Open Government Portals Assessment: A Transparency for Accountability Perspective

Abstract

Abstract. Dataset portals such as Data.gov and Data.uk.gov have become flagship initiatives of open government and open data strategies. These portals aim to fulfill the open government objectives of promoting re-use of public sector information to develop new products and services, and increasing transparency for public officials' accountability. This work focus on the latter and its aim is to propose a set of requirements as part of a framework to assess whether dataset portals are indeed contributing to a higher degree of transparency focusing on accountability. Previous studies on internet-based transparency (including Internet Financial Reporting -IFR) were analyzed, from which several requirements were derived concerning the data types sought after, the public entities covered, the information seeking strategies adopted and the desired qualitative characteristics of data. The rationale behind our proposal is that dataset portals developed under the open government principles should, at least, be able to fulfill the informational and operational requirements identified in the 'traditional' transparency assessment literature.

Open government data portals in the European Union: Considerations, development, and expectations

“…This is probably due to the European e-Government Action Plan 2016-2020 (https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/european-egovernment-action-plan-2016-2020), which aims to scale up the development of truly valuable e-public services that could boost the single European market. Therefore, the link between e-Government policies, open government and OGD is evidenced, as posited by Attard, et al (2015), Janssen, et al (2017 and Lourenço (2013).…”

“…In the USA, during Obama's tenure, the USA Open Government Directive of December 8, 2009 (Office of the President, 2009) was launched, which Canada followed in 2011 with a pilot national open data site, followed in 2014 with the Directive on Open Government (Government of Canada, 2014). Another milestone was the inauguration of the Open Government Partnership The uses of OGD should be centered on creating public value and constructing public policies based on an open culture (Zuiderwijk & Janssen, 2014a), such that governments should move from open data to open service (Chan, 2013;Yang, Lo, & Shiang, 2015), deploy collaborative solutions among e-government stakeholders to foster innovation (Edelmann, Höchtl, & Sachs, 2012;Veljković, Bogdanović-Dinić, & Stoimenov, 2014;Yang & Kankanhalli, 2013), and enforce government efficiency, transparency and accountability (Attard, Orlandi, Scerri, & Auer, 2015;Janssen, Matheus, Longo, & Weerakkody, 2017;Lourenço, 2013). In addition, the geopolitical context is a crucial factor, since the effectiveness of open government policies is influenced by cultural, geographic or regulatory factors tied to the country under consideration (Reale, 2014;Yang, et al, 2015).…”

Public Accountability ICT Support: A Detailed Account of Public Accountability Process and Tasks

“…Even in high profile open government portals, accountability relevant data may be 'hidden' by the sheer amount of datasets available. It is therefore necessary not only to create specific organizing structures within those general purpose portals [32] to increase this data visibility but also to use awareness mechanisms (such as Real Simple Syndication -RSSand social networkse.g. Twitter).…”

Framework for assessing institutional readiness of government organisations to deliver open, collaborative and participatory services

“…Similar to the approach taken in [11] where assessment needs are mapped to aspects of existing models, the presented framework is being built on existing models described in [2], [3], [4], [7], [9] and [12]). The framework will be offered to MDAs as a selfassessment toolkit for conducting diagnostic survey of the "As Is" environment with a view to determining their internal capacity and readiness for open government as well as integrated, participatory or inclusive services.…”

“…the 2014 UN EGovernment Survey [12]), guidelines on how agencies can determine their readiness and attainment of open government goals in general are limited [1]. The few works in this space include [9] provided by the World Bank, [2] and [7]. This paper describes the efforts by a government agency responsible for e-government strategy and implementation in developing an effective assessment framework for institutional readiness of federal ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) to: i) deliver open government services, ii) collaborate with other agencies in sharing data, systems and services for efficient service delivery and iii) engage citizens and other stakeholders in government decision making and co-development of services.…”