Governing by Rankings: How the Global Open Data Index Helps Advance the Open Data Agenda

Abstract

This paper studies how the Global Open Data Index (GODI) mobilises different audiences and translates into open data policy and publication. As such, it urges for a broader vision of ‘impact’ that traces the users of governance indicators first, before describing how indicators translate into different actions. The findings should be read as a depiction of different types of impact, yet without claiming representativity across different contexts. Based on the interview sample, GODI drives change primarily from within government. Its international visibility and country rankings may incentivise and maintain high-level support for open data. In the absence of open data policies, GODI has been used to support commitment when combined with soft-policy tools. GODI also lays a baseline for agencies to improve and is used at multiple government levels to highlight progress around open data, despite non-comparability of results across years. GODI could help individual agencies and communicate more clearly what a good open dataset looks like. Being easily communicable does not come without risks. There is evidence that GODI was confounded with broader open government policies and used as an argument to reduce investment in other aspects of open government. This effect may possibly be exacerbated by superficial media coverage that reports on the ranking without engaging with the broader context of country’s information policies. In order to understand civil society’s engagement with GODI, more research is needed first to classify and sample civil society actors and reconstruct ways of engaging with governance indicators carefully. Our findings suggest that individuals and organisations working around transparency and anti-corruption make little use of GODI due to a lack of detail, and a misalignment with their work tasks.