Developing Strategies for Improving Government Data Openness in China: A Quantitative Analysis and Assessment

Zhang Xiaojuan

doi:10.11648/j.ijics.20180303.11

Abstract

This paper aims to develop successful strategies for improving government data openness at state level in China based on its current status of Open Government Data (OGD) against the Open Data Barometer (ODB).For this purpose, firstly, primary and secondary data on the index scores of countries around the world from 2013 to 2016 were collected through the websites of ODB, followed by a statistical analysis of the data which showed the correlation of the indicators of the ODB, emphasized by the co efficiency between the indicators. Secondly, through the quantitative analysis of their survey on individual indicators in China, the authors found that the overall readiness of China’s OGD is acceptable, especially at the local government level, but its implementation and impact is still relatively backward. Further analysis of the assessment results of sub indicators identified the specific problems in China’s OGD. Finally, based on the correlation of indicators and the results of China's assessment, the authors proposed the strategies for the improvement of China’s OGD from the perspectives of readiness and implementation, which will facilitate an overall upgrade of national government data openness in the way of improving the performance on individual backward sub-indicators and addressing the identified problems. The “vertical” improvement of China's readiness is featured with a promotion of the common upgrade of execution and impact while the “horizontal” increase of execution leads to the development of subsequent impact. In addition, a comparative study showed that the former strategy has a slight advantage over the latter in terms of the expected results. This research is of practical significance as it will help to identify, prioritize, and address the most critical issues of government data openness in China.

Highlights

In January 2009, the Obama Administration of USA signed Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, and launched the open government data (OGD) platform Data. gov in May of the same year; [1] In June 2009, the British Government officially began the "freeing up public data" Initiative and launched Data
According to the above implementation promotion measures, assuming that the score of each of the two assessment questions, namely, is the data openly licensed and is the dataset provided in machine-readable and reusable formats, of each dataset is increased by 5 points and under the prerequisite that the data will not be added of score if it has already satisfied the requirements, China's implementation score will be increased to -0.25 after standardization, with ranking moving up 25 places
China's outstanding problems in terms of readiness are that China does not have national level government guidance and policy support, has not yet set up national level Open Government Data (OGD) platform and has not yet formed national level OGD action plan and the actions of the local governments require unified leadership

Summary

Introduction

In January 2009, the Obama Administration of USA signed Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, and launched the open government data (OGD) platform Data. gov in May of the same year; [1] In June 2009, the British Government officially began the "freeing up public data" Initiative and launched Data. Gov in May of the same year; [1] In June 2009, the British Government officially began the "freeing up public data" Initiative and launched Data. [4] The successive establishment of OGD platforms has promoted the development of government data openness in China. With continuous advancement of OGD movement, the assessment of government data openness has been conducted in recent years. As one of international OGD assessment systems, ODB analyses global trends, and provides comparative data on countries and regions with an aim to uncover the true prevalence and impact of open data initiatives around the world. The assessment indexes of ODB include readiness, implementation and impact. The assessment of the ODB is conducted by scoring specific assessment questions, where sub-indexes of readiness and impact are directly composed of assessment questions. The implementation consists of index datasets and the assessment questions are fixed, that is, these assessment questions are examined for each dataset

Objectives

Results

Conclusion