Open Government Data in Practice: Stakeholder Attitudes and Behaviours Towards Open Data Initiatives (original) (raw)

2019, Open Data in Practice

The vision encoded into the open data movement is about creating transparency around the inner workings of government departments and creating economic benefit underpinned by methods used to transcribe and curate data for the purpose of re-use by third parties. While this vision is one that champions that all government data should be open by default unless there is good reason to, yet this vision remains partially released. Despite the barriers to accessing government data have been falling there is still a wall standing between open data values and its embodied practice. For this wall to begin to be dismantled, we need to examine how open data practices is incentivised and rewarded and what conceptions of data openness are given priority in the design of government policies and programs. Very few studies (except: Ruijer et al., 2018) have examined open data through a practice lens, opting for in favour studies of technical and data quality/format barriers. In this research we contribute to this narrow literature by adding an ethnographic and observational perspective on the study of situated open data practice based on action-based methods where public servant, citizens and others actively collaborate to solve problems using open data platforms under observed conditions. In this research, we pick up on what Sieber and Johnson (2015) call ‘data over the wall’, approach to managing open government data programs where governments publish their data via a portal and where interaction and participation with citizens is limited. However, in order to advance the goals of open government it is important to further reflect on the possibilities of open government data usage and not simply view publishing open government data as an end point (Sieber and Johnson, 2015 cited in Ruijer et al., 2018: 4). For most working in open data, the currency of data “openness” is measured by the number of datasets available for public use on dedicated open data portals. The production of novel, positive and creative uses of this data increases the likelihood of greater support and investment in open data programs. But, not only are such use-cases rare, use cases that increase the profile of open data in broader public discourse tend to arise when there are problems or issues arise around data availability, quality or security. However, in an environment where maintaining transparency of public sector operations, there is a trend for government workers to employ flexible and selective practices in the day-to-day running of open data programs and initiatives. While it is not our intention to mark certain open data practices as questionable or less suited than others, it is our intention in doing this research to uncover the range of operational and ideological positions on open data among open data workers themselves.