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Data from official sources on nights spent in an accommodation for tourists in Lombardy are available until 2021. These data on touristic flows for 2020 and 2021 registered a clear downfall because of restrictions related to Covid-19. The aim of this paper is to verify the presence of a full or partial recover of tourists in provinces of Lombardy using short-term predictions for 2022. A time-series procedure has been applied to obtain a forecast estimate for 2022 using an ARMA model with the addition of an exogenous variable. The hypothesis at the basis of the model is that a punctual estimate of the touristic flows could be obtained using an auxiliary variable explaining the number of employees in the food services and hospitality industry. This auxiliary variable is represented as the difference between the number of starting work contracts and the contract terminations. These data are available thanks to the Informative system of mandatory communications provided by the Italian Minister of Labour. The availability of this information is daily guaranteed at level of single municipality but for the purpose of this paper, data have been aggregated at province level. The short-term predictions obtained for 2022 have been used to verify the presence of a recovery respect to the pandemic emergency of Covid-19 using a double growth rate. A first growth rate has been computed comparing the number of estimated tourists respect to the 2021 measuring the existence of a rebound after the restrictions. A second growth rate measured the estimates for 2021 respect to the presences of 2019 to monitor the trends in Lombardy compared to the before Covid-19 period. Preliminary results showed an evident upswing respect to 2021 and a partial recovery respect to 2019 for the majority of Lombard provinces.

The Covid-19 pandemic has shaped every area of our lives in few months, and the consequent effects at personal, professional and organisational level are unprecedented. Specifically, as a consequence of this forced change, Higher Education systems have registered the necessity to transform learning and teaching processes to provide responses to new learners’ needs. The aim of the paper is to present the output of a comparative group discussion of Intall project, and to show how it supports reflection on some practical implication for the New Normal. Reflecting on the output obtained through a comparative group discussion on ‘Re-thinking teaching and learning during the pandemic Covid-19’, the paper wants to present the main issues that the education systems have been facing during the pandemic, and to provide insight into the practical implications for the New Normal in higher and adult education. This paper provides some contributions to the debate on teaching and learning in higher education for the New Normal.

This paper aims at analyzing the relationship between university performances of freshman students, measured by the University credits (CUs) gathered during the first semester, and the results achieved in T.E.L.E.MA.CO. test, a useful tool for orientation and access to university studies based on solid scientific methodologies, and their social-demographic characteristics. This analysis is useful to understand when and how timely policies and programs can be implemented to avoid losing students, a frequent trend, especially in the first semester of the first year. All the considered students are enrolled at the Economic Department of the University of Genoa. Data provided directly by the Department are analyzed from a descriptive point of view and then a logit model is used to compute the probability of getting at least 15 CUs at the end of the first semester. Furthermore, the paper investigates the existence of a gender gap in mathematics before the beginning of university and after the first exams, based on the score gained in the admission test in the numeracy section (pre-university assessment) and the mark obtained in the mathematics exam (post-university assessment). Finally, this work attempt to explain if the university environment contributes to increase or reduce the gender gap.

The present is an introductory summary on the topic of misinformative and fraudolent statistical inferences, in the light of recent attempts to reform social sciences. The manuscript is focused is on the concept of replicability, that is the likelihood of a scientific result to be reached by two independent sources. Replication studies are often ignored and most of the scientific interest regards papers presenting theoretical novelties. As a result, replicability happens to be uncorrelated with bibliometric performances. These often reflect only the popularity of a theory, but not its validity. These topics are illustrated via two case studies of very popular theories. Statistical errors and bad practices are discussed. The consequences of the practice of omitting inconclusive results from a paper, or 'p-hacking', are discussed. Among the remedies, the practice of preregistration is presented, along with attempts to reform peer review through it. As a tool to measure the sensitivity of a scientific theory to misinformation and disinformation, multiversal theory and methods are discussed.

