitoring animated by Monithon, by the laboratory on European cohesion policies of the University of Turin and by the University of Turin will be presented with contributions respectively by Luigi Reggi (Monithon), Alba Garavet (Europe Direct Torino), Simona De Luca, and Gianmarco Guazzo from At School of OpenCohesion (ASOC).
Besides, the Monithon team will offer specific training on the civic monitoring of EU funds for the environment and sustainability, which finance thousands of projects throughout Italy. On this occasion, a new interactive platform will also be illustrated – created in collaboration with Sheldon Studio starting from the open data published by OpenCoesione – to discover and promptly locate the projects financed in one’s territory, and access all the information already available such as the financial dimension, the description, the subjects involved, the implementation schedules and the progress. The objective of the event on April 16 is to launch initial experimentation of environmental civic monitoring by “triggering” the autonomous initiative of the training participants.
The event scheduled for the afternoon of Friday 21 May will open with the presentation of civic monitoring initiatives – their challenges, strengths, and the preliminary results achieved – launched on an experimental basis following the training day of 16 April. The discussants for this session will be Willebrordus Sluijters and Andrea Mancini of the Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission. During the second session, the foundations will then be laid for the process of setting up a national civic monitoring network of European funds for the environment and sustainable development, with a round table of comparison and extended discussion between various organized subjects of Italian civil society. Among the organizations and participants who confirmed their presence at the round table are: Sergio Andreis (Kyoto Club), Gianluca Catullo (WWF Italy), Sabina De Luca (Forum Inequalities Diversity), Anna Donati (Alliance for Sweet Mobility), Paola Dottor (Transparency International Italia), Emanuele Genovese (Fridays for Future Italia), Anna Lisa Mandorino (Cittadinanzattiva), Maria Maranò (Legambiente), Luigi Reggi (Monithon), Sara Vegni (ActionAid), Duccio Zola (Lunaria).
The impact of civic monitoring: the relations with the media and public institutions
/0 Comments/in Annual report /by MonithonSince 2013, Monithon has been developing tools and methods for enabling the “civic monitoring” of public funding. Our “civic monitoring reports” include information on how the projects are developed, how they are progressing, and what is their impact from the point of view of the final beneficiaries, such as citizens and enterprises.
In 2020, 125 new reports were developed and published on our website. The reports mainly come from the students participating in the “At the School of OpenCohesion” (ASOC) initiative, a European educational best practice carried out by the Italian Government. Its goal is to stimulate public engagement thanks to the use of open government data published in the OpenCohesion portal. The ASOC project has been using the tools and methods from Monithon for its civic monitoring activities since the very beginning.
In this post, we present some of the main results of Monithon’s civic monitoring from 2013 to 2020.
But there is more. While our usual statistics on results are included in our complete infographics, we added new figures and cases on the actual impact of this civic monitoring in Italy. We asked ASOC students if and how they could reach the media and the policy makers, and what was the main result of these interactions. We also analyzed the interactions among all actors involved via Twitter.
We found that the monitoring teams were very good at creating connections with policy makers and the media. However, the actual impact on policymaking was limited to a few interesting cases.
Click here to download the complete infographics
The results of civic monitoring
Considering all civic monitoring reports since 2013, the total amount of public funding monitored increased from 7.35 in 2019 to 9.41 billion Euros in 2020. Most of these projects (about 70%) are large transportation infrastructures such as train or metro stations and railways. This is a pretty impressive figure, considering that the total value of the projects tracked in the OpenCohesion website is about 180 billion euros.
Overall, most of the projects that have been assessed obtained a positive evaluation. However, some projects were judged as ineffective (10%), blocked (8%), or in progress with some problems (15%). In particular, problems found were both administrative (11%) and technical (11%), while there were cases in which results did not match the expectations (2.8%), or the project was not effective without the necessary complementary interventions (3.2%).
Each report, of course, includes much more detailed information about different qualitative aspects of implementation. The projects were described from the final beneficiaries’ perspective, and assessed by considering their strengths, weaknesses, and future opportunities. Moreover, the civic monitors always added suggestions for improving the project or replicate it in other contexts. Here is a list of the reports published in 2020.
