The Daily Shaping of State Transparency: Standards, Machine-Readability and the Configuration of Open Government Data Policies

Goëta, Samuel; Davies, Tim

doi:10.23987/sts.60221

Cited by 16 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…How is this requirement enforced? In the practices we observed, technical intelligibility was applied through the adoption of standard or shared formats (Goëta and Davies, 2016). And so it is only once data have been identified, extracted, cleaned and partly transformed that they may truly be considered ‘open’.…”

Section: Transformationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Rawification and the careful generation of open government data

Denis

Goëta

2017

Soc Stud Sci

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Drawing on a two-year ethnographic study within several French administrations involved in open data programs, this article aims to investigate the conditions of the release of government data - the rawness of which open data policies require. This article describes two sets of phenomena. First, far from being taken for granted, open data emerge in administrations through a progressive process that entails uncertain collective inquiries and extraction work. Second, the opening process draws on a series of transformations, as data are modified to satisfy an important criterion of open data policies: the need for both human and technical intelligibility. There are organizational consequences of these two points, which can notably lead to the visibilization or the invisibilization of data labour. Finally, the article invites us to reconsider the apparent contradiction between the process of data release and the existence of raw data. Echoing the vocabulary of one of the interviewees, the multiple operations can be seen as a 'rawification' process by which open government data are carefully generated. Such a notion notably helps to build a relational model of what counts as data and what counts as work.

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Section: Transformationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We will not go into great detail concerning formats. Formatting is a complex subject just now emerging in the field of open data (Goëta and Davies, 2016). Instead, we propose to focus on two cases in order to emphasize the consequences of even the slightest reformatting process: CSV and GTFS.…”

Section: Transformationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rawification and the careful generation of open government data

Denis

Goëta

2017

Soc Stud Sci

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“…The dominance of low-hanging buzzwords such as consultation and collaborative forums, without explicit descriptions of how such processes would function, should give open government enthusiasts pause. Studies demonstrating the powerful influence that institutional context exercises on open government agendas (Goëta and Davies, 2016;Janssen et al, 2012;Kornberger et al, 2017) would suggest that activities without specific programmatic detail are likely to revert to the status quo of national political contexts. While this will vary infinitely across country contexts, the default status of civic engagement is rarely ideal (Francoli et al, 2015), and this finding suggests as currently formulated, OGP action plans are doing little to advance government intentions in terms of civic interaction.…”

Section: Conclusion and Potential For Further Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Look Who's Talking: Assessing Civic Voice and Interaction in OGP Commitments

Wilson

2017

JeDEM

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This article argues that meaningful citizen-state interaction is a core component of the OGP mandate and theory of change. Assessing the frequency and quality of such activities in countries' national action plans can indicate the degree to which OGP is facilitating government efforts to meaningfully engage with their citizens in the pursuit of accountable and responsive governance. A conceptual framework is proposed for identifying and evaluating the quality of civic voice and interaction in OGP commitments. Analysis of commitments from 61 countries finds little evidence of meaningful civic interaction, and proposes implications for open government advocates and campaigners.

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“…Interviews were also used by both Heimstädt and Currie who combined them with observations and document analysis in their studies of local governments' attempts to do open data policy (Currie, 2016;Heimstädt, 2017). Researchers working in science and technology studies (STS), next, focused on how open datasets and open data standards were construed in practice (Goëta and Davies, 2016;Denis and Goëta, 2017). Lastly, a group of public administration scholars from Utrecht University, to which I primarily respond in this commentary, studied open data initiative with "context" sensitive, "activity theory," and "practice"-oriented methodologies.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 14 See, e.g., Goëta and Davies (2016); Denis and Goëta (2017); Ruijer et al (2018); and Kitchin (2021). …”

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confidence: 99%

Studying open government data: Acknowledging practices and politics

Maanen

2023

Data & Policy

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Open government and open data are often presented as the Asterix and Obelix of modern government—one cannot discuss one, without involving the other. Modern government, in this narrative, should open itself up, be more transparent, and allow the governed to have a say in their governance. The usage of technologies, and especially the communication of governmental data, is then thought to be one of the crucial instruments helping governments achieving these goals. Much open government data research, hence, focuses on the publication of open government data, their reuse, and re-users. Recent research trends, by contrast, divert from this focus on data and emphasize the importance of studying open government data in practice, in interaction with practitioners, while simultaneously paying attention to their political character. This commentary looks more closely at the implications of emphasizing the practical and political dimensions of open government data. It argues that researchers should explicate how and in what way open government data policies present solutions to what kind of problems. Such explications should be based on a detailed empirical analysis of how different actors do or do not do open data. The key question to be continuously asked and answered when studying and implementing open government data is how the solutions openness present latch onto the problem they aim to solve.

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The Daily Shaping of State Transparency: Standards, Machine-Readability and the Configuration of Open Government Data Policies

Cited by 16 publications

References 19 publications

Rawification and the careful generation of open government data

Rawification and the careful generation of open government data

Look Who's Talking: Assessing Civic Voice and Interaction in OGP Commitments

Studying open government data: Acknowledging practices and politics

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