by David Osimo in EU eGov action plan published: the good, the bad and the unknown , are the  
actions on Open Data (a EU portal and a revision of the EU PSI directive), and on citizens control  
over their data. However the Action Plan contains no reference to the need for a more open and  
collaborative governance. 
In the case of European Structural Funds, as Luigi Reggi reported in March 2011: 
there is no single point of access to the data. Hundreds of Managing Authorities are 
following different paths and implementing different information strategies when 
opening up their data. 
Many databases (often simple PDF lists) [...show...] huge variation not only in 
the way they can be accessed but also in content and quality of data provided. 
... [...The results of...] an independent web-based survey on the overall 
quality of data published by each Managing Authority responsible for the 434 
Operational Programmes approved in July 2009... can be summarized as follows: 
The use of open, machine-processable and linked-data formats have unexpected 
advantages in terms of transparency and re-use of the data by the public and private 
sector. The application of these technical principles does not need extra budget or major 
changes in government organization and information management; nor does it require 
the update of existing software and infrastructures. What is needed today is the 
promotion among national and local authorities of the culture of transparency and the 
raising of awareness of the benefits that could derive from opening up existing data and 
information in a re-usable way. 
The European Cohesion Policy is only halfway to accomplishing a paradigm shift to 
open data, with differences in performance both between and - in some cases - within 
European Countries. 
Things don't go much better for the European Union in the energy field. Carlo Stagnaro wrote in  
EU Energy Orwellianism: Ignorance Is Strength: 
Energy is an active area of EU public policy. Yet authorities are not revealing 
information (data is surely has) that is crucial to determine whether its policies are 
distorting the market and come at too high a cost to society. This is a major fault in 
Europe's credibility in advancing its policy goals, as well as a serious limitation to the 
accountability of the policy making process 
We realized that, while strongly supporting green investments the EU does not know, or 
does not make it public, how much is spent every year on green subsidies... With regard 
to green jobs, several estimates exist, but no official figure is provided. 
More recently... I discovered that Eurostat does not tell how much coal capacity is 
installed - as opposed to natural gas- or oil-fueled generation plants. It is possible to 
know how much coal is used, but not the amount of fixed capital which is invested in 
7/34
Copyright  2011 LEM, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna. This work is released under a Creative Commons attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)