That’s ReDO: Ontologies and Regional Development Planning

European Cohesion Policy generates several programs at territorial levels. An evident trend is the increasing of multi-level governance in the period 2007-2013, promoting a wider participation to programming processes. It is possible to affirm that new instances are coming out. We refer to problems generally connected with participation processes. The relation between problems in knowledge management and ineffective impacts of local development plans is confirmed. Therefore, the central role of communication determines relevant issues regarding the ability to understand the meaning of general and sectoral policies by stake holders, the awareness of citizens to manage technical instruments implementing such policies. Are they conscious of ex-ante comprehensive context analysis and/or can they share possible future scenarios? A way to tackle these problems is the use of ontologies. In this work we present the structural elements and an application of ReDO ontology (Regional Development Ontology) analyzing major steps of ontology design and nodal phases of ontology building (i.e. consensus on relations and restrictions, and switch from glossary to taxonomy).