Inclusive digital innovation

Digital innovation is one of the principles on which open government policies are based, and it is an essential and transversal intervention to all other principles: transparency, civic participation, fight against corruption, accountability. With the digital target of at least 20% for the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the European Union promotes investments in technologies, infrastructures, and digital processes of the Member States to increase European competitiveness on a global scale. In this context, the Italian priority is to recover the deep digital divide in culture, as evidenced by the fourth last place in the EU in the country in the DESI index (Index of digitalisation of the economy and society), and by the last place on digital skills.

In the National Recovery and Resiliency Plan, we read, “The digitisation and innovation of
processes, products and services characterise every reform policy of the Plan, from the tax authorities to the public administration (...). The sixth Missions of the PNRR represent  structural "thematic" areas of intervention: 1. Digitisation, innovation, competitiveness and culture; 2. Green revolution and ecological transition; 3. Infrastructures for sustainable mobility; 4. Education and research; 5. Inclusion and cohesion; 6. Health. "In this context, it appears necessary to support the initiatives for monitoring and civic control of public investments through the involvement of civil society and public administrations in joint activities of exchange and comparison of good practices already implemented or to be started.

The availability of data and information in an open format connected to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan investments becomes an enabling element of the processes of widespread civic participation and accountability of the Administrations. The commitments concerning inclusive digital innovation in the 4th National Action Plan, present in Action 1 - Open data, have been poorly implemented as out of 41 commitments, only 17 have been completed.

According to the DESI report - Digital Economy & Social Index 2019, Italy has significantly
improved its position on open data. However, many difficulties continue to be encountered, which slow down the possibilities of reusing these information assets. One of the main ones is the lack of meeting between supply and demand, which is expressed in the inadequate knowledge of the Open Data phenomenon and the potential underlying the re-use of data, in the provision of low- quality datasets, to the point of making the re-use from part of the community. The lack of compliance with standard data representation models  designed to make them effectively integrable and comparable is added to this.

In this scenario, in addition to the need to continue to promote the culture of data re-use, we should proceed to the definition of shared rules and publish high-value Open Datasets, both for the potential contribution in terms of transparency and for re-use with a view to services and new business activities. Other commitments are present in Action 10, relating to Citizenship and digital skills.