At the 7th International Conference on Advanced Research Methods and Analytics (CARMA 2025), held from July 2 to 4 in Rome, Carlo Bottai was awarded the Best Paper Award, sponsored by Banca Widiba, for his presentation of "Web-Augmenting the Italian Third Sector Register." Francesco Trentini, Diletta Abbonato, and Anna Velyka, all postdoctoral researchers at the University of Milano-Bicocca, co-authored the paper. The authors present an innovative framework that combines administrative data from Italy's national register for third-sector organisations (RUNTS) with information extracted from organisations' websites using Large Language Model technology to classify economic activities according to the ICNPO standard. The University of Milano-Bicocca supported this research through the competitive grant for young researchers "Bicocca Starting Grants 2023."
The research analysed 1,939 organisations and revealed significant discrepancies between official self-reported activities and those identified through automated website analysis. The findings suggest that organisations often report their mission statements rather than their actual operational activities, providing valuable insights into the gap between aspirational goals and actual operations in Italy's third sector.
This groundbreaking methodology demonstrates how integrating administrative data with web analytics and artificial intelligence can significantly enhance data quality, improve transparency, and inform more effective policymaking. The award recognises the practical value of this research for understanding Italy's Social Economy and highlights the potential for applying similar approaches to other countries and sectors, making it a valuable contribution to the global research community.
The methodology is the heart of the Osservatorio Statistico sul Terzo Settore, which produces quarterly data on the Italian Third Sector, and is about to release the first set of data for the second quarter of 2025.