A bottom-up model for Italian Open government

As a multilateral initiative, the Open Government PartnershipThe Open Government Partnership (OGP) is a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on improving government transparency, ensuring opportunities for citizen participation in public matters, and strengthen... More aims at connecting the countries whose governments and civil societies are willing to work together to develop and implement ambitious open government reforms through shared methods.

It involves governments, politicians, administrators, citizens and businesses, each engaged in promoting policies of openness worldwide but also inside the countries themselves, spreading its ideals to other countries and defining national policies through cooperation and dialogue.

Thus, the process of opening up and modernization of public administrations is based not only on the participation of the different institutional actors and levels of government – Italy was the only G8 member to involve the sub-nationalRecognizing that much of what impacts people’s daily lives occurs at the local level, many OGP countries are working to open up lower levels of government by creating commitments focused on subnatio... level of government for the drafting of its first national Action PlanAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen... on open dataBy opening up data and making it sharable and reusable, governments can enable informed debate, better decision making, and the development of innovative new services. Technical specifications: Polici... – but it is also based on the citizens participation.

This process, in which lies the deepest meaning of the hard path through openness, can have a top-down approach, as shown in Italy by the initiatives promoted by the Department of Public function as “Opencoesione”, the “Bussola della Trasparenza” and the provision of permanent platforms for public consultations. Yet, in the period we are living, it can also have a strong bottom-up boost, given by the civic engagement experiences: from the #FOIA4Italy initiative, that stems from the Italian civil society working for years on transparencyAccording to OGP’s Articles of Governance, transparency occurs when “government-held information (including on activities and decisions) is open, comprehensive, timely, freely available to the pub... More, freedom of information and access to data, to the increasing number of examples of active citizenship that led to the  implementation of new participatory policies.

The principle of “horizontal” subsidiarity, established by the article 118 of the Italian Constitution,  goes indeed beyond a mere participation in decision-making, promoting instead the notion of sharing functions of general interest with the administration.

Thus, exploiting the potential of this paradigm shift, the Italian bottom-up model of open government could lead to the reconfiguration of the existing system of relationships between governments, citizens and stakeholders, better responding to the need of a shared administration which is open, transparent and participatory.

Much has been made, thanks to the approval of the first Italian Municipalities of Bologna, Siena, Ivrea and L’Aquila, on the RegulationGovernment reformers are developing regulations that enshrine values of transparency, participation, and accountability in government practices. Technical specifications: Act of creating or reforming ... on the shared administration, which enables the civic engagement by fostering a strong partnerships between the administration, its citizens and the private actors. However, more still needs to be done, such as involving the largest number of administrations and administrators, progressing on the implementation of commitments and completing the on-going reform.