Last week – that appropriately ended with the Open Government Data Camp in Warsaw – has been extraordinary for Italians who care about open government and open data. The Emilia Romagna Region and the City of Florence launched the respective open data portals; the Ministry for innovation and public service announced the dati.gov.it, recruiting civic hacking competition Apps4Italy for added firepower; and Wikitalia, an ambitious civil society initiative, went public.

The present scenario seemed unthinkable just a year ago. Sure, there are reservations and new challenges, as Andrea De Maio warned; we need to be on our guard, and to keep our bullshit detectors on and fully charged. But we have reasons to savor the moment and treat ourselves to a small celebration.

The Italian way towards an open government is different from the more famous cases of the USA and the UK. In those countries the initiative was taken by the government, whereas south of the Alps the civil society has played an important role, in some cases a leading one. Informal meeting spaces – my favorite one is the Spaghetti Open Data mailing list – allowed the more curious and adventurous civil servants to interact with the movement and build up ammo to “sell” open government initiative to their respective institutions. For this reason, we in SOD (I know, unfortunate acronym) have watched most open gov-open data initiatives unfold from the very early days: the ones quoted above, but also others (the Ministry’s initiative is an exception).

This interaction between institutions and civil society has been extremely constructive. The latest example: the portal dati.emilia-romagna.it was launched on Monday morning. The link was immediately picked up and circulated onto the mailing list. In the space of about ten hours, the Region got a lot of kudos – pushed out onto the main social media by mailing list members – and a comprehensive expert test drive, as different members tried its features and posted suggestions for improvement, unsolicited and for free. Something similar happened with ENEL’s open data website, that went live with an unappropriate license. The community’s suggestions (and in this case the criticisms), amplified by social media, led the person in charge of the company’s open data initiative to subscribe to the mailing list, where he received a warm welcome and a passionate argument for changing the license and really opening up those data. Three weeks later, ENEL adopted a fully open license. Take a moment to ponder this: this is what governance could look like – pluralistic, respectful, fast, knowledge-based and low-cost. In my country, it generally does not.

So, the time has come for taking this scene to the next level, and that is Wikitalia. The idea first occurred to Riccardo Luna. He chanced to read my book Wikicrazia at exactly the right moment, as he was looking for new challenges after successfully launching Wired Italia magazine. Riccardo resonates with the vision of constructive collaboration I outlined in the book, that of Internet-mediated collaboration between citizens and institutions is both viable and badly needed if we are to live in Italy. During the summer he, I and others fleshed out this vision into an organization and an action plan. The result is a nonprofit initiative which is inclusive (the door is wide open to any collaboration), action-oriented and with a clear strategy, and natively global (I personally insisted in involving friends and colleagues abroad like Beth Noveck, Andrew Rasiej, Tom Steinberg, Marietje Schaake, Micah Sifry and others right from the start).

So, buongiorno Wikitalia. All Italians that want a regeneration are invited to invest in themselves and get to the next screen. Press PLAY to get started, and good luck.

Back from Barcelona, and time for a wrap up of Personal Democracy Forum Europe – also in response to a request for feedback from PDF Founders Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry. The conference is brand new to Europe, so it’s still in beta – and it has every right to be. Here’s what I experienced:

Personal approach of the organizers. Although somewhat of an outsider, I was made feel welcome at all times, thanks to a great team (though I do have a weak spot for Antonella).

Inspiring American presence. As seen from Europe, PDF has the great advantage of bringing over many interesting Americans that we can interact with – on our home turf! The American/European dualism kept surfacing and peppering the conversation.

High level of speakers. PDF EU convened some pretty bright people, with interesting things to show. Well worth getting to know.

High level of attendees Some really interesting people showed up, and we were able to have good conversations out of the spotlight.

Format issues. However, I did not always manage to make the most of those interesting speakers. The conference was mostly formatted into four-speakers panels with 6-8 minutes presentations and Q&A; presentations were in general too short to really delve deep into individual stories; Q&As were too short to morph into a real conversation. It ended up being, at times, annoyingly superficial. For example, when I got Irish blogger Mick Fealty to tell me about his story, his community and his vision it took me the best part of an hour to understand it well enough that I could make suggestions to him, and compare his project to other stuff I have seen or done. Mick and I did that over breakfast on Sunday morning: in the panels there was no time.

Two crowds or one? PDF EU had sessions on e-activism and sessions on e-government, and I am not sure that the two really belong together. Spin doctors and political advisors can be very interesting (think the Obama campaign, well represented in Barcelona), but I am not so sure that people like me belong with the same crowd as people like them. I see my role as that of a technical person. I designed Kublai to improve the effectiveness of regional development policy: whether I think regional development policy is a good idea or not is completely irrelevant. The democratic process resulted in laws and regulations saying there should be one, my job is not questioning it but making it work. The credibility of people like me – and ultimately our usefulness to society – depends on our ability to argue our cases without being suspected of partisanship. Of course, the skill set – if not the value system – overlaps across the two crowds, I guess we need to work out the conditions for they to be at ease with each other.
Finally, my presentation was a hit , having done my homework. The funniest remark I got (from two different people) is that Kublai is the first project they have come across which has actually found a use for Second Life! Just when did the Lindens get such a bad name?