These results were disseminated using different means, with the aim of reaching out to the people responsible for programming and implementation of a specific policy, as well as to foster an informed debate in the media around the issues that were found.
Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook were the most used social media. In addition, students were suggested to organize local events, especially during the Italian “Open Data Week” (50% of the cases). It is interesting to note that about one-fifth of the projects managed to be formally audited by local public administrations to discuss their results.
The impact of civic monitoring
The media coverage of civic investigations could be considered one first measure of impact.
63% of the monitoring reports were somehow covered by the media. In particular, local TVs and newspapers were interested in giving attention to the research process and the results. Almost 50% of the teams that responded to our questionnaire stated that they were featured in the local press. Others were interviewed on the radio or featured in local web magazines.
The team Terra di Mezzo created their own web radio on Spotify called Radio Raid featuring interviews with political leaders and key people in the fight against the local mafia. The team told Monithon that “our broadcasting helped to involve not only the population but a wider national and international audience. It made the reuse of confiscated assets, a topic that the media do not usually cover, a symbol of the fight against ‘Ndrangheta in Isola di Capo Rizzuto”.
The students also described if and how they could reach policy makers. 76% made contact with local or national public agencies, responsible for programming or implementation of the monitored project. In some limited cases (7%), the administration did not respond to the requests at all. In other cases, more than one contact request was made to different agencies, with some agencies that responded and others did not (18%). In 2020, the COVID pandemic provided for additional barriers to civic monitoring.
The logo of the monitoring team “Terra di Mezzo” from Calabria
The type of responses also varied. The students received formal or generic replies to their requests (18%), or more specific promises (32%).
For example, the team Watershed from the 2018-2019 ASOC edition monitored the construction of a canal to prevent natural disasters in Palma di Montechiaro, Sicily. They got very concrete promises. “We noticed that the works, although completed, had several limitations. The sinkholes were full of weeds and debris that did not allow the water to enter the pipeline and then drain into the sea, and that some manholes have been stolen and then replaced with boulders that allowed debris to enter the canal. […] Following our suggestions, the Mayor signed a memorandum of understanding for the maintenance of the canal”.
In some limited cases, the suggestions from the civic monitoring were successfully implemented to improve the project’s effectiveness (8%).
The students of the team Panta Rei, who evaluated a set of water purifiers near Naples in 2020, told us that “Our inputs have helped to turn the spotlight on the issue of the project Regi Lagni, stimulating a series of initiatives that have multiplied in this period, […] such as the establishment of a “Special Investigation Commission on Water Pollution” by the Municipality of Castel Volturno (Naples).
In 2018, another monitoring team – Veni Vidi Vico – monitored a renovation project of their own school, the “Giambattista Vico” high school in Laterza, Puglia. “The works, which concerned the water and fire protection system, financed with European funds, were completed, but the fire certification was lacking because the electrical system was not in accordance with current regulations. […] Thanks to our continuous reminders to local authorities, the following year the electrical system was modified and certified”.
Finally, we assessed the degree to which the students were able to form relations with the other actors through the analysis of their Twitter connections. The use of Twitter to document the different steps of the investigations, as well as the public encounters, was one of the requirements of the ASOC program. Therefore, the vast majority of the monitoring teams created a Twitter account and used it to post photos, videos, as well as to mention people and organizations.
We mapped the complex network of interactions among these accounts, each representing an individual or an organization that used the ASOC official hashtags such as #ASOC2021. We considered not only the students (civic monitoring teams) but also all different actors with different roles that participated or were interested in the ASOC program.
More than one thousand national and local actors created about five thousand connections. The two central nodes represent the two main official accounts of the ASOC team, that is @OpenCoesione and @ascuoladioc. We removed another big node in the center, our own @monithon, which systematically re-tweeted and mentions a large number of student teams. Some Europe Direct Centers and the Managing Authorities of the regional programmes from Southern Italy often act as hubs.
Apart from the ASOC team, the students were able to form Twitter relations also with the Policy Makers, including supporting regional authorities (445 connections), NGOs (268), and the media (132).
Increasing impact
We showed how monitoring teams and communities are usually very good at creating relations to conduct field analysis of the funded projects and disseminate their results both on social media and more traditional media.
