Shifting from Old Open Government to New Open Government: Four Critical Dimensions and Case Illustrations

Abstract

Entering the 2000s, the open government movement along with open data policy gradually has taken over NPM, a long-standing global government reform for more than two decades. Despite the distinctive characteristics of recent open government initiative, it is arguably considered to be an extension of the conventional open government movement for right-to-know represented by the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 in the U.S. However, we argue new open government is different from old open government in terms of four dimensions: policy focus, nature of information, primary value, and role of citizens. New open government initiatives have shifted their policy focus from simple right-to-know to open data; the nature of information from traditional paper-based forms of information to machine-readable and reusable data; primary values from transparency to citizen participation and networked collaborative governance; and role of citizens from passive informed and service recipients to active co-producers of public services and users of open data. These points are specifically illustrated in this paper with selected open government initiatives undertaken by the Korean government.