Abstract
Since 2009, eighty-one countries subscribed to President Obama’s Open Government program including its dominant Open Data (OD) component. Do Open Data 2.0 plans address the problems detected during the first generation of this program (2010-2012)? If not, how can these plans be improved? The article is a review of the main lines of criticism of the original OD program based on lessons learned worldwide. OD1.0 suffered from bad design, flawed execution, and adverse consequences. Open Data 2.0 plans fail to address the critical flaws of the first Open Data program. The analysis of OD1.0 reveals two primary lessons for converting OD2.0 into a more focused and effective openness program: OD2.0 architects must consider agencies’ data release strategies, and avoid creating a transparency “policy bubble”. Numerous countries followed the path of the original American Open Data program; therefore, the future of this program will have an impact on bureaucracies worldwide.
Highlights
What were the main problems of the Open Data (OD) program worldwide? Do OD 2.0 plans address the problems detected during the first generation of this program (2010-2012)? If not, how can these plans be improved? The article argues that OD 2.0 plans fail to address critical flaws of the OD 1.0 program
The main OD argument is that governments are merely custodians of the information they collect, and that if this information is released to the public, communities of web developers and visionary thinkers will emerge to most effectively utilize the data, as happened with Code for America and the Sunlight Foundation in the United States (US) and the Open Knowledge Foundation in Britain (MayerSchonberger & Cukier, 2013, pp. 116-117)
On May 21 2009, a team headed by the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of both the Department of the Interior (DOI) and the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) launched www.data.gov (OMB, 2009), as the premier web publishing location for the most important federal datasets
Summary
Transparency is openness to public scrutiny as defined by the rights and abilities of organizations and individuals to access government information and information about government. The main OD argument is that governments are merely custodians of the information they collect, and that if this information is released to the public, communities of web developers and visionary thinkers will emerge to most effectively utilize the data, as happened with Code for America and the Sunlight Foundation in the United States (US) and the Open Knowledge Foundation in Britain The OD movement relies on three assumptions: (1) politicians will agree to cede control over some information; (2) agencies will release data; and (3) citizens will use the published data. Critics argue that evidence does not support these assumptions Critics argue that evidence does not support these assumptions (Janssen, Charalabidis, and Zuiderwijk, 2012, p. 3)
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