The last issue of Italian magazine “eGov” includes an article on e-government projects co-funded by European Cohesion Policy which I wrote after the release of a number of official reports on the implementation of Regional Operative Programmes in Italy.
In this article – available in Italian only, sorry – I try to provide a clearer view of financial resources dedicated to e-government development and diffusion in Southern Italy in 2000-06 and 2007-13 programming periods, as well as of main co-funded projects. These are some of the conclusions I came to:
- financial resources dedicated to e-government and information society in Southern Italy are huge compared to its actual absorptive capacity;
- from a “governance” point of view, after a political phase dominated by a well-publicized “shared vision”, low investment from the national government increased the role of regional policies in the whole implementation of e-government in Italy. This caused, especially in the South, a stronger role of Regional Cohesion Policy in defining strategies and policy priorities.
- Since national government – for many reasons – can no longer play the role of coordination center of local actions, interregional coordination and collaboration is becoming essential. The DPS project I wrote about in the past is one possible and still experimental solution.