Abstract
An index of the release of open government data, published in 2016 by the Open Knowledge Foundation, shows that there is significant variability in the country’s supply of this public good. What explains these cross-country differences? Adopting an interdisciplinary approach based on data science and economic theory, we developed the following research workflow. First, we gather, clean, and merge different datasets released by institutions such as the Open Knowledge Foundation, World Bank, United Nations, World Economic Forum, Transparency International, Economist Intelligence Unit, and International Telecommunication Union. Then, we conduct feature extraction and variable selection founded on economic domain knowledge. Next, we perform several linear regression models, testing whether cross-country differences in the supply of open government data can be explained by differences in the country’s economic, social, and institutional structures. Our analysis provides evidence that the country’s civil liberties, government transparency, quality of democracy, efficiency of government intervention, economies of scale in the provision of public goods, and the size of the economy are statistically significant to explain the cross-country differences in the supply of open government data. Our analysis also suggests that political participation, sociodemographic characteristics, and demographic and global income distribution dummies do not help to explain the country’s supply of open government data. In summary, we show that cross-country differences in governance, social institutions, and the size of the economy can explain the global distribution of open government data.
Highlights
Open data (OD) refers to information that has been generated by public or private entities and published under a license that allows its use, reuse, and distribution freely [1]
We consider open government data as a pure public good and, it satisfies two properties: open government data is a non-excludable good, and it is a non-rival good
We used an index of the supply of open government data and estimated a cross-section regression model to analyze the cross-country differences in civil rights, transparency, quality of government, the size of the economy, the size of the population, political participation, and sociodemographic characteristics
Summary
Open data (OD) refers to information that has been generated by public or private entities and published under a license that allows its use, reuse, and distribution freely [1]. Information collected and released from the public sector (e.g., transportation, pollution, agriculture, education, health, and census, among others) is referred to as Open Government Data (OGD) [2]. The public sector is considered one of the main contributors to the open data movement, due to the vast amount of information it generates [3]. Authors argue that this trend is related to the potential benefits that OGD offers as a shared value (social and economic). The economic aspect of OGD is related to fostering innovation, enterprise opportunities, and job creation, because OGD is considered a production asset in the digital economy
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