On 25th of September, the Italian Interactive Forum took place in Bologna, in the Baroque, beautifully renovated Sala del Dentone, within the Bologna municipality headquarters.
The event was organized with the official patronage of Bologna municipality, and in collaboration with the Italian Coordination of Local Agenda 21, a network of municipalities and local authorities engaged for a better environmental management and sustainable development.
The Agenda 21 Coordination actively supported the organisation of the Interactive Forum, by inviting its members and promoting INCITE DEM among its network.
The Emilia-Romagna region, and the Bologna municipality, already activated dedicated offices to participation, and the Neighbourhood Houses case of Bologna has been shared at the beginning, with the other participants. Not on purpose, the project has the same title as one of the proposed models.
Nine regional authorities and municipalities representatives participated in presence to the event, while other three people – from the municipalities of Mantova and Cesena – could not make it in presence and provided contributions from distance. The exceptional asyncronous mode has been allowed considering the emergency that many municipalities had to face in that week, mainly related to some heavy rainfall which flooded many areas in Northern Italy.
The number of in-presence participants was enough to create three groups and maintain the general methodology and structure of the event. Each group was asked to evaluate two models, elaborated by the INCITE DEM research group based on the results of the Democracy Labs.
The feedback has been very specific and to-the-point by each group, and each model was addressed with constructive suggestions and criticism. A general cross-cutting remark – valid for more than one model, but not for all, to be fair – was the the risk of overlapping the administration in charge, meaning that a voted government cannot delegate its power – partially or completely – to a third party established thanks to a petition or upon request by a fixed number of citizens. This debate on legitimacy can be recognised indeed even in some of the other Interactive Forums already carried out in the other countries. On the other hand, more or less everyone agreed that all models contain positive elements to make citizens more active and bring them closer to the administrators, at least at the local level.
Another recurring feedback is related to the AI involvement at different levels, in the majority of the presented models. For the current structure of the local public administration, this would be hard to manage: the main issues would be privacy and data collection, legislation, bureaucracy, and competence of the public officials, which raises some reflections on the economical and social sustainability of the proposed models, considering an average local authority.
Could a polis lifestyle be sustainable in our times? Would the citizens be positive about dedicating most of their freetime to participation? Digitalisation and deep AI support can help in making it more affordable on the citizens’ side, but is the public administration capable of managing it? Nearly everyone agreed – both those in presence and those remotely contributing in writing – that, in any case, at local/neighbourhood level the rate of success would be higher.