The progressive disaffection that has characterized the last decades the voter turnout of Italian citizens has posed the problem of one as urgent to the political decision maker greater citizen participation themselves to the administrative and political life of local and national institutions, and how to make decision-making processes accessible and inclusive.
More orpen government against the disaffection of citizens
A first step towards greater citizen involvement in political-administrative choices came from the increasingly widespread adoption of open government or “open government” policies.
Historically, the origin of the doctrine is traced back to the philosophical concepts of the Enlightenment, and in particular to the political theories of Montesquieu and Antonio Genovesi; in a decidedly more recent era it was the administration of the President of the United States of America Barack Obama in December 2009 which, with the issuing of the Directive on Open Government, gave great impetus to these policies, drawing inspiration from the principles of Transparency, Participation and Collaboration.
The current definition of “Open Government”, also referred to by our Ministry for Public Administration, is taken from the OECD Report, “Open Government: The Global Context and the Way Forward” of 2016 and is the following: it is “a culture of governance that promotes the principles of transparency, integrity, accountability and participation of stakeholders in support of democracy and inclusive growth”.
The fundamental principles of Open Government
There are therefore three fundamental principles of Open Government:
- Transparency, which favors and promotes responsibility by providing citizens with information on the Administration’s activities
- Participation, which increases the effectiveness of administrative action and improves the quality of the Administration’s decisions
- Collaboration, which directly involves citizens in the activities of the Administration.
In particular, the participation of citizens in public policies allows for the adoption of inclusive decision-making processes, through which administrations have the possibility of better understanding the needs to be responded to and consequently making better choices, thanks to the contribution of the final recipients of those decisions.
Consultazione.gov.it and ParteciPA
Given that open government policies represent one of the most effective ways to modernize public administrations and improve the quality of services provided to citizens and businesses, a fundamental piece is allow the widest possible participation in public decision-making processes; the challenge becomes preparing tools, made available by the institutions to citizens, which thanks to new technologies (applications usable via the web but also via mobile telephone) allow effective political participation in the choices of the institutions in any context and at any level (local, national, supranational).
Since 2019, in order to promote quality public consultations with Italian PAs, the Department of Public Function and the Department of Institutional Reforms have carried out the operational guidelines on public consultation; the action was not limited, however, to urging the adoption of good practices by PAs for consultations, but the same institutions made the Consultazione.gov.it portal available, where to find documents, insights, news and all ongoing consultations, and the ParteciPA platform.
This last one is a real one operational tool to give practical implementation to public consultation and participation processes; the platform is completely open source and through it the citizen can participate online in active consultations, taking part in a debate, commenting, or inserting proposals, answering a questionnaire, taking part in a meeting or other activities; for local or central PAs, it is instead possible to launch a public consultation via the platform, to gather the point of view of all potentially interested parties – individual citizens, businesses and/or their organizations – in developing public policies.
In this way, through the consultation process, the administrations concerned solicit citizens to provide comments, ideas and observations or other types of information to enrich and improve the decision to be made or the measure to be taken. Once the contributions received have been acquired and examined, the administrations report the observations received and those possibly accepted.
Digital tools for participation
If this is the tool made available by the Ministry to promote and encourage public consultations, there is no shortage of other applications and platforms that can be adopted to allow citizen participation, below are some examples.
Consul Democracy
Consul Democracya digital democracy platform, used internationally, developed in an open and shared way, aimed at encouraging citizen participation in public decisions.
we decide
we decidea platform adopted both locally and internationally, based on free software and equipped with numerous functions to encourage citizen participation, also created and developed in a participatory manner, it can be used by both small and large groups, in the most diverse contexts , associative or corporate, but also in the public and administrative sphere; is the reference platform of Partecipa.gov.it, made available for consultation and public participation processes
Liquid feedback
Liquid feedback, open source software designed to support processes of deliberative democracy, divided into an opinion formation process and a voting process, within a community.
Limesurvey
Limesurveyan open source application for creating online questionnaires and surveys.
Referendums and popular initiatives
These tools have recently been joined by platform of the Ministry of Justice to manage referendums and popular legislative initiatives
Its adoption, aimed at facilitating democratic participation, was highly anticipated as by accessing its private area with their digital identity (Spid, Cie, Cns or eIDAS), citizens and promoting committees can both support and manage one or more referendum proposals .
For citizens, once they have completed authentication with their digital identity, it is possible to support an initiative among those available and, at the end of the operations, download the signature certificate, thus having confirmation of what was carried out via the platform.
The platform allows promoters to promote a repealing, constitutional referendum or a popular initiative law, using a guided procedure and following the entire process with a series of tools, including a function that allows you to view the number of signatures collected at a territorial level for the specific initiative.
At the signature collection deadline the same promoters can download a certificateissued by the Ministry of Justice, making the data and signatures of the question available directly to the Referendum Office of the Court of Cassation.
Considering the constitutional importance of the activities relating to political participation that can be carried out through this platform, its development and activation has placed our country in an advanced position in the use of digital technologies to support democracy, confirming the importance of use of these tools to broaden public participation and accessibility at all decision-making levels.
Note
1) In 2011, Italy joined the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an initiative involving 78 countries which aims to obtain concrete commitments from Governments in terms of promoting transparency, supporting civic participation, fighting corruption and of diffusion of new technologies to support innovation inside and outside administrations. The theoretical context chosen as part of the participation by the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and adopted by the Italian Government is that of “deliberative democracy”, a paradigm developed with the aim of improving democracy through dialogue and informed debate between citizens; the term “deliberation” (from the English verb “to deliberate”) does not mean “decision”, but an in-depth “evaluation” through discussion and comparison between different points of view. ↑
2) The promotion of sustainable practices also from a social point of view, in the policies of the Member States, is also a request from Europe: in the Action Plan for European democracy, approved by the Commission in December 2020, the deliberative democracy for the implementation of the Next generation EU, i.e. for all public works that fall within the PNRR. ↑
3) From an operational point of view within each participatory process present on the platform there are: the presentation of the consultation with objectives and duration; the phases in which the process is organised; the tools made available at each stage. ↑
4) The project was managed by the Department for technological innovation of justice through the General Directorate of automated information systems of the Ministry and was activated with the DECREE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS 18 July 2024, Certification of the operation of the Platform for the collection of signatures expressed in the referendum, referred to in article 1, paragraphs 341 and following, of the law of 30 December 2020, no. 178, published in the Official Journal General Series n.173 of 07.25.2024. ↑
