Claudio Inguaggiato - Coordination Unit in Regione Piemonte Sylvie Occelli - Ires Piemonte

1. Policy making in an information wired environment: re-aligning government and governance relationships by complexity thinking Claudio Inguaggiato - CoordinationUnit in Regione Piemonte Sylvie Occelli - Ires Piemonte claudio Inguaggiato@csp.it occelli@.ires.piemonte.it

2. How to re-align the relationships between government and governance: the point of view of government actors … need for a whole government approach ICT spreading and establishment of new kind of socio-technical systems Background issues… acknowledging a variety of actors’ views (government organizations, societal partners, scientists)

3. Contents 2) implications: how complexity thinking could help re-aligning the government/governance relationships 1) the Piedmont case study: a) the regional context; b) a network approach to municipality aggregation 3) concluding remarks: some priority issues

4. 1) The Piedmont case study: a)the regional context • A widespread ICT diffusion • Difficulties to handle to cascade of changes • Limited understanding of the relationships between front office action domains and back-office initiatives • Some structural features are more binding Relationships between (front office) action domains (red symbols) and back office improvement initiatives (green symbols) for population service deliver by Piedmont municipalities 2011

5. 1) The Piedmont case study: b1) a network approach to municipality aggregations • Main problems faced by regional government: • to leverage its authority in such a way to avoid the negative consequences associated with deliberated top-down or spontaneous bottom up initiatives • to assume its responsibility in making the aggregation process as smooth and effective as possible • One of the biggest Italian regions (more than 4 million inhabitants), Piedmont accounts for 8% of the population of the country • It has a very high number of municipalities (1206) • There are few larger cities (Turin the regional capital and the province head cities) and a majority of small and very small municipalities (80% has less than 5000 inhabitants)

6. 1) The Piedmont case study: b) a network approach to municipality aggregations Intensity of participation to clusters of Piedmont municipalities • Aggregations: • Provinces, which divide the regional territory in 8 local areas • Territorial Pacts, aggregating half of the municipalities in 16 larger communities • Areas for Integrated Projects aggregating about 60% of the 1206 municipalities in 18 areas • Integrated territorial programs, resulting from the aggregation of 80% of the municipalities in 29 areas, Piedmont re-known wine Area !!! Intensity: up triangle = 1, square=2, circle=3. Province: red=Turin, orange=Cuneo, dark green=Alessandria, light blue=VCO, light green =Biella, yellow =Novara, dark blue=Vercelli, violet=Asti

7. 2) Implications of the Piedmont case study Application of (SNA) system thinking helps framing the problem Not a trivial result in government organizations !! • Extending the perspective of observation of a policy problem. • simplification: “subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful” • co-evolution in the knowledge perspectives of the involved people • widespread usage of social-based web applications convey a novel way to appreciate phenomena • need to link better the (internal) view of a problem, with the many other (external) views. Role of cognitive mediation artefacts: what knowledge project, underlying the application of a certain artefact within a certain context, is expected to deliver the most in establishing, reinforcing and enriching that linking?

8. 2) Implications of the Piedmont case study Application of the SNA helps framing the problem. Not a trivial result in government organizations !! B)Empowering the government actors: developing a capability to properly extract andtailor the information to the policy tasks/practices Data availability: easy, secure, reliable, inexpensive, accessible and timely data, in fact, are key data features in supporting this capability (big data and open data) Transform data/information into knowledge: data/information should make sense for situated governmental actions. This is largely overlooked by conventional tools

9. 3) Concluding remarks Nurturing a trans-disciplinary system approach to policy activities: priority issues Extension of the policy perspectives, by complexity thinking, should primarily aim at favoring inter-organizational linkages Exploring the significance of information in policy practices, i.e. the functions cognitive mediation artifacts can play in appropriating existing data and in supporting routinely vs. not routinely tasks Taking advantage of the experience gained by government actors in carrying out ICT-supported (complexity based) own policy activities, i.e. exploiting knowledge flows from interpreted information, such as good practices and stories Thank you for the attention