DATI BENE COMUNE
At a glance
The Campaign “Dati Bene Comune” was created to promote the culture of open data among the italian civil society and the public institutions and to ask the Italian government to publish open data on the management of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dati Bene Comune was launched in November 2020 by ActionAid Italia, OnData and Transparency International Italia and collected more than 50.000 signatures to the petition and gathered the endorsement of over 200 organizations and media outlets in the first 6 months.
The campaign reached several important achievements in the initial phase and is now shifting the attention to the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan, asking for more transparency and accountability through the publication of open data about the projects financed by the Plan, thus increasing the transparency on the management of the European Next Generation Fund.
MAIN ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE FIRST 6 MONTHS
- Covid-19 data available on the Ministry of Health website were not allowed for re-use due to a restrictive licence: the campaign asked for a change and the Ministry did it thus making the website and its content common goods.
- The Scientific Technical Committee (CTS) supporting the Italian Government in the management of the Covid-19 emergency did not publish the minutes of its meetings: partner organisations asked for it and now the minutes are accessible to the general public.
- The organisations engaged a group of Members of the Parliament elected within different political parties and established an open dialogue with them.
- About 200 people attended the first awareness-raising event “50.000 buone ragioni per liberarli tutti” (50.000 good reasons to release all the data) organised by the campaign and the video on YouTube reached 1.919 views.
NEXT STEPS
Vision/main goal here
- Keep the community engaged
The partners will organize public events to keep the organisations supporting the campaign engaged and active. The partners also aim to widen the network and to increase the number of individual experts, journalists and “common citizens” following the campaign.
- Keep the community informed
The partners will continue to inform the public on topics relevant for the campaign, publishing news and posts on the campaign website’s blog www.datibenecomune.it; tweeting from their official accounts using the hashtag #datibenecomune; publishing articles about the campaign on national media outlets.
- Increase inclusiveness and diversity
The campaign will shift the focus from data related to the health emergency to a wider set of data related to the national Recovery Plan. This means that several other organisations from different sectors can be engaged in the process. Organisations working in the environmental sector, in the promotion of gender equality, trade unions and associations in the field of labour and workers protection, individuals or associations in the field of innovation technologies will be contacted and asked to join “Dati Bene Comune”.
- Scale down / Scale up
Due to the high number of organisations and to the high-profile competences that joined the campaign, the partners will organise local and thematic working groups for addressing specific and local issues related to the publication of data. The groups will work independently and will report to the community about their activities and achievements.
The partners also aim at scaling the campaign up to the European level, finding partners in other EU Countries in order to create an international network of organisations pushing for better standards of transparency, openness and inclusiveness during the execution of the recovery plans.
- Improve the effectiveness
The partners were able to reach some important results and to open a formal dialogue with institutions and decision makers, but this is not enough. Dati Bene Comune wants to make a real difference and for this reason the partners, in consultation with all the network of the campaign, will publish a policy paper with all the requests about the data related to the recovery plan and advocate for the publication of data according to adequate modalities, timing and technical requirements.