The results of our questionnaire, which now is embedded in “step 3” of the civic monitoring report, also showed that the average impact of this monitoring on projects’ effectiveness is still limited. Nevertheless, we also received very interesting stories about the creation of real partnerships between the students (including their teachers and communities) and the administrations involved in project implementation.
We think it is crucial to multiply the opportunities for the establishment of such effective partnerships, both at the local and national levels. OpenCoesione, our biggest partner and one of the main open data providers for civic monitoring in Italy, could facilitate this process by further increasing the chances for the creation of new connections, as well as to promote the actual use of the input from the bottom-up in the policymaking cycle. For example, the ASOC team recently organized a series of meetings with selected monitoring teams and representatives of regional and national authorities programming or implementing Cohesion Policy in Italy, with the aim of discussing students’ suggestions for better policymaking. This initiative, called ASOC Talk – a dialogue with public institutions, seems to be perfectly in line with our suggestion.
In addition, we think that Italian NGOs, already involved in civic monitoring as authors of reports or supporters of the activities of ASOC students, could do more for advocating better EU policy and projects’ implementation based on the results of civic monitoring. Students and NGOs should find common topics and interests and form a strategic alliance. The creation of stable connections among interested actors, associated with policy mechanisms for real citizen engagement, could be the way to take civic monitoring to the next level.
MoniTutor is the new online mentor for citizens monitoring how public funding is spent
/0 Comments/in Methods and tools /by MonithonMoniTutor is a new, Italian online guide developed by Monithon, a civil society initiative that provides methods and tools for citizens that want to monitor how public money is used. Since 2013, anyone can use the Monithon online platform to send “civic monitoring reports” evaluating the effectiveness of public projects funded by the European Union and other funding in Italy. Almost 600 reports have been submitted, which are the output of investigations usually taking months to be carried out.
Now the experience of developing a report is enriched by a step-by-step guide that is tailored to the specific project to be monitored. This means that each public project has its own unique guiding content, based on its size, topic, policy goal, status, and other characteristics. For example, the guide will distinguish between a completed large infrastructure like a railroad and a small research grant. Moreover, MoniTutor’s algorithms support the citizens in making sense of the open data already available for each project by providing an initial interpretation (to be confirmed by a visit or by interviewing people responsible). Open Data are accessed and seemlessly integrated through the APIs of OpenCoesione.gov.it, one the main open government portals on public investments in Italy, currently tracking over 1.5 million publicly-funded projects.
Additional suggestions are provided based on the experience of a network of policy analysts and experts, who volunteered to offer specific recommendations on interesting readings, policy documents, websites, interesting questions for interviews. Thematic suggestions now cover 90% of the different types of projects already monitored in the past.
MoniTutor is accessible directly through the Monithon web page for submitting the reports. Once the user is logged in, she can create a new report and then copy and paste the URL of the selected project from OpenCoesione.gov.it to Monithon. The guide will be immediately generated and displayed through 3 steps: Desk Analysis, Evaluation, and Impact.
The “civic monitor” can read the guide and then fill in the related fields for each step, following the standard structure of a journalistic investigation, or field research. Starting from the collection and analysis of avaialble data and documents on the policy goals and motives to finance a specific project, the user then proceeds to collect information on the ground. This civic monitor – who is often not a single user but organized as a team – collects hard evidence of how the project is progressing and its results by paying a visit to the project, making videos and photographs, and interviewing people responsible. If the project is funded by the EU, for example, MoniTutor provides the names, phone numbers and addresses of the Managing Authorities that decided to finance that interventions, as well as of the organizations responsible for its implementation.
This form of “thick participation” to public policies also includes the possibility for citizens to offer specific suggestions and collaboration to local and national governments responsible for programming policies and delivering public value.
Now the MoniTutor is being tested by thousands of high school students in Italy thanks to the governmental initiative “At the School of OpenCohesion” (A Scuola di OpenCoesione, or ASOC), which has been the main source of reports for Monithon, by far. A replication of the same initiative in additional 5 EU Countries (Spain, Bulgaria, Greece, Croatia, and Portugal) is currently under way thanks to the support of the EU. We really hope those young ladies and gentlemen will find it useful!
