Whose open data is it anyway? An exploratory study of open government data relevance and implications for democratic inclusion

Abstract

Open government data (OGD) is believed to enhance democratic outcomes by empowering citizens with the information necessary to participate in meaningful ways. Nonetheless, questions remain about whether OGD is indeed empowering citizens to participate or if the data that governments publish is more reflective of the interests of non-citizen stakeholders. Using the metadata of 2607 publicly available datasets scraped from New York City’s open data portal, this exploratory study uses qualitative content analysis to identify what types of data are published and what the data say about OGD’s potential as a tool for advancing inclusion in democratic processes. The analysis focused particularly on the datasets’ relevance to five particular stakeholder groups: citizens, private sector firms, nonprofits, researchers, and the city’s internal agencies. Findings showed that non-citizen-relevant datasets not only outnumbered citizen-relevant datasets by a large margin but they were also viewed and downloaded at higher rates too. The implications of this for inclusion in democratic processes are discussed, including power imbalances among OGD user groups, the discretionary power data publishers possess, and, ultimately, whether the types of data cities publish is sufficient for empowering an informed citizenry, as an effective democracy demands.

Barriers to Openly Sharing Government Data: Towards an Open Data-adapted Innovation Resistance Theory

“…Secondly, some do have competitors, yet still do not view this as a significant barrier. They instead recognize that the benefits of OGD, such as increased transparency, public trust, and the public value that can be generated from or with it (Benmohamed et al, 2024;Schwoerer, 2022), outweigh any potential competitive disadvantages.…”

Impact of Digital Governance on Public Service Delivery in East Africa

“…e. Open Data Initiatives: Promoting open data initiatives involves releasing government datasets in machine-readable formats that are accessible to the public. This allows journalists, researchers, and civil society organizations to analyze data, identify trends, and hold the government accountable for its actions [36]. f. Education and Awareness Campaigns: Governments can conduct education and awareness campaigns to inform citizens about their rights to access information and empower them to demand transparency from public institutions.…”

Managing public sector data: National challenges in the context of the European Union’s new data governance models

“…In this context, research into OGD's features, barriers and effects provides insightful inputs concerning the process of opening up data and its consequences. Within this literature, there is an emerging consensus that the OGD's initial ambitious promises are difficult to realise in the real world (Janssen, 2012;Jetzek et al, 2013;Murillo, 2015;Reggi et al, 2022;Schwoerer, 2022). Some authors have suggested that the real potential of OGD is quite limited (Ruijer & Meijer, 2020).…”

“…However, it is generally agreed that the OGD on which the new European regulation is built has had limited positive results. Scholars have noted an important gap between OGD promises and real-world impact (Jetzek, Avital, & Bjørn-Andersen, 2013;Reggi, Dawes, & Gil-Garcia, 2022;Ruijer & Meijer, 2020;Safarov, Meijer, & Grimmelikhuijsen, 2017;Schwoerer, 2022). The literature identifies several barriers that hinder OGD potential such as a lack of opportunities, motivation and ability to use public data (demand side), a lack of appropriate institutional incentives to share (supply side), and a lack of adequate governance mechanisms to gather and act upon, users' feedback (Jetzek, 2016;Reggi et al, 2022).…”