Monthly Archives: February 2013

Afterschool programs in Romania

In Romania, 1 of 6 children drops out of school every year. The main causes for this phenomenon are poverty and  the lack of social services. Child focused NGOs in Romania like World Vision have created afterschool programs to demonstrate that school dropout and children’s social problems can actually be prevented.

I visited school 126 from sector 5, Bucharest and talked to children benefiting from this program, parents and teachers. A few days later, I took a long journey (about 15 hours by train) to Vaslui county, one of the poorest areas in Romania, to see the same model of afterschool services applied in the rural areas.

Experts in the field widely agree that such programs should be made available at national level to all children and families in need. The after-school programs can also help children whose parents have emigrated abroad for work.

My travel companion was Giorgio Comai, who has actually written more extensively about this  topic on Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso. You can read his feature story here.

Open Data Hackabot 2018

Open data and bots

I had the privilege to support the institutional communication activities of Open Data Trentino with its Interreg European projects. In the video above I interviewed the protagonists of a 2 day hackaton. Students, mentor and experts had the challenge of designing and creating bots for products and companies, using open data from the Public Administration.

I've been also involved in the social media management activities, press releases and contacts with the media to promote the digital agenda in Trentino.

I  supported the efforts of the public administration to enable a dialogue between private enterprises, reasearch institutions, citizens and PA with the aim of boosting a data driven economy in Trentino and creating opportunities for companies and public administration with the use of open data.

Trento Smart City Week

Trento Smart City Week

On 12-15 April 2018 the Open Data Trentino Project of the Autonomous Province of Trento participated in the Trento Smart City Week. The event was an important occasion to promote some of the activities developed within the frame of an Interreg Europe project, such as the Open Data Hackabot 2018.

The event also offered an interactive platform to connect with local stakeholders on important topics like the transformation of public administration for citizens, the public informative heritage and the participatory approach to a data driven economy within a “smart” territory.

An exhibition place was set up to welcome citizens to interact with the public administration representatives and be informed about the on-line services developed based on the data that the public administration holds.

The exhibition place also hosted four public presentations of the chatbot concepts developed during the Open Data Hackabot where more than 50 young students passionate about technology participated in a 48 hours hackathon meant to develop and test solutions facilitating dialogue between public administration, private enterprises and citizens through chatbots, using open data.

Solvers, “clients”, tutors and researchers involved in the process discussed the challenges proposed by the Emergency Service Station, the Provincial Public Health Center, the Agency for Water Storage and Energy and the Autonomous Province of Trento.

The solvers presented the solutions and results developed for these four “clients” and acknowledged that this was a learning experience that enabled new and interesting synergies that need to be further developed and replicated in the future.