Regional

Innovation
Policies
Luigi Reggi’s website

The open data paradigm and the

European structural funds
Luigi Reggi

European Cohesion Policy has always paid special attention to

transparency. Today all European Regions publish lists of beneficiaries of
Structural Funds as required by the Council regulations. But only a part of
this data is in a machine-readable and reusable format. Italian region of
Calabria represents a good exception

As the current debate on ‘government 2.0’ focuses on accessing public

information as a way to foster open government and transparency, the
availability of public data is becoming crucial for an effective delivery of
new user-generated services. According to the last Ministerial Declaration
on eGovernment, approved in November 2009, new demand-led
information products and services enabled by the reuse of public sector
information will support the transition of Europe to a knowledge-based
economy.

In this regard, great importance is attributed to the formats in which this

data is published. It is universally recognized that a web page (i.e. HTML
code) or a PDF file is not enough. To allow mash-up or geo-referencing,
data should be machine-readable, preferably in open, standard and
reusable formats such as XML, RDF, CSV (see for example WC3
guidelines).

The European Cohesion Policy has always paid attention to the

transparency issues related to the vast amount of public resources that
have been assigned to the European Regions.

According to Article 69 of the Council Regulation (EC) No 1083/2006 of 11

July 2006 laying down general provisions on the European Regional
Development Fund, the European Social Fund and the Cohesion Fund and
repealing Regulation (EC) No 1260/1999, the Member States and the
Managing Authority for the operational programme shall provide
information on and publicise operations and co-financed programmes. The
information shall be addressed to European Union citizens and beneficiaries

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Innovation
Policies
Luigi Reggi’s website

with the aim of highlighting the role of the Community and ensuring that
assistance from the Funds is transparent.

To fulfill Article 69 of the Council Regulation (EC) No 1083/2006, Managing

Authorities of the programmes co-financed by Structural Funds have to
draw up a Communication Plan aiming at:

• improving communication through the implementation of community

actions more visible and close to citizens in order to increase the
general consent on the future EU policies

• guaranteeing more transparency through more efficient, transparent

and accessible European institutions open to public control

• closing the gap between EU institutions and citizens through the

improvement of the dialogue and listening.

Consequently all direct beneficiaries (the public or private bodies or

firms responsible for commissioning operations or, in cases of aid schemes,
the bodies that grant the aid) must be published by the Managing
Authorities under the rules governing the implementation of the 2007-2013
funds (EC No 1828/2006). The information must contain the name of the
beneficiary, the names of the operations and the amount of public
funding allocated to the operations.

From this page of Inforegio web site (DG Regio of European Commission) it
is possible to access to the lists of projects and beneficiaries published in
the web sites of the Regional Operative Programmes and of the Regional
Managing Authorities.

As reported in the table, currently most of these lists are provided in HTML
tables or can be downloaded as PDF files, making them difficult to export to
Excel or other applications and connect them to different databases for a
more detailed analysis.

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 Regional
Innovation
Policies
Luigi Reggi’s website

Country Centralized / Most common formats

decentralized
database*
Austria Decentralized PDF (all regions)
Belgium Decentralized HTML (2 regions), XLS (1 region), PDF (1
region)
Bulgaria Centralized XLS
Cyprus - PDF
Czech Decentralized PDF, XLS, DOC
Republic
Denmark - Google Maps geo-referenced, HTML
Estonia - HTML
Finland Centralized HTML
France Centralized XLS
Germany Decentralized PDF
Greece Centralized PDF
Hungary Centralized Flash / HTML
Ireland Decentralized HTML
Italy Decentralized PDF (12 Regions out of 21), XLS (5 Regions).
Latvia - HTML
Lithuania - XLS, Advanced search
Luxembourg - PDF
Malta - n/a
Netherlands Decentralized HTML
Poland Centralized XLS
Portugal Decentralized PDF
Romania Centralized PDF
Slovakia Centralized XLS
Slovenia - HTML
Spain Centralized PDF
Sweden Centralized HTML tables and figures
United Decentralized HTML, PDF
Kingdom
Source: Regional Innovation Policies, www.luigireggi.eu

* Centralized database = One database at national level; Decentralized

database = Different databases on different web sites for each Regional
Authority!

The Calabria project database

A good example of how this data should be published is the project

database of Italian Region of Calabria, accessible online through the web
site Calabria Europa.

To date, the database includes more than 32,000 projects; for each
project the following information is reported:

• the name of the project

• the name of the final beneficiary
• the owner of the process
• the territory where the beneficiary is located

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Innovation
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Luigi Reggi’s website

• the type of funds (ERDF, ESF, etc) and the Operational Programme
• the amounts allocated
• the amounts paid out

Through an interactive interface and an advanced search, users can look

for specific projects, territories where the project impacts, Operational
Programmes, measures, or expenditure categories and then to export the
results in CSV format. It is also possible to visualize the data in terms of
statistics, graphs and figures, and then export to a PDF. This tool is also
used to report on the state of play and implementation levels of the policies
funded, not only by the Structural Funds, but also by national funds such
as the FAS (Under-utilized Area Funds). The tool includes data about the
programming periods 2000-2006 and 2007-2013.

The most interesting feature is the search for a single municipal

territory, which gives the opportunity, once exported to a CSV file, of geo-
referencing the data with the greatest possible detail. As an example, the
map below shows the total amounts allocated in the 2007-13 programming
period, displaying the funds only for projects impacting on a single
municipality.

Total 2007-13 ERDF funds allocated to the projects whose

beneficiaries are located in a single municipality, March 2010