Environmental sustainability is one of the main goals of all countries in the world. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been proposed by the United Nations in 2015. The purpose of this paper is to explore if and how European countries achievethe goals of environmental sustainability (tracked by the SDGs number 13, 14, and 15). In particular, SDG 13 refers to climate change and its impacts; SDG 14 refers to the conservation of water and marine resources while the last one; SDG 15 deals with the preservation of forests. The reference methodology of the paper are the Self-Organizing Maps proposed by Kohonen in 1982 as an unsupervised clustering method in the framework of artificial neural networks. The proposed analysis considers the 23 indicators related to the three SDGs of environmental sustainability and aims to explore and identify groups of countries with similar characteristics through a dimensionality reduction. Such clusters will be visually represented in a two-dimensional map. The proposed analysis considers the most recent data for all the above SDGs, which is 2018, with the aim of classifying the countries in terms of environmental sustainability and highlighting possible implications for policymakers. An analysis of the network accuracy is shown, using appropriate indicators. These results allow us to see which countries have achieved these goals and how they have deviated from them.

In a previous volume, State and Society in Papua New Guinea: The First Twenty-Five Years (2001, reprinted by ANU E Press in 2004), a collection of papers by the author published between 1971 and 2001 was put together to mark Papua New Guinea's first 25 years as an independent state. This volume presents a collection of papers written between 2001 and 2021, which update the story of political and social development in Papua New Guinea in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The chapters cover a range of topics, from an evaluation of proposals for political reform in the early 2000s, a review of the discussion of 'failing states’ in the island Pacific and the shift to limited preferential voting in 2007, to a detailed account of political developments from the move against Sir Michael Somare in 2011 to the election of Prime Minister Marape and his performance to 2022. There are also chapters on language policy, external and internal security, religious fundamentalism and national identity, and the sustainability of economic growth.

The 2030 Agenda has been adopted to achieve a better and sustainable future for all. The process of approaching its 17 Sustainable Development Goals is monitored through a global system of 240 statistical indicators approved in March 2016 by the United Nations Statistical Commission. Sustainable Development Goal 5 seeks to achieve gender equality and empowerment all women and girls: it is broken down into 9 targets. According to these targets, indicators are being established for monitoring and evaluating progress on SDG in order to ensure high transparency and accountability within the 2030 Agenda. A gender equality plan will typically address several issues at once, leading to a complex set of measures. Nonetheless, effective monitoring and evaluation instruments are often lacking, which undermines the transformative potential of the planned measures. If objectives are not indexed on relevant progress, success or outreach indicators, it is difficult to assess whether the organisation is actually being transformed. Monitoring and evaluation are critical for building a strong, global evidence base around gender equality and for assessing the wide, diverse range of interventions being implemented to address it. Policy makers need support now if they are to use SDG evaluation as an opportunity to improve policies and programmes closer to home, applying tailored approaches. This paper deals with monitoring and evaluation of Goal 5 in Italy. In the context of the SDGs, evaluation relates to determining the merit, worth, significance and sustainability of strategies, policies and programmes that contribute to the achievement of the SDGs at national and territorial level. After analyzing the indicators available for the monitoring of the Goal 5, the benefits and limits that still exist for a full representation of gender equality will be explained.

