Tag Archives: Wikicrazia

Why the Italian government should not create an open government unit

Apparently the new Italian government is determined to move to adopt open government practices. It is plausible: several ministers are curious enough to investigate new ways, and smart enough to live out this space as protagonists. Regional cohesion minister Fabrizio Barca has written a review of my book of open government that shows a deep and sophisticated understanding of the topic. The most determined in this is probably Education minister Francesco Profumo, who in 2011 – as the newly appointed CEO of the National Research Council, was taking steps to open up its governance. Not by chance, Profumo requested and got the competence on innovation.

The interesting problem is how to open up the Italian public administration, overcoming its inevitable resistances. To keep it simple, consider two possibities: a top-down strategy, focused on the production of regulation and guidelines, and a bottom-up one, focused on building capacity in the various agencies of the central State, but also – and mainly – of the Regions.

The top-down strategy consists in building a strong open government unit in the Innovation department. This unit writes regulations that mandate the adoption of radical transparency and citizen engagement practices; and it produces tools for the various government agencies to do so (for example guidelines, definitions, technical documents). If it works, this strategy results in a new central institution that can do open government.

The bottom-up strategy consists of infiltrating the various state and regional agencies with open and transparent policies and projects. The goal is not to concentrate competences, but to distribute them; and not to set up transparency and openness as add-ons to the policy process, but rather embedding them in each phase of the policy cycle, from design to ex-post evaluation. If it works, such a strategy builds new capacity in the existing agencies to whatever it is they do (education, health care, infrastructures and so on).

Clearly, the two strategies are not alternative but complementary. Nationwide regulation is needed: for example, we need a Freedom of Information Act as a legal tool of last resort, and you can only do this top-down. But I believe that the bottom-up strategy should be the main one. Here’s the reason: a technical unit that owns open government risks to be considered as a nuisance by the frontline agencies; and the latter can jeopardize open government policies simply by not cooperating, or treating them as more red tape, another bureaucratic requirement. It would be a disaster. Contrived open government is very likely to turn into a sad charade.

Some unsolicited advice to Profumo: minister, resist the temptation to gather the best and the brightest around you. Promote, rather, a community of practice of the Italian civil servants engaged in open government practices; set up an annual conference, reboot Innovatori PA, open channels of cooperation with the world’s leading administrations; use the authoritativeness of your role to reward those who perform well, at any level of the hierarchy; open up spaces of dialogue with the civil society. Don’t create another silo; rather, let open government’s women and the men work from the trenches, were public policies are deployed. Do this to stimulate the agencies’ demand for openness rather than push it down their throat. We risk the emergence of a typically Italian uneven situation, with some agencies performing much better than others. Well – that beats an evenly dismal situation.

Happy Birthday Web, Italy needs you

On the road again. This time I am going to a birthday party: we celebrate the twentieth birthday of the World Wide Web. The date: Monday, November 14th. The location: Rome, Hadrian’s Temple. The guest of honor: sir Tim Berners-Lee, the Web’s proud father, who will deliver the keynote speech. Much more modestly, I too will hold a short talk about Wikicrazia, i.e. collaborative, Internet-mediated governance.

In the foreground, the party; in the background, difficult times for Italy. But they only make the celebration more necessary: nobody dare take it from us! As Saint Augustine wrote sixteen centuries ago, we are the agents of the times: if we don’t like them, we can always invent new times, or at least try to. A growing number of Italian citizens, connected by the web, is doing just that. I am trying to do my bit, too: Wikitalia – we will talk about it on Monday – is exactly that, Italy’s birthday present to the Web, and the Web’s to Italy.

(The video above was not made for the occasion: it is rather an attempt to explain to some interested non-Italians what I want to do with my life. But I find it fits the occasion well.)

The distributed author: Wikicrazia readers present Wikicrazia


I receive many invitations to speak at public events to present Wikicrazia, my book on government in the age of Internet collaboration. The topic is hot, and it is going to stay hot: from my vantage point it seems that Internet-enabled spaces of collaboration between citizens and public authorities are sprouting up all across Italy, and there are trailblazers in most democratic countries. I see my role, at least in part, in helping those people to connect to each other and with the global open government movement. I grew up in a small town, and I know well how empowering it feels to take action on your home turf while feeling a part of some global-scale phenomenon.

I am not in the country; it is much harder than usual for me to attend events in Italy, and I was resigned to stop doing so for several months. Last week, however, I got a really interesting proposal, and I had the idea to ask the organizing team if they would accept someone other than myself to present my book. They accepted with enthusiasm. At this point I published an update on Facebook to probe whether my friends and readers would be up for it; to my great surprise, in a couple of hours I got half a dozen volunteers. Fantastic: a book on collaboration,written collaboratively and now even presented “wiki style” by an open community! This must be a first.

Here’s the deal. Navarra Editore and I are looking for volunteers to present Wikicrazia on my behalf in the coming months, when I can’t make it myself (which will be most of the times). We require:

  • being familiar with the book. You need not agree with it: a critical presentation is perfectly acceptable.
  • being comfortable with speaking in public

And we offer:

  • my gratitude!
  • my famous slides (with notes).
  • payment of travel and hotel expenses.
  • a Skype or phone session to discuss how to set up the presentation (as suggested by one of the volunteers).
  • a small gift from the publisher, to show appreciation

Our goal here is to build and “advanced wikicrats” group with members in most Italian regions (and abroad?), people that can contribute in a useful, competent and confident way to the public events that are organized therein. I have a feeling that such a group could be useful to do other things as well.

We are kicking off with an event in Riomaggiore, at Cinque Terre, on 29th, 30th and 31st of July. See how it goes.