Abstract
While many governments are now committed to release Open Government Data under non-proprietarystandardized formats, less attention has been given to the actual consequences of these standardsfor knowledge workers. Unpacking the history of three open data standards (CSV, GTFS, IATI), thispaper shows what is actually happening when these standards are enacted in the work practices ofbureaucracies. It is built on participant-observer enquiry and interviews focussed on the back rooms ofopen data, and looking specifi cally at the invisible work necessary to construct open datasets. It showsthat the adoption of open standards is increasingly becoming an indicator of the advancement of opendata programmes. Enacting open standards involves much more than simple technical operations, itoperates a quiet and localised transformation of bureaucracies, in which the decisions of data workershave substantive consequences for how the open government data and transparency agendas areperformed.Keywords: Open Government Data; Open Standards; Enactment; Infrastructure Studies; DataAssemblages
Highlights
While many governments are committed to release Open Government Data under non-proprietary standardized formats, less attention has been given to the actual consequences of these standards for knowledge workers
Following an initial round of analysis drawing out the relationship between file formats and data schema, we introduced a further case drawing on participant-observation and interviews with participants involved in the development and implementation of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), seeking to explore how far findings from the earlier cases applied outside the French context, and with a different base file format from comma separated values (CSV)
The open data standards we have explored have come to be used as means of operationalising assessments of whether Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives are delivering against principles of machine readability, or against specific transparency goals
Summary
“It is time for science studies to investigate how data traverse personal, institutional, and disciplinary divides.” (Edwards et al, 2011). Yu and Robinson (2012: 196) denounce the idea that technical criteria, such as the use of open standards in the release of datasets, should be enough to satisfy calls for transparency, writing that: “An electronic release of the propaganda statements made by North Korea’s political leadership, for example, might satisfy all eight of these requirements [Sebastopol principles on Open Government Data], and might not tend to promote any additional transparency or accountability on the part of the notoriously closed and unaccountable regime” To these critiques we might add lessons from science data sharing, to the effect that data standards rarely produce interoperability or interpretability of datasets.
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