Cosmopolitics, an open-source dashboard designed by an Istat team to perform exploratory data analysis using Eurostat statistical open data on international trade, offers several tools for investigating globalization phenomena such as the dynamics of global value chains (GVC). The advantage of this widely spread economic organization is well known: companies obtain economic advantages by direct foreign investments or by production outsourcing, i.e. relocating some production phases to countries where high specialization or an advantageous labor market create greater opportunities. However, by its very nature, the GVC is highly sensitive to shock transmissions and supply chain disruptions associated with geopolitical events or epidemiological crises. The dashboard will be released as Istat experimental statistical product and available online. Through a Social Network Graph Analysis approach, it will offer students, researchers and policy makers the opportunity to explore the dynamics of global trade for specific products traded by different modes of transport. The tool allows users not only retracing recent critical phases affecting global trade, but also interactively simulating bilateral trade flows interruptions or closures of specific logistic poles or transport routes. This gives the opportunity to outline possible scenarios in which the GVC trade relationships reshape under shock transmissions, such as conflicts, changes in bilateral relationships between countries, logistics or transport new arrangements, reallocation of foreign investments, etc. By computing standard Social Network indicators (such as graph density, indegree, outdegree, and closeness centrality), the tool provides many quantitative measures associated with the specific global trade structures displayed. This paper will illustrate the methodology implemented in the dashboard and will provide examples on how to explore GVC scenarios by Cosmopolitics.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, remote working (RW) has been a way to producing despite limiting contacts. In Italy, about a half of the workers experienced, at least for a part of their working time, RW during the years 2020 and 2021. In this paper we analyse the data collected through a web-based survey conducted in the second half of 2021 at a convenience sample of Italian adults. The survey was aimed at highlighting how Italians experienced the pandemic and how they perceived their future. Also, we measured the frequency and the intensity of the RW phenomenon, the feelings of those who practiced and the opinion of workers about the possibility to practice it in the future. The data show that so many adults practiced RW during the pandemic. Their judgement of the experience is largely positive: 60.8% stated they were inclined to pursue it again as a normal work strategy. Though, there are distinctions. The type of job and the recent experience entail people’s commitment towards RW. Even what people expect from work may influence their disposition to take in RW as normal. The convolution of wells of the RW disposition, scouted through a multivariate statistical analysis, showed that, on top of the well-known suitability of RW to certain job types (white-collar, gig activities, self-employed), the workers’ propensity to RW is higher if commuting cost saving, own time optimisation and not-too-open schedules, work-family balance and a free time surplus, the possibility of interaction and socialisation with other company’s employees and customers and a secure web connection characterise their jobs.

Cities play a leading role in addressing many of the global challenges of the 21st century. They are an important part of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, which assigns them multiple tasks. Cities should be committed to reducing the ecological footprint and to creating solutions that respond in a differentiated way to the challenges and opportunities in different areas of the world. The sustainable development strategies of cities have determined the definition of different urban models, focused on the need to offer citizens well-being and innovation. This contribution presents the model of learning cities (LC), cities that put learning and education at the heart of their strategies. The paper identifies some of the possible strategies to make cities more responsive to the learning needs arising from the recent pandemic crisis.

Learning and teaching in higher education can help to face the rapidly changing demands and transformations in social, professional, and individual life. «Digitalisation is not only an additional challenge but also an effective means to address key challenges for higher education in the 21st century» (Rampelt et al. 2019, 6). Digital practices in Higher Education forced by the Covid-19 disruption are challenging educational processes at every level. Digitization is here no longer just about the question of the technical dimension, but, about the structural interweaving and relational co-constitution of the digital with the social, the cultural, and the individual. Here the INTALL@home vision of learning international comparison without being physically mobile – theoretically framed and elaborated in this paper – starts.

This volume collects the contributions presented at the conference “Data-driven Decision Making” organized by the Italian Association for Applied Statistics, held in Genoa from 12 to 14 September 2022. The papers cover a broad range of topics, with a common thread: the use of statistical methods to support decision-making both in public administrations and in private companies.

The variability of the characteristics of immigration at different territorial levels is an important key to interpreting social phenomena. This paper deals with immigration in the municipalities of the Northwest of the country. In the analysis, the databases of official statistics are considered. In particular, foreign population incidences based on ISTAT data in the last decades are used. The approach is a mix of complementary techniques of spatial analysis, known in the literature: the Univariate local Moran's Index, the Differential local Moran's Index and the LISA Cluster Transitions technique. The combined use of these tools allows both the representation of immigration structure at the municipal level and the analysis of its spatial dynamics. The results, determined by the complementarity of different methods of spatial analysis, allow to identify clusters of municipalities and to understand both differences and the dynamics of migration. The proposed analysis might be considered as a useful reference for the development of public policies at the local level.

