Partecipa.net is an Italian project on e-participation coordinated by the Emilia-Romagna regional Government and involving twenty-one local Administrations and nine associations of the Emilia-Romagna Region.It started on September 2005,in response to a national call on e-democracy launched on 2004.Partecipa.net is based on a permanent connection system of telematic tools, called ‘eDemocracy Kit’, which allow citizens to be informed, to discuss and be consulted during the decision-making process (see the support documents,Project_Survey).The Kit offers four services:informative newsletter,mailbox for questioning the decision-makers,discussion forums,polls.Thanks to the project, citizens can take part in the definition of policies.In particular, Partecipa.net has been tested on the urban and territorial planning.Partecipa.net improves techniques and methodologies already developed in two previous local good practices.The applications developed are Open Source,so that they can be easily adapted to different local Administrations

Policy Context

Partecipa contributes to the European Union policy ‘an information society for all’on the themes of e-government and e-democracy.On November 2005,the Declaration of the Manchester Conference stated that ICT should be used to achieve“greater participation in decision-making”.The i2010 eGovernment Action Plan considers, as one of its five major goals, “strenghtening participation and democratic decision-making” and aims to developed tools “for effective public debate and participation in democratic decision-making”.Partecipa fits with the eParticipation Preparatory Action,launched for the first time by the European Commission on 2006.The project has also been developed in the framework of recent national policy aiming to increase the particpiation of citizens through ICT.On 2004 the Italian Government has implemented the second stage of the programme ‘E-government in Regions and Local Public Administrations’.One of the programme action is the promotion of the digital citizenship.A national call has been launched as well,in which Partecipa has been selected and funded.The programme policy has been upheld on March 2007 by the directive “Toward a National eGovernment System:Strategic Guidances”,issued by the Ministry for Innovation in PA.A strategic goal is “to build the digital citizenship, promoting e-democracy and reducing the digital divide”.Partecipa fits with the Emilia-Romagna policy on ICT as well.It has its roots in the Regional Law 11/2004 about the building of a regional telecommunication system.Partecipa was enforced by the 2004 Regional Telecommunication Plan.The new 2007-2009 Plan stresses the importance of using ICT to empower the citizens involvement in policy-making and states Partecipa.net as the base on which futher e-democracy projects will be developed.Partecipa.net is coherent with the Regional Charter principle of promoting citizens participation and consultation.An example of the implementation of that principle is the Regional Law 20/2000 about the territorial planning, which foresees citizens participation in defining planning policies.This has make possible to test Partecipa on that matter.

Description of target users and groups

Public Administrations represent a direct target group.They consist of all the Emilia-Romagna local Administrations which are still not involved in the project but that could be in the next future. At the end, the project aims to involve the whole local Public Administrations of the Region.The citizens and association of citizens that live in the territory of Administrations partners in the project are a direct target group as well.Public Administrations and citizens have been focused as target groups basing on a quantitative as well qualitative analysis.According to the report "The Benchmarking of Front-office in the Emilia-Romagna's Local public Administration",issued by the Emilia-Romagna Region on 2007 and referring to 2006,the e-democracy rates in the Region are increasing:on the average, they go from 40% to 67%.Local public Administrations' web sites supply services like access to decisions,information on the Administration activity,mailing box to interact with the decision-makers and, less frequently, forum and polls.That means, Emilia-Romagna local public Administrations and their officers are becoming more open and used to e-democracy methods.It is important to encourage them to do more and better on that matter.For what regards Emilia-Romagna citizens,they are showing more interest in e-partecipation.According the same report, 37% of citizens using the internet have got in touch with public Administrations by web. In addition, the report "Supply and Demand of e-Democracy in Emilia-Romagna", issued by Regional Government on 2003, states that from 61,3% to 72,5% of citizens using the internet seem to value the on-line participation.Partecipa.net involves 42% of about 88% of Emilia-Romagna population aged more than 15.That percentage correspond to the population of seven municipalities and two provinces partner in the project,equivalent to more than 1.600.000 inhabitants.The project pays particular attention to young people, in particular to students of the whole regional high schools, aiming to involve at least 20% of them (about 24.000 students).

Description of the way to implement the initiative

The Partecipa.net project is coordinated by the Emilia-Romagna Regional Government.The twenty-one public Administrations involved can be divided in two groups, representing different level of involvement in the project: 1) main partners:they are funding the project and implementing the Kit.They are: the Emilia-Romagna Regional Legislative (www.regione.emilia-romagna.it);the city authorities of Bologna, Modena and Ferrara (www.comune.bologna.it;www.comune.modena.it;www.comune.ferrara.it);the city authorities consortium of Argenta, Portomaggiore, Ostellato and Voghiera;the provincial authorities of Ferrara and Piacenza (www.provincia.ferrara.it;www.provincia.piacenza.it) 2) supporting partners:they are not funding the project but have shown interest in implementing the Kit by the mid-term.They are:the city authorities of Cesena,Forlì,Parma,Piacenza and Reggio Emilia;the provincial authorities of Bologna,Forlì-Cesena,Rimini,Parma,Modena and Ravenna. Additional partners are nine professional and citizens associations.

