Sometimes, I rarely promise, in this Almanac it will happen to talk about me. But it will be a way to talk about the feats done by others. This is the case of what happened on 11 September 2014: OpenExpo debuted.
It was a project in many ways futuristic, yet in others it was absolutely obvious, necessary, inevitable. I say it for how I lived it: it helped save the Milan Expo. I remember how it started: I had been involved in some group of experts who had to to help design an Expo 2015 at the controversial times and battleground between those who wanted it and those who saw the usual opportunity to squander public money. At the time with a very large group of friends and acquaintances, all, today I can say, of extraordinary level, we had created an association that aimed to increase the principles of open government: transparency, participation, sharing. All through the network. We were a group of dreamers but among us there were excellent experts (not me).
We called it Wikitalia and at first I was elected president only because I had more time to dedicate to it than others (I had recently been out of work). In short, I make it short: they call me at Expo to get some advice on technology and I make it a condition that I immediately create a site where to put all the data of the works under construction: tenders, money, construction site status. All. I said: only if we are a glass house will Expo have the consensus it deserves. I was first ignored and then rejected and resigned. A year later some of the people I had dealt with were arrested for Expo contracts. And the big boss, Beppe Sala, now mayor of Milan, together with the minister Maurizio Martina, who was in charge of Expo, call me: what was the transparency project? Just do it. Immediately. It was July, if I remember correctly, there was an event in Venice when we announced it. And two months later we were online with all the data, site by site, in real time. That feat was accomplished in August mainly thanks to two people: Ernesto Belisario, who knows open government like few others and who followed all legal matters; And Giovanni Menduni, our professor, a true magician when it comes to transforming public datasets into dashboards that can be read by everyone.
It was a beautiful example, Open Expo, one of those, we told ourselves, from which there is no turning back. And instead we went back: the money and projects of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan are not open, they are not transparent, they are not shared and they are not participated. The site that was made to tell the Pnrr, Italia Domani, looks like something from twenty years ago. But it is only the pendulum of history, just wait: Wikitalia is no more, but there are other excellent associations to ask for it; maybe we will be able to have an Open Recovery Plan. Sooner or later.
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