Towards a Genealogy of Open Data

Abstract

In just a few years, open data has been established as a fundamental cornerstone of official transparency and accountability initiatives around the world - from US President Barack Obama and UK Prime Minister David Cameron's respective open government programmes, to the Open Government Partnership, to the G8 Open Data Charter launched in June 2013.This paper will suggest several threads for investigation for a genealogy of open data, examining how the rise of open data has coincided with a focus on technological innovation, public sector efficiency and economic growth in official transparency discourse rather than on social justice and meeting the needs of citizens. It proposes a programme of research into the politics of open data looking at how the concept is implicated in a broader, shifting landscape of political visions, values and practises, and how it is changing the way that different actors think and talk about transparency as a political concept.