The Open Data Day in Reggio Calabria: report of an exciting day

The Opendata event took place simultaneously all over the world and in particular in 11 Italian stages including Turin, Florence, Rome, Bari and Catania. In connection with the Rome event, they attended the Calabrian event Flavia Marzano President of the General States of Innovation e Nello Iacono president of the Italian OpenData Institute.

Here is the report of our February 21st, a wonderful day of meeting and updating on Open data created by theMonithon Calabria Association and fromPiepoli Institute (scientific sponsor) in collaboration with theItalian Open Data Institute, The States General of Innovation And At the School of Open Cohesion, with the patronage of the Municipalities of Reggio Calabria, Cosenza and Pizzo and in the presence of the Digital Champions Calabria.

Present the President of the Young Entrepreneurs of Confindustria, the schools of the whole province of Reggio Calabria and the Europedirects of Reggio Calabria and Bovalino, present the University for Foreigners Dante Alighieri in the person of Dr. Franco Palumbo, the Order of Engineers, the innovative start-ups Ingreen of Reggio Calabria and Smarts, the non-profit associations: Aniti, Innovaterra, Innovamentis, Pronexus,

The day was opened by the mayor of the Municipality of Reggio Calabria Giuseppe Falcomata and by the Councilor for the Smart City Agatha Quattrone gathered in the Great Hall of theITIS Panella Institute.

The mayor, warmly welcomed by the young students, underlined the importance of Open Data and in particular of the opening of the data owned by the Administration to help make the city's government action transparent and encourage the collaboration and participation of the positive forces and social capital (students, the world of research and business, innovative start-ups and Digital Champions, associations and active citizenship).

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The event received compliments by the Honorable Enza Bruno Bossio of the innovation intergroup of the Chamber of Deputies who invited the public to today's meeting February 23 in Catanzaro on the theme " The development of Calabria travels on Ultra Broadband: all Municipalities will be connected by 2016” which will take place at the EuroLido Hotel Falerna (CZ) at 2.30 pm

The Reggio Calabria event had two purposes:

  1. tell the state of the art on OpenData in Italy and in Calabria, with the direct update of the Administrations, Associations and Schools that are working on OpenData;
  2. promote the dissemination of digital culture, making local public administrations, businesses, schools and young people aware of the use of OpenData, showing how in-depth knowledge is essential for improving the public administration in the services it offers citizens.

 

During the event Philomena Tucci, member of IASSP and SGI and head of the Piepoli Institute, presented the national survey State of OpenData in Italy from which emerges on the one hand a still low knowledge of open data (13% of the Italians) and an even lesser use (7% of the Italians declares to have used), but a very high interest above all in how public funds are used, how they are made and where are the laws, what is the state of the level of pollution and traffic in our cities, what happens to the confiscated goods.

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(Source: survey conducted by Istituto Piepoli on 2 February 2015 using the CATI methodology, on a sample of 500 cases representing the Italian population, males and females aged 18 and over, segmented by sex, age, major geographical areas and size of centers in proportion to the universe of Italian population).

Great support from public opinion for the introduction of this theme in schools and in the education system to develop citizens' critical sense from an early age: "We specifically chose a school for Open Data DAY because the renewal of the ruling class passes through education and innovation in educating young people»- says Filomena Tucci – «because thanks to OpenData the public administration is made responsible for spending the money collected from taxes through greater citizen control, which verify and ask for the results of public funding and their effectiveness".

An important confrontation followed between three Smart City councilors from the South: the Smart City councilor of the Municipality of Reggio Calabria Agatha Quattrone; the Smart City Councilor of the Municipality of Cosenza, Nicola Mayera; and in connection, via Skype, the Smart City assessor Alessandro Delli Noci of Lecce.

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The Ass. Agatha Quattrone, one of the first women to hold the smart city department in the South introduced the Road map for the transformation of Reggio Calabria in a smart European city. «Through its policy, the Administration intends to promote the process of transforming the city of Reggio Calabria and its metropolitan area into a Smart City, considering this a political priority and a strategic objective for including Reggio in the networks of large European and international cities.

