Web-Based Participatory Democracy: Findings from Italy - Information and Communication Technologies in Public Administration - page 90

citizens for participating. Thus far, however, the Italian public administrations
did not attempt to face the issue of costs rationally. In some cases, announce-
ments of new online consultations have followed long periods of silence. In
March 2014, for instance, the government published a call for experts to be
hired in a task force being set up to manage all future initiatives of participa-
tory democracy. The deadline for applications expired in April 2014, but the
government did not give any sign to proceed on the creation of the task force.
In other cases, the Italian administrations have simply decided to postpone any
initiatives of web democracy, especially if the estimated costs were too high.
Exemplary is the case of the Ministry of Public Affairs, who announced in April
2014 a broad consultation on the reform of Italian public administration. The
consultation lasted 30 days. A brief summary was then published by the minis-
try to inform about the consultation, and contextually, the phase of confronta-
tion with stakeholders was postponed. Given the absence of a unitary approach
from Italian administrations on the topic of web democracy, it might be only
assumed that this is currently hinged to the will of each administration. When
the spending review process approved by the Italian Parliament in 2013 will
enter into force, a progressive harmonization of public administrations' budgets
and, possibly, a less varying usage of web participation at the administrative level
might be expected.
Moving to the second issue, one should note that, even if discontinuous, the
spread of channels of web democracy contributed to the increase in the expecta-
tions of Italian citizens of good administrative behavior from public institutions.
Initiatives from civil society aimed at supporting public administrations in experi-
menting with e-democracy have increased over the last 2-3 years. The scope is to
fill the gap created by public administrations' inactivity in web democracy and the
increasing citizens' expectations. Unfortunately, the self-financed nature of these
grassroots projects thus far impelled a greater experimentation. Examples include
Airesis, a social network created with the specific aim of promoting e-democracy in
the public sector, and Openpolis. The latter is a not-for-profit association founded in
2006 by citizen-activists that develops and implements projects to enable free access
to public information on political candidates, elected representatives, and legisla-
tive activity. The data are extracted from Italian public administrations' websites
and then made available for free to citizens and the media. Openpolis has rapidly
turned into a civic observatory on Italian politics, allowing experts and ordinary
people to shape their own view. The project currently monitors more than 225,285
politicians and includes more than 17,348 official declarations. Almost 19,000
users access and share the information available on its website on a regular basis.
The goal is not only to increase the opportunities for dialogue between citizens
and their representatives in central and local governments but also to contribute to
constantly and effectively pressure local governments and individual politicians. It
is for this reason that the municipalities that adhere to the initiative are invited to
let citizens post their opinions and comments online.