 

Main results, benefits and impacts

Partecipa.net is still ongoing. Although there has been a mid-term evaluation, the assessment process is not finished yet. So, it is not possible to issue comprehensive data about the project impact, in particular quantitative evidence of it. In addition, an e-partecipation project can be hardly evalueted only in terms of monetary benefits and costs. It is important to consider the social value that the project produce as well. Referring to the eGEP measurement model, it is possible to state that Partecipa.net has increased the organizational efficiency, through an impact on the governance, represented by the integration of Administrations. Working together and sharing solutions and applications, the twenty-one Administrations involved in the project are saving funds and human resources. In addition, Partecipa.net produces a good impact on the policy efficacy and on the governance system. It gives citizens more opportunities to influence the decision-making process, makes public Administrations more open and, in this way, increases their transparency and ‘accountability’. That is proved by the following indicators: - increase in the Region e-democracy rates: according the above-mentioned report “The Benchmarking of Front-office in the Emilia-Romagna’s Local public Administration”, since 2004 they have constantly increased; - increase in the number of discussion forums and polls on the Administrations’web sites from about 4% of 2003 to 10 % of 2006: according to the report, that is mainly due to Partecipa.net; - number of the tools of the ‘e-Democracy Kit’ acted: at the moment, six Administrations have implemented the Kit (the Emilia-Romagna Regional Legislative Assembly; the City Authorities of Bologna, Modena and Ferrara; the Provincial Authority of Ferrara, which also involves a consortium of four municipalities, and the Provincial Authority of Piacenza). They have acted more than 100 on-line informative newsletter, about fifteen discussion forums and ten questioning mailboxes (see support documents, examples of Kit implementation by two partners). The constant increase of the e-democracy rates shows that the project impact is sustainable over time. It will be more in the future, thanks to the implementation of the Kit by other local Administrations and the continue support of the Regional Government, reaffirmed in the recent 2007-2009 Telecommunication Plan. From an economic point of view, after the start-up phase the project will not imply additional costs, because it will rely on the partners internal resources. The software applications improvement will be free as well, thanks to the sharing in Open Source. Innovation: Partecipa.net can be regarded as an innovative experience on regional and national level. Although Emilia-Romagna’s local public Administrations are used to involve citizens in the decision-making process, they generally developed their own project individually. This is the first time a regional-wide project aiming to increase citizen participation through the use of ICT tools is developed, creating a territorial integrated system on e-democracy . For that reason, it is remarkable that Partecipa.net has involved twenty-one local public Administrations, supported by nine citizens associations. The same lack of integration affect e-participation projects on national level. In addition, several projects partially financed by the National Government aren’t sustainable over time, because of lack in management or funding. The call launched by the National Government on 2004 has selected for funding fifty-seven e-democracy projects. At the moment, only ten are still working. Among them, there is Partecipa.net. That is an important achievement for the project. It is also important to stress the sharing of project software applications in Open Source. Public Administrations, especially in Italy, aren’t used to share the results of their projects with the others. The innovative aspects of Partecipa.net have been also recognized by the United Nations, that have selected and commended it as finalist for the UNPSA (United Nations Public Service Award) 2007 edition.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Track record of sharing

Sharing results is one of the essential goals of Partecipa.net.The project is designed so to involve, in the mid-term, all the Emilia-Romagna’s local public Administrations;furthermore, it is at disposition of other local Italian Administrations interested in the case.The project staff is also engaged in sharing results and developing the project at European stage,through European Commission programmes such as ‘CIP – ICT PSP’ and ‘ePARTECIPATION’.To reach those goals, a number of dissemination activities have been implemented.They are based on an articulated Communication Plan (see support document).Communication activities aim to involve in the project not only citizens, but also other Administrations interested in the Kit.Dissemination activities consist of:1) the Partecipa.net web site:where you can also find links to the project web sites developed by the six partners Administrations which have already implemented the ‘e-Democracy Kit’ 2)informative documents about the project in English, French and Spanish, available on the web site 3) participation in meetings and exhibitions:Partecipa.net has been presented on 12 different occasions during events,exhibitions and conferences organized by others,in Italy and abroad (Brussels).Since 2004 it has been illustrated seven times at the ‘Forum P.A.’and ‘COM.P.A’., the two much relevant Italian exhibitions on public Administrations.In addition,the project has been presented as a case study to the students of the University of ‘Suor Orsola Benincasa’ in Naples 4) a promotional film, available on the web site via streming and as CD-Rom:the film has been realized with the intentional purpose of showing Partecipa.net to other Administrations.The sharing of project results is also promoted through the networking action.Partecipa.net is part of two European networks supported by the EU:DEMO-NET,the European network of excellence in relation to e-democracy,and ERIS@,the European Regional Information Society Association.Finally,the Kit software applications are hosted by the international Open Source community ‘SourceForge’ (http://www.sf.net),where they can be used and developed furtherly by others.

Lessons learnt

As stated before, Partecipa.net is still ongoing, so it is not possible to issue final assessments about it. But one of the evaluation purpose is to define a general framework to be applied by all the further public Administrations which will implement the ‘e-Democracy Kit’. The Kit has been implemented by six local administrations so far: useful lessons can already be learned by those experiences. They are, mainly: 1) one of the hardest task of e-participation projects is the involvement of decion-makers: so, to make them working it is essential to develop methods which guarantee a wide and concrete decision-makers involvement; 2) the internal organization and work times of each partner determines the way in which the Kit is implemented: for example, in some cases the decision-making times in the Administrations don’t match with the citizen consultation times scheduled by the project. So, the Administration has to harmonize as much as possible its organization with the project implementation; 3) to develop and implement the project in the right time, it is essential for partners to be open-minded and cooperative

Scope: Regional (sub-national)