Consistency between personal values and career choices is essential to achieve job satisfaction and to attain positive career outcomes and self-realization. Schwartz and Bilsky (1987) propose ten basic values, measured through the Portrait Value Questionnaire, related to the universal needs of existence: self-direction, stimulation, hedonism, power, achievement, security, conformity, tradition, universalism, and benevolence. These values are organized in a circular shape, according to their similarities and dissimilarities and following the contraposition between openness to change and conservation, and between self-enhancement and self-transcendence. Focusing on professional goals and aspirations, Schein’s Career Orientation Inventory (1990) identifies eight anchors that drive employees’ career paths and orientations: general managerial competence, technical/functional competence, autonomy/independence, security/stability, entrepreneurial creativity, dedication to a cause, pure challenge, life-style. Schein affirms that a career anchor is “that one element in a person self-concept, which he or she will not give up even in the face of difficult choices” (1990). In this paper, we aim at understanding the mutual relationship between the paradigms proposed by Schwartz and Schein, in order to enlighten how personal motivations inform career preferences and choices. We administered the Portrait Value Questionnaire and the Career Orientation Inventory scales to a sample of 253 respondents who work in different fields and positions, through a survey questionnaire. Results show a high level of consistency between Schwartz’s and Schein’s theoretical frames. Those who are more oriented to the openness to change dimension tend to favour careers of autonomy and entrepreneurial creativity, while a conservative motivation leads to more safe and stable careers; analogously, personal values of self-enhancement support challenging careers while self-transcendence pushes for dedication to a cause and work-life balance.

The present paper is a contribution to the broad field of adult education within a lifelong learning perspective. It starts from literature and theories in this field, and develops a reflection based on empirical work, related in particular to the use of qualitative methodologies in the guidance process for adults engaged in the recognition of strategic competences acquired in non formal and informal learning contexts of civil service. The lifelong learning perspective places the valorisation of experience, reflective and transformative learning at the center to remove barriers that hinder adult participation. The outcome of this experimentation was the tutoring procedure to support reflexive and self-analysis activities for the construction of the competences portfolio.

Italy was one of the countries severely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. An analysis of the factors that played a role in the spread of this epidemic is necessary. However, the assessment of which factors may be specific, and which may contribute the most is complex and involves a high degree of uncertainty. The main objective of this study is to evaluate and analyse the statistical associations of the spread of Covid-19 infection with identified spatial context variables (density, old-age index, average temperature, and pollution). For this purpose, the developments from the spatial convergence theory were considered, as well as data from the Italian provinces from March 2020 to February 2021, referring to the first, second and third wave. The hypothesis tested in this study is to investigate the contribution of environmental and demographic factors to the convergence of observed infection rates. Based on panel data of 107 Italian provinces from the first to the third wave, this article uses a spatial autoregressive model (SAR) to analyse the conditional β-convergence of Covid-19 infection rates. The empirical results of this paper show that there is spatial conditional β-convergence in the intensity of infection rates. This means that the contagion in neighbouring areas will affect the contagion in the local area. The age structure and population density of the provinces had a certain promoting effect on the transmission of the infection, depending on the wave analysed. Regarding the observed average temperature, the effects are not very significant and inconsistent. For the first and last wave, the level of pollution is significant in explaining the convergence processes of the infection. We demonstrate that accounting for spatial factors is essential to capture key features of the spread of Covid-19 infection.

The Trusted Smart statistics is an expression introduced by Eurostat to indicate the mature phase of the production of statistics based on Big Data and the transition from statistics based on traditional data sources to statistics created with new data sources. In this paper we will discuss: the impact of digital transformation in National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) and in their production of official statistics, how NSIs have adapted new research paradigms, how digital transformation has prompted National Statistical Institutes to adapt their production processes by exploiting new data sources, with the aim of improving statistical information also in terms of eg. of timeliness and granularity and strengthening their role in the ecosystem of scientific knowledge. This transformation process involves the entire organization in order to guarantee the same levels of relevance, quality and trust as traditional statistics. Istat, thanks to new data sources, increasingly performing technologies and specific skills, has positively seized the opportunities offered by the general context and has recently established a Trusted Smart Statistics Center (TSS Center) to have a governing body that systematically guides organizational adaptation at a technological, methodological, ethical, legal, communication and human resource level. The objective of the TSS Center is to capitalize the investments that Istat has made in European (e.g. ESSNet) and international (e.g. UNECE HLG-MOS) research projects, transferring the lessons learned and the know-how acquired in the statistics of new processes productive. At an organizational level, the TSS Center has the task of designing a sustainable organizational structure that helps and supports the individual company components to work in a systemic, coherent and synergistic way to create the new Trusted Smart Statistics production system.

