Scholars and policy makers are giving increasing attention to how young people are involved in politics and their confidence in the current democratic system. In a context of a global trust crisis in the European Union, this paper examines if open government data, a promising governance strategy, may help to boost Millennials’ and Generation Z trust in public institutions and satisfaction with public outcomes. First, results from our preliminary analysis challenge some popular beliefs by revealing that younger generations tend to trust in their institutions notably more than the rest of the European citizens. In addition, our findings show that open government data is a trust-enabler for Millennials and Generation Z, not only through a direct link between both, but also thanks to the mediator role of citizens’ satisfaction. Accordingly, public officers are encouraged to spread the implementation of open data strategies as a way to improve younger generations’ attachment to democratic institutions.
Organizaciones internacionales y gobiernos nacionales están promoviendo la adopción de estrategias de gobierno abierto. Hay una serie de índices que mide la evolución de algunas de sus dimensiones, pero hay aún una ausencia de indicadores que comprendan datos abiertos, transparencia, participación y colaboración simultáneamente. En este artículo proponemos el Índice de Gobierno Abierto y Participación (IGAP) a partir de trabajos académicos previos, el cual permite realizar comparaciones espaciales y temporales. El índice se construye para una muestra de 33 países miembros de la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos (OCDE) por medio de fuentes abiertas y consistentes que ponderan los distintos componentes del gobierno abierto. Los resultados arrojan que las áreas de transparencia y datos abiertos tienen un amplio margen de mejora y que las estrategias de participación requieren un abordaje autónomo. Por regiones, el gobierno abierto está más desarrollado en los países de la Commonwealth, mientras que los de Europa Oriental presentan los niveles más bajos.
Purpose
This paper aims to assess if the extent of openness and the coverage of data sets released by European governments have a significant impact on citizen trust in public institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
Data for openness and coverage have been collected from the Open Data Inventory 2018 (ODIN), by Open Data Watch; institutional trust is built up as a formative construct based on the European Social Survey (ESS), Round 9. The relations between the open government data features and trust have been tested on the basis of structural equation modelling (SEM).
Findings
The paper reveals that as European governments improve data openness, disaggregation, and time coverage, people tend to trust them more. However, the size of the effect is still small and, comparatively, data coverage effect on citizens’ confidence is more than twice than the impact of openness.
Research limitations
This paper analyzes the causal effect of Open Government Data (OGD) features captured in a certain moment of time. In upcoming years, as OGD is implemented and a more consistent effect on people is expected, time series analysis will provide with a deeper insight.
Practical implications
Public officers should continue working in the development of a technological framework that contributes to make OGD truly open. They should improve the added value of the increasing amount of open data currently available in order to boost internal and external innovations valuable both for public agencies and citizens.
Originality/value
In a field of knowledge with little quantitative empirical evidence, this paper provides updated support for the positive effect of OGD strategies and it also points out areas of improvement in terms of the value that citizens can get from OGD coverage and openness.
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