The results of our civic monitoring: an overview from 2013 to 2019
/0 Comments/in Annual report /by MonithonIn 2019, 114 brand new civic monitoring reports have been added to the pile of Monithon’s reports, each evaluating the progress and effectiveness of one project funded by the public money in Italy. Considering the total amount of funding that has been monitored, this year marks a new record with more than 3 billion € of public funding, most of which are European money for regional development.
This year, all reports but one have been created by high school students participating in the “At the School of OpenCohesion” (ASOC) initiative, an European educational best practice promoted by the Italian Government to stimulate public engagement thanks to the use of open government data published in the OpenCohesion portal. Since the beginning in 2013, the ASOC project has been using the tools and methods from Monithon during their civic monitoring activities.
The remaining report was developed in June by a group of students from the University of Turin, as the final step of a course that was co-created by the University and the Europe Direct Center in Turin. This annual course is devoted specifically to European policies and civic monitoring.
In this post, we are proud to present an update of some of the main aggregated results of the Monithon’s civic monitoring from 2013 to 2019, with the aim to disseminate this practice to interested policy makers, government employees, journalists and citizens. Therefore, the results include also reports by the students of the previous editions of ASOC, and those created by NGOs and informal groups in the past few years.
Click here to download the complete infographics with the aggregated data from 2013 to 2019
What is monitored
Considering all civic monitoring reports from 2013, the total amount of public funding monitored increased from 4.53 in 2018 to 7.35 billion euros in 2019. Most of these projects (about 70%) are large transportation infrastructures such as train or metro stations, and railways. This is a pretty impressive figure, considering that the total value of the projects tracked in the OpenCohesion website is 140 billion euros. This means that about 5% of the total amount of public funding for Cohesion Policy from 2007 to 2019 has been somehow covered by a civic monitoring report.
We can also note that the European funds are considered particularly interesting for the civic monitoring groups, given that the 72% of the funding monitored cames from the European Union.
Civic monitoring results at a glance
Overall, most of the projects that have been assessed (63%) get a positive evaluation. In particular, 41% are found to be completed and useful, while 22% are still in progress and not showing major problems.
One third of the projects, however, presents some relevant issues. 18.1% of the projects show delays or other problems during the implementation phase. Other projects have difficulties in starting-up, due to administrative or financial reasons (10.7%). More interestingly for the policy makers, the monitoring groups have dedicated special energies to assess the results and effectiveness of the projects, from the point of view of the final beneficiaries.
While the expected results are not achieved only in the 3.2% of the projects, 9.2% are considered completed but also show some problems regarding the effectiveness. The effectiveness of an investment is evaluated in the broader context where the intervention takes place. For example, 2.7% of the projects fullfill their promises in terms of the implementation goals that were defined on paper, but they are also found to be useless without the provision of complementary interventions.
The ideas from the Monithoners
Each civic monitoring report end with a section about ideas and suggestions from the monitoring groups. One third of the reports contains suggestions on how to improve the specific intervention, coming from the analysis of the implementation and from the evidence collected during the visit. Other comments and suggestions can be classified into three main types. The first type of suggestion is to further develop these projects in order to obtain greater impact. In some cases, this means funding contexual interventions to get the most out the initial investment. The second type is about improving the governance of the funding, for example when ministries and local administrations “don’t talk to each other”, or when the voice of the final beneficiaries is not heard by policy makers. Finally, in some cases the projects were so appreciated by the monitoring groups that the main suggestion is to disseminate the results even further by improving the communication to potential targets.
Towards a new year of civic monitoring
We at Monithon are very excited about next year of civic monitoring. For the first time, the “At School of OpenCohesion” initiative will be replicated in 7 other European Countries and Regions during the 2019/2020 school year: Bulgaria, Croatia, Alentejo (Portugal), Catalonia (Spain), Peloponnese, Thessaly and Ionia Nisia (Greece). This is thanks to the efforts and funding from the European Commission, which has been supporting civic monitoring from the very beginning. The nice coincidence is that the first edition of ASOC included exactly 7 schools.
We love this experiment and will be happy to share our knowledge, methods and tools to interested teams in the EU. It will interesting to see how the ASOC method will be adapted to different contexts, while maintaining its focus on Cohesion Policy, which comes with common rules and regulations for all EU countries.