The concept of life satisfaction dates back to the Age of Enlightenment and became popular in the Nineteenth century as a synonym for ‘good life’. Efforts are still underway to overcome the traditional economic criteria of well-being by broadening the definition and measurement of life satisfaction based on a large set of indicators. Although ‘money cannot buy happiness’, the economic dimension remains a crucial element of life satisfaction. Economic insecurity arises from unpredictable economic losses, which may affect individuals’ well-being due to the feeling of failure and inability to recover. In this paper, economic insecurity is investigated for its impact on the trajectories of life satisfaction over a timespan of 30 years among working-age German citizens, grouped by age (16-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50-64) and activity sector (secondary vs. tertiary). Latent Growth Curve Models were estimated on longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), using individual and time fixed effects. The analyses allow us to break down the impact of economic insecurity on life satisfaction into a fixed component and a specific random component for each individual. Every year, panel respondents have been asked to provide their subjective perception of life satisfaction on a 10-point Likert scale. Economic insecurity is measured through the Bossert and D’Ambrosio’s index. Our results show that economic insecurity has a negative impact on life satisfaction, which becomes more relevant for people in the 40-49 age group. This impact appears to be stronger for workers belonging to the secondary sector. Moreover, among the youngest individuals (16-29), such an impact shows a higher variability over time: therefore, within this age group, economic insecurity appears to affect life satisfaction more unpredictably. As relevant differences exist between the considered groups, our results give way to the implementation of targeted policy measures.

The paper draws from Sergio Caruso’s reflections that the ‘extension’ and ‘intensification’ of citizenship are inseparable from democracy. Within this framework, it questions how innovative formulations of democracy such as so-called ‘deliberative arenas’ can contribute to the strengthening of citizenship. Specific attention is devoted to the public debate on major works, a privileged field of inquiry for some assessments of the effectiveness of participation guaranteed by such instruments.

Over the years, official statistics have shown increasing attention to the territory in providing detailed and quality information and, in this sense, the Population and Housing Census has always guaranteed the availability of sub-municipal data useful for decision-making processes in the social, economic and environmental fields. The Istat modernization programme introduced the Permanent Census that, differently from the traditional decennial census essentially drew on collecting data from people, is strongly based on the integration of administrative and sample data, and planned for providing yearly statistical figures. This change requires new methodological and IT architectures. It is a revolution that – on the medium term – is expected to provide more stable and coherent figures at various territorial levels.In this framework, sub-municipal data derives from the integration of the Basic Register of Individuals and the Basic Register of Places. The quality of data depends on the quality of the Registers and the procedures adopted to integrate and elaborate input data. In this regard, Istat is working to improve the geocoding information and linkage procedures. One of the problem encountered is that of non-geocoded units. These are units without an allocation into an enumeration area because of problems in administrative data. Istat has studied a procedure integrating deterministic and probabilistic approaches for assigning the enumeration area to those critical units. An experimental study is carried out to evaluate the quality of the imputation procedure. In this paper, we discuss the approach adopted, the evaluation process, the results obtained and the impact on the quality of the data and the spatial analyses that can be carried out.

Rapid access to emergency medical care is crucial in reducing the implications of negative health events in terms of both mortality and disability. Thus, in a well-designed health system the geographical distribution of emergency care services should be able to minimize the share of people whose access time lies beyond critical thresholds. In spite of this, statistical information measuring accessibility to emergency care services at a highly disaggregated level is unavailable in Italy. This paper makes a step in filling this gap, by providing geographically detailed estimates of accessibility in two northern regions, Liguria and Lombardia. To do so, we use three data sources: 1) georeferenced population data measured at the currently most possible detailed level (census enumeration areas, CEAs) from the 2011 Population Census; 2) open data on location of emergency care services; 3) crowdsourced data on road travel distances. Elaborating these data with an efficient algorithm based on open source routing machine provides us with a clear mapping of particularly disadvantaged areas. We find that in 2013 the population share whose access time to emergency care services lies beyond a critical –and policy relevant- threshold of 60 minutes is fairly limited (about 0.1% in both regions). Regional differences emerge when setting lower thresholds. We briefly discuss how accessibility may have evolved in recent years, based upon some conjecture on population dynamics at the CEA level and updated information on emergency care centers. Finally, we analyze how differences in accessibility are related to a set of characteristics describing the population’s living conditions. Different results emerge. In particular, older and less educated people in Liguria face significantly lower access to emergency care. Overall, our results suggest that spatial differences in accessibility -within and between regions- should be considered a relevant determinant of health inequality.

