Citizens evaluating local services and facilities in Southern Italy

Costs and savings

The costs of this pilot project mainly consists of costs of staff in the working group and the travel payments to participants in the training seminars at national and regional levels. The members of the national focus group which defined the quality dimensions and indicators received no fee, nor the citizens and representatives of the civic associations participating in the monitoring at local level. The local authorities which took part in the project did not receive any funding for the project. The time which volunteers invested in the project have been estimated as:

• 2,5 days in total for training, including the seminar at national level, the training at regional level and a half-day meeting at local level to organise the team work and to divide up the geographic area for the monitoring;
• the collection of data was undertaken by means 4 “public walks” of a duration of 2-3 hours each;
• the analysis of data required another meeting of about two hours to agree on scores and 2-3 half-days to complete the codebook and the drafting of the report;
•  the presentation of results typically involved a press conference or a public meeting with the involved citizens.

Laura Massoli provided Governance International with this case study on 30 July 2010. It was updated on 17 February 2012.