Web-Based Participatory Democracy: Findings from Italy - Information and Communication Technologies in Public Administration - page 87

with a loss of 4.4 percentage points compared with the previous year. According
to the 2014 report from Assinform—the national association of information and
communication technology (ICT) companies operating in Italy—the Italian digi-
tal market is now worth a total of €65.2 billion, having registered a reduction in
growth of 1.8% per year since 2009. Over the same period, ICT worldwide has an
annual average growth of 3.8% (3.5% in North America, 6.6% in Asia, and 5.8%
in Latina America). Investment on ICT in relation to gross domestic product in
Italy is 4.8%. The European average is 6.5%, with Germany at 6.8%, France at
7.0%, and United Kingdom at 9.6%. In essence, Italy invests €25 billion per year
less than Europe does on ICT.
A fourth factor to consider when evaluating attempts by Italian public admin-
istration to engage citizens online relates to the digital divide in the public sector,
especially in local administrations.
The 2014 Smart Culture & Travel Report examines the development of ICT in
116 municipalities. The report highlights the gap in a number of online services to
the public, such as tourism. Although all the municipalities analyzed in the report
have a website, the report notes that less than 50% have a page dedicated to tour-
ism, and only 17% have a page dedicated to culture. Most importantly, only 14%
of the municipalities provide booking services for hotels, whereas in less than 3%
of the cases, it is possible to buy museum tickets online. The report also analyzes
the use of social media by municipalities. Of the 10 bigger cities, 6 have at least a
Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube account. However, only 29% have activated a pro-
file on all those social media. In fact, whereas 54% have a Facebook profile, 445 and
41% of the municipalities use Twitter and YouTube, respectively.
As reported by the E-Democracy Centre of the Faculty of Law of the University
of Geneva, in 2005, 16.5% of regional public administration bodies in Italy had an
ICT office, which often deals also with e-democracy initiatives. The highest con-
centration was found in the regions of Emilia Romagna and Tuscany. More specifi-
cally about the presence of digital democracy tool from Italian municipalities, the
latest data available (Saviano & Iorio, 2010) reveal that only 52.6% provide at least
one digital democracy tool. However, 50% of these tools are just very simple and
informative (e.g., information contents on the websites or newsletters). Deliberative
tools (e.g., forums with public administrators or blogs) are almost nonexistent, as
they do not even number 1% of the total.
4.8 A Matter of Costs
Ultimately, the current stagnation of web democracy in Italy is connected with
the budgetary restraints in the public sector. Even when public bodies have
admittedly relied on the web to engage civil society as a way to maximize the
outcomes at almost no cost, as in the case of the Dialogue with Citizens experi-
mented by the Monti Government, budgetary restraints have impeded attempts