The United Nations 2030 Agenda increasingly represents a reference point for political planning, as demonstrated by the centrality of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in the new cycle of EU policies. According to the European Committee of the Regions, 65% of the Agenda’s objectives will not be achieved without the involvement and coordination of subnational governments. It is therefore necessary for the territories to adapt their programmatic tools in order to make them coherent with European and national programming, through the definition of a methodology capable of conforming the tools of local programming with those defined at the higher territorial levels. The aim of this paper is to present the methodological framework defined by the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development (ASviS), based on the numerous experiences with local administrations, to support the implementation of multilevel sustainable local development strategies which make territorial planning consistent with the national and the European programming. The basis for correct multilevel programming provides for a mapping of the local context with respect to the 17 SDGs also through the calculation of composite indices, capable not only of summarizing the degree of sustainability of the individual territories for each Goal, but also of comparing the performance between the different realities belonging to higher or lower levels. Based on these results, the public and private stakeholders are involved in identifying quantitative “outcome” objectives, needed to define the commitments of the territories and to monitor the impact of policies with respect to the achievement of the SDGs.

The contribution aims to offer a critical analysis of the Italian discipline on the ways of acquiring citizenship. The paper analyzes the most problematic aspects of the 1992 law, showing its anachronisms and unreasonableness, and then highlights the profiles that most need reform. In particular, the status of the minor born or schooled in Italy and the naturalization procedure claim a profound revision.

In this paper we highlight the sensorial and cultural correlates of the consumption of Trebbiano wine produced in the Abruzzo region, Italy. The data have been collected through a questionnaire survey on a sample of 48 adults. The sample was conveniently selected among the participants at a scientific meeting held in Pescara in September 2018. The survey was part of a complex sensorial experiment concerning the preference of this white wine with respect to a series of other regional white wines. The collected data on Trebbiano wine consumption have been analysed through a path analytic regression model in which consumption was the criterion variable, while cultural and sensorial variables, on the one hand, and wine expertise and drinking habits, on the other, were the variables mediating the respondents’ disposition towards this type of wine. The analysis showed that two thirds of the respondents frequently or occasionally used to consume the topical wine. The frequency of consumption was strictly influenced by the relevance the respondents conferred to this wine when put in competition with other wines during an outdoor dinner. The consumers who particularly appreciated it were wine experts (sommeliers, wine course attendants, wine producers) and other wine consumers able to recognise the intrinsic characteristics of a wine thanks to the sensorial skills (for smell and aroma evaluation) they developed through long experience and specific learning.

How did individual and social aspects influence depression feelings during the pandemic? In this paper, we analyse the data collected through a survey conducted in the second half of 2021 among a convenience sample of Italian adults. The survey was aimed at highlighting how Italians experienced the pandemic and the way they perceived their future. A total of 556 Italians answered the CAWI survey. The analyses of the collected data show that, while having been infected by the virus or having had a family member infected by it did not influence the depression level, other individual characteristics and subjective feelings did. In particular, being female, younger, having had low trust in information delivered by television, no experiences of smart working or remote learning, little support from friends and family, and being unable to imagine the future increased the likelihood to feel higher levels of depression. Being able to imagine the future mediated the relationships of age and smart working or remote learning experiences with depression. The results indicate that, having a lower ability to imagine the future, younger people and individuals who did not work or study remotely have also a greater tendency to feel depressed.

COVID-19 calls for new ways of approaching internationalisation in adult learning and education. Based on experiences gathered during the 2021 virtual Adult Education Academy, this paper identifies challenges in international virtual learning settings in higher education. Such settings involve different levels of digital literacy among participants and moderators, limited access to high-speed internet, different time zones, and difficulties in social interactions. The article presents the didactical and methodological conceptualisation of a virtual setting to overcome these challenges. The concept involves facilitating exchanges between moderators, providing technical support, implementing (a-)synchronous sessions, and establishing a virtual space in which learning materials are created.

