Open data is fundamental to journalists, and the data that allows us to track public funds is journalism’s very nature.

“Follow the money” is not only a catchphrase made popular by the film “All the President’s Men”. It is also the heart of the work of those who want to verify if public funds are used in the interest of citizens.

For this article, I looked at two EU databases offering open data on public funding – that is, information accessible online, available in machine language that can be used by standard computer programs, associated with metadata, and freely reusable by users.

Open Coesione as an Italian prototype

In Italy, Open Coesione has, in a certain sense, led the way in the world of monitoring European funds through open data.

Open Coesione is a national initiative of open government on cohesion policies (a set of measures aimed at promoting economic development and reducing regional disparities). It is coordinated by the Department for Cohesion Policies of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers through the Evaluation and Analysis Unit for Programming (NUVAP) and was born in 2012. It aims to encourage better use of public resources by disseminating and reusing data and information on interventions financed with national and European resources.

More than twenty years after its birth, the portal now contains the monitoring of 1.8 million Italian projects co-financed by the European Union for a total of 280 billion euros of public funds invested.

You can browse and search by themes, territories, and type of investment.

From this overview, it’s possible to reach even a single project in a single municipality.

You can check the project description and goals, and understand how many funds come from the European Union, how many are from local institutions at various levels, and how many funds have already been used. You can check if the project has been concluded or if it’s still ongoing.

You can download data and metadata in csv format, and reuse them.

From Italy to EU: two platforms

There are two similar projects for monitoring this kind of funding at the European level

1. Cohesion Open Data Platform visualises and provides open data on hundreds of national, regional and interregional programmes funded by the EU Budget. It’s structured into three levels:

– Website with country/fund/theme views

– Data stories: exploration of data with narrative and explanatory texts

– Open data: data to download, view and build analyses with formatted datasets (API)

It offers an entry-level approach (with FAQs, a blog, a user guide) if you are new to data and data visualisation, or a section if you are already good at managing data.

2. Kohesio is a database that offers easy and transparent access to information about projects and beneficiaries co-financed by EU cohesion policy in 2014-2020 and will enrich with projects and beneficiaries of 2021-2027. The database currently contains more than 1.5 million projects and approximately 500,000 beneficiaries. It acquires data in close cooperation with the Member States. There is a map that you can browse by countries and reach a geolocalization of any single project.

How to use this database for journalistic coverage and for having an impact, too

These databases are meaningful for journalism coverage.

You can use them for several approaches to public funding and policies.
First of all, they allow you to have an overview of fundings, which are a complex theme to manage.

*An example of overview of different EU funding*

Second, once you manage to find out the way these funds are distributed, you can go deeper and use data

to find a single story as an example of funding
to compare different interventions in different areas and make regional, national, state-to-state comparisons
to figure out and highlight the way public money is used

From a journalistic perspective this is incredibly insightful. If you combine this approach with an “on the ground” intervention by collecting stories where you have identified fundings, the result will be extremely interesting and useful for citizens.

In fact, you will be able to show what a public intervention in the area means concretely, and you will be able to tell in a concrete way what impact these policies have on people. Something that seems abstract thus becomes highly tangible.

The best way to operate in this area is to combine the power of data with the stories of real people, actions, and actual projects.

We have extensively used these databases in an Italian project to which I contribute as project manager and editor-in-chief. The project is called A Brave New Europe – Next Generation, and it has been co-financed by the European Commission, leaving us complete editorial freedom (which is a non-negotiable condition for an independent journalistic project).

Here are some things you can replicate based on what we’ve already learned and practised:

highlight good practices. By telling the story of how energy communities act in some countries in Italy, as in this piece, for example, it is possible to raise awareness among people who will be able to take action to ask for similar actions also in their own municipalities
highlight situations where these funds do not give the desired results. For example, by analysing the data on funding for inclusion and the fight against poverty in Italy and verifying that, at the same time, poverty indicators are increasing, we can suggest that the solutions taken up to now are not adequate

highlight meaningful elements of a specific intervention and the missing ones. For example, dealing with sustainable mobility, we realised that single funding for a single-cycle path could be excellent for a local community. But if it is not included in a development plan with a holistic vision, it risks remaining an isolated project nullifying the possibility of more comprehensive benefits
identify waste, ineffective interventions, contexts in which better could be done, such as in the reception of migrants in Italy
due to the possibility of geo-localisation of these stories, you can create maps (for example, using tools like Flourish or MyMaps, or Google Earth, as we did

create a virtuous circle: disseminating good practices while highlighting critical issues will induce a better use of funds and journalism can have a profound positive impact on society

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