Venetian municipal authorities have been extremely involved in developing Information technologies projects and solutions to deal with the territory necessities. “Amministrare 2.0”, “//Venice > connected” or “Dematerializzare 2.0” are some examples of these projects. Such initiatives show the municipality’s effort to extend the reach of such technological tools beyond mere institutional communication. Nonetheless the attempt of the public institutions may not be sufficient if the struggle for innovation is not shared by other local partners. In order to verify the level of innovation reached also by the local system, Fondazione 2000 has analyzed the web-sites of various local bodies in Venice: institutional networks, private companies pools, on-line based resources, research and education agencies, other cultural entities (associations, cultural services providers and cultural centres) for a total amount of 137 analyzed web-sites.
The main interest of the survey was to determine whether the web-sites served merely self-referential purposes or if they tended to emphasize the importance of the whole territory through their own promotion instead. The final conclusions showed that the second case is the most prevalent. More in details:
 the majority of the web-sites includes a description of the bigger system the institution belongs to (territory, cultural district, business field, etc). This is especially true for institutional networks but also for the vast majority of private companies associations, research and education agencies and other cultural entities;
 almost 90% of local entities’ web-sites includes specific information for the promotion of the territory, advertising of products and offered services;
 as far as collaboration is concerned, a good part of the sites informs about initiatives realized in collaboration with or by other local entities. In detail, 69% of public institution and 76,9 % of private companies refer in their web-sites to activities organized with other partners;
 a discrete amount of web-sites offers customer care tools: users forums are provided in 27 % of the surveyed web-sites.
 To conclude, at a more initial stage and in limited terms, also web 2.0 interactive tools are provided, especially by private companies, in order to involve their customers in the production of information. The information acquired through the survey suggests a change, an evolution in the behaviour of local entities towards the exploration of the possibilities offered by the new Internet technologies. The “closed-up” attitude, underlined five years ago, characterized by a limited curiosity for the possibilities offered by the IT often used only to increase companies efficiency or to improve institutions communication abilities, has today been replaced by a new approach.
IT are now considered as the most valuable tool to explore new business possibilities and new administration solutions, while strengthening the ones already existing.
A new outlook that may prove essential for Venice to develop its strength and turn them into a cohesive system, to face harder international challenges.