Are Italian youngsters adequately equipped for an after-pandemic upswing?All over the world young people seem to be particularly dazed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Indeed, they were touched just lightly by the disease, though the isolation due to the distancing need and the remote learning mode may be the sources of depressive ailments and other psychological distresses. In this paper we analyse the data collected through a survey conducted in the second half of 2021 among a convenience sample of Italian adults. The survey was aimed at highlighting how Italians experienced the pandemic and the way they perceived their futures. About one third of the sample was below 35 and we consider them the young. Most of them were students, a few worked, some were looking for a job. The analysis of the collected data shows that so many young Italians were disturbed by the pandemic, even though the sanitary impact of the disease on them was much less relevant than other age classes. Among the youngsters, the depression and anxiety rates was significantly higher than other adults, the perception of a future role was limited to them and their potential resources for future life was also jeopardized. The possible causes of the reduction capacity among young adults was scouted through a multivariate statistical analysis. It showed that the perception of personal difficulties is correlated to a feeling of uncertainty for their future roles, to a pressure over their social-economical and personal resources to face their future and to a sort of apathy that could limit their pro-activeness.

ISTAT census layers, realized by ISTAT since 1991, are in update; this kind of digital cartography divides the entire national territory in very small enumeration areas to which are linked all the variables gathered during the census surveys. This layer, thanks to the several pieces of information related to each enumeration area, has a huge value for the statistical description of the Italian situation also regarding land cover and land use themes. Therefore, to further enrich the information assets of the ISTAT cartography, Environment and Territory Service of the Institute aims to produce an implementation of the enumeration areas layer to homogenise them with regard their land cover and land use. In addition, this is achieved through a specific code (Cod_TIPO_S) that can be related to the European frame LUCAS (Land Use and Cover Area Survey) legend. LUCAS survey represents the official frame for the dissemination of land cover and use statistics at continental level. For our purpose a specific transcoding table has been created between COD_TIPO_S and LUCAS legend. New enumeration areas layer provides for 47 legend entries In this brief paper both the work carried out and some provisional results for some of the major Italian urban areas are illustrated. The activities are in progress and are based on GIS algorithm and Python scripts.

The paper shows the new particularly rigorous regulatory context introduced by the entry into force of the AGID guidelines with reference to the application of the Italian digital administration code on the formation, management and storage of electronic documents. In this regard, a concrete case study of the innovative software Docustar is presented, developed by the innovative SME Stella All in One, an ISO 27001:2013 certified company. The cloud software implemented in this way represents a real revolution both in terms of digital rights management of documents, but also in terms of AGID compliance. In addition, being a cloud software intended for use by the public administration, the system perfectly meets the requirements of the CSA Star Self-Assessment, another focal point together with the ISO 27001 standard to ensure the security of information on application systems.

This paper presents the Milan Open Data (OD) platform as a means to provide statistics and data in the framework of “Data-Driven Milan”, a city where policy decisions are taken in an “informed and aware” way using data. Open Data are ever more important in providing citizen communities with useful information. Over the last 10 years, the municipality of Milan has developed its OD platform from an experimental portal to a fully-fledged portal with more than 1,600 datasets, implemented a Linked Open Data (LOD) system and 8 advanced data visualization projects, and produced OD policies and operating guidelines. The OD portal is based on the CKAN technology, which makes datasets available via both download and Application Programming Interfaces. It currently has about 9,000 unique visitors per month. Data are also published as tables on the statistical portal and maps on the geo-portal. A single entry point to the three portals is about to be released. The advanced visualization projects make data available as reader-friendly graphics. Depending on its topic, a project might be a storytelling of the city through key statistics, a means to communicate the administration’s achievements, or a “data democratization” operation, such as “Open bilancio”, which publishes detailed information about the municipality’s annual budget. LOD are semantically enriched and machine-readable data that help to implement data interoperability between distributed systems. The ongoing LOD automation project aims to improve the current system by minimizing manual operations in the dataset lifecycle. Three Municipal Resolutions have been issued to define OD governance: the first establishes that data are released under an Open License, to promote the digital economy; the second promotes data interoperability and quality; and the third, issued in 2021, establishes the guidelines and an operating model for OD governance, including ontology-supported data publishing.

