[open-government] Data-Driven Journalism Workshop on EU Spending

Mon Oct 21 21:53:50 UTC 2013

I would like to echo the comments from Aline.

I'm in Montreal,  Canada and would be interested in any materials
distributed or presented at the workshop.

Regards

Immanuel
On 2013-10-21 9:18 AM, "Pennisi Aline" <aline.pennisi at tesoro.it> wrote:

> Hi
>
> I saw that a Data-Driven Journalism Workshop on EU Spending: Tools &
> Techniques was held in Utrecht, 8th-9th September.
>
> http://blog.okfn.org/2011/08/09/data-driven-journalism-workshop-on-eu-spending-tools-techniques-utrecht-8th-9th-september/#sthash.fyRjr45Y.dpuf
>
> I was wondering whether someone in this list participated and can give me
> some feedback on how it work out and what was produced.
>
> The reason is I'm thinking of organizing something similar in Italy, where
> a large chunk of data on single projects financed by EU structural funds
> and specific national funds is available thanks to the open data initiative
> Open Coesione: http://www.opencoesione.gov.it/ .
>
> OpenCoesione actually refers both to open data catalogues produced by the
> administrations with a role in coordinating development policies in Italy
> and a specific application built on those catalogues, by mashing-up various
> data sources. The web portal www.opencoesione.gov.it is the application.
> It presents a subset of the data available in the open data catalogues to
> citizens facilitating their access to basic information of which investment
> projects are being financed, which are completed, how much money they cost,
> who is involved and receives the resources, where the projects intervene.
> By learning what EU Regional Policy and Italian development funds are doing
> in your home town, we hope you can boost implementation, by providing
> feedback on the actual state-of-affairs on site or on how the project is
> useful (or not) within your local community. You can get a full description
> of the project and the data in English here:
> http://www.opencoesione.gov.it/progetto/en/  and
> http://www.opencoesione.gov.it/faq/en/  .
>
> The debate on how EU structural funds are been used by Member countries
> seems rich mainly abroad: in Italy to present data I think there has not
> been much interest and exploration on the contents of this huge open data
> operation and the connected civic monitoring initiative Monithon
> http://www.monithon.it/ , where people can report on what they see and
> learn about the projects that have been financed. There has been news
> coverage on the OpenCoesione portal but mainly commenting on the
> transparency aspects (and not so much actually looking into the data or
> using it). There also are a number of researchers and other administrations
> using the data for their own internal purposes, but little in linking
> information on the projects to other data and little on investigating the
> use of the money or who it goes to.
>
>  Among the reasons for this I think we are facing:
> - little demand for this kind of detailed data and lack of a civil society
> mobilized on the specific themes of EU regional policies (most people we
> have meet in different context don't really have a specific question to
> "ask" to this data)
> - little knowledge in general on public finance and how governments work
> - little capacity in analyzing the large amounts of data among journalists
> or other parties who could use the data for their professional purposes
> - the general idea that the data in itself should be telling you a story
> instead of you using the data (and other information sources to tell a
> story)
> - little incentive to face these issues on the demand side (because if you
> do it it's only on a voluntary basis, so you have to be strongly motivated)
>
> This situation may be specific to Italy. Since there has been some effort
> put forth by the administration opening the data to promote its use, I'm
> interested in general in learning about workshops or other kinds of
> initiatives on EU structural funds that are being successful in having
> people used the data.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Aline
>
>
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