A city is all the more smart the better the quality of life of the citizens who live there and the more sustainable the development of its territory from an environmental, economic and social point of view. The domains to bet on, as indicated by the European Commission in the Strategic Implementation Plan (2013), are Transport and Mobility, Energy and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). One of the enabling levers to make a city smart it is certainly Open Data. Know and share the data of your territory says Agata Quattroneit allows the Administration to make informed choices and to monitor the impacts of the choices made, to spread the culture of transparency, to involve companies, the world of research and citizens in the co-planning of the city 2.0.

It is in this direction that the Smart City Department has started the process of entry into the network of cities that promote Open Data; has set up a working group made up of city officials and citizen volunteers to create a dedicated Open Web Platform and create a City Community for sharing open data in a standard format. The objective is to recover and publish, in the short term, the data owned by the Organization which is already easy to implement (with the support of the Companies and Municipal Administration Sectors), and to promote the "liberation" of data relating to interest for citizens (transport, cultural heritage and tourism, health and the environment, etc.).

As a first example of intelligent use of data, the Municipality will test the platform Risorgimento.Lab of the social enterprise Aniti with the aim of creating a network between people and spaces, starting from unused or confiscated goods and buildings of the city, which from reporting and locating the situation of abandonment on the map arrives at their re-evaluation, to transform them into a resource.

A fundamental role will be played by the training action and the promotion of good practices within the Organization for managers and officials who deal with data management. It is for this reason that the Administration intends to promote, also with the support of the Calabrian Digital Champions, theeducation & training for public officials on Open Data with dedicated days and support for initiatives such as the DIPA Master in Data Intelligent & Smart Government by Monithon Calabria and Dante Alighieri University»

The Smart city councilor of Cosenza, the first Calabrian city to have implemented smart projects in which the important Resnovae project is underway with Enel, Ibm, General Electric, presented both smart applications which, thanks to open data, allow to streamline traffic and reward citizens who behave in compliance with environmental standards, but also updated those present on the meaning of open data for the growth of an intelligence city and a smart community. Councilor Nicola Mayerà was present for the administration of Cosenza, which last year had inaugurated the open data day. He was young and smart and answered the questions and curiosities of the young people on the possibility that a smart city and the use of new technologies can create new job opportunities. In short, a simple and frank debate was opened with the boys who thus showed all their enthusiasm.

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The doctor is also present in the room Angela Strong of the smart city Cosenza urban laboratory group which invited the administration of Reggio and all the schools present to visit the Urban Lab, a real demonstrator and space dedicated to young people and creativity for urban regeneration and the creation of solutions to the needs of the city.

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The twinning on the opendata theme continued with the testimony of the smart city councilor of Lecce Alessandro Dellinoci who illustrated the Council's strategy to motivate and engage Council employees for the Opendata release. The Councilor of Lecce who has already been active on opendata for some time, has closed a memorandum of understanding with Wikitalia to activate a Od section in the programming office and for the training of PA personnel. The Councilor has recently launched a contest of ideas for creating Apps on Opendata.

Finally, the day ended with an open #opentalk session of interventions and proposals from the public, moderated by the Digital champion Angelo Marra President of the Young Entrepreneurs of Confindustria who highlighted the importance of the commitment and attention that children must have from school and who explained the role that digital champions have in raising awareness among citizens and administrations on digital skills, among the digital champions present Massimiliano Aiello, Rocco Sicoli, Paolo Mirabelli, Giuseppe Oppedisano, Vito

Finally with one of the first dataninja, the Data Journalist Alessio Cimarelli discussions were opened with the administrators and entrepreneurs, researchers, journalists, students and experts of open data and data journalism, the associations and schools participating in A Scuola di Open Coesione. In particular, Alessio Cimarelli showed the Confiscati Bene project as an example of OD http://www.confiscatibene.it/it , but also gave ideas to the administrators for discussion by illustrating the Italian benchmark on the situation of the ODs.

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