Meeting the challenge of population ageing requires a better understanding of frailty and disability, and appropriate strategies to ensure the resilience of the health and social care system, without destabilising public finances or over-burdening the economy. An increasing life expectancy will primarily affect the health care and the long-term care spending. Countries will face an ongoing challenge to provide care for a heterogeneous population of older adults. Within this context, the current paper is designed to (a) measure the current needs for social care in South Tyrol, (b) identify the local trajectories of health status, disaggregated by age, sex and severity of illness, (c) forecast the health care needs and the healthcare system’s financial sustainability. Demographic forecast data (up to 2050) on population age and sex structure is provided by ISTAT . Health care data for administrative and billing purposes is from the Autonomous Province of Bozen-Bolzano, which are used to study health care delivery, benefits, harms, and costs. Preliminary results show a decrease in the prevalence of individuals receiving home care allowance from 2009 to 2019 for all levels of severity and both for men and women. Overall, greater prevalence occurs at lower levels of health condition severity (levels 1 and 2 over a four points-scale of severity) and after age 75. Historical payments combined with the demographic forecast allow for an estimate of yearly average costs individual recipients (by age, sex, and health condition) as well as for the whole local social system.

Most measures of interrater agreement are defined for ratings regarding a group of targets, each rated by the same group of raters (e.g., the agreement of raters who assess on a rating scale the language proficiency of a corpus of argumentative written texts). However, there are situations in which agreement between ratings regards a group of targets where each target is evaluated by a different group of raters, like for instance when teachers in a school are evaluated by a questionnaire administered to all the pupils (students) in the classroom. In these situations, a first approach is to evaluate the level of agreement for the whole group of targets by the ANOVA one-way random model. A second approach is to apply subject-specific indices of interrater agreement like rWG, which represents the observed variance in ratings compared to the variance of a theoretical distribution representing no agreement (i.e., the null distribution). Both these approaches are not appropriate for ordinal or nominal scales. In this paper, an index is proposed to evaluate the agreement between raters for each single target (subject or object) on an ordinal scale, and to obtain also a global measure of the interrater agreement for the whole group of cases evaluated. The index is not affected by the possible concentration of ratings on a very small number of levels of the scale, like it happens for the measures based on the ANOVA approach, and it does not depend on the definition of a null distributions like rWG. The main features of the proposal will be illustrated in a study for the assessment of learning teacher behavior in classroom collected in a research conducted in 2018 at Roma Tre University.

This Open Access book deals with the pressing question of how to achieve transformational change that reconciles development with environmental sustainability. It particularly focuses on the role of evaluation in finding sustainable solutions. Environment and development are closely interlinked, as are human health and ecosystem health. The pandemic that began in 2020 demonstrated in no uncertain terms how destruction of habitats has allowed hitherto unknown pathogens spill over to humans wreaking havoc on people’s lives and livelihoods. We are already seeing the impacts of global climate change in terms of heatwaves, forest fires and increased storms. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) explicitly recognize the equal importance of the social, economic and environmental dimensions of development. In these turbulent times, when humankind faces multiple complex challenges it is essential to know that our responses are effective and that they make a positive difference. Evaluation can provide invaluable lessons to how we design policies, strategies and programs and how we allocate limited resources between competing priorities. This book brings together key thinkers and practitioners from the public and private sectors, from major multilateral organizations and from bilateral donor agencies, to present the latest knowledge and experience on how to evaluate interventions in the nexus of environment and development. The book does not promote any particular approach or methodology, but rather emphasizes the need for mixed methods to address the question at hand in the best and most suitable manner. It covers cases from a variety of fields, from climate change mitigation and adaptation, energy efficiency and renewable energy, natural resources management, biodiversity conservation and more. This book is not a conference proceedings although it has its roots in the Third International Conference on Evaluating Environment and Development organized by the GEF Independent Evaluation Office in October 2019. The conference brought together a larger number of established and upcoming evaluators, researchers and evaluation users from the Global North and South, representing a wide variety of organizations, to discuss the frontiers of environment and development evaluation. Following the conference, the editors identified and contacted the participants who made key contributions at the conference and asked them to develop their ideas and papers into book chapters according to a coherent plan.