Italy has confirmed that eParticipation will be at the heart of its next OGP national Action Plan, planned for 2016.

In a webinar, titled “Govern with Citizens: online participation in the design of public policies”, the Ministry for Simplification in Administration said that civil society had been consulted in finalising the next Action Plan and commentaries had been collected to help build the text.

Italy published its first Action Plan in 2012, which was mainly based on an auto-evaluation process, the Ministry said. The second Action Plan started in 2014. Since then 2 meetings have been held with civil society.

In the World Justice Project (WJP) Open Government 2015, Italy was ranked 28th out of 102 countries listed in the barometer.  In terms of civic participation, the WJP report states that Italy ranked 30th.

Italy has also to deal with a complex situation in Sicily where the principles of openness, transparency and participation are slow to implement, as a second report published by the University of Palermo shows.

Decision-making with citizens: a five-step process

The webinar, organized by InnovatoriPA (a community for innovation in Italian public administration) aimed at presenting the multiple models and methods for citizen participation in public policies, using Web technologies. The co-design principle was also discussed during the event.

In an introduction to eParticipation Gianfranco Andriola, who works for Formez PA (modernisation of the Italian state) and who has been involved in the creation of the national Open Data portal (Dati.gov.it), detailed how decision-making could follow an eParticipation process. According to his presentation, this involves a five-step mechanism: expectations, planning, communication, action and lastly, decision, assessment and feedback.