Towards Open Data for Public Accountability: Examining the US and the UK Models

Abstract

Abstract Since 2009 governments worldwide have been developing Open Government Data (OGD) programs. Our paper examines the ways in which public agencies in the two leading OGD countries, the US and the UK, have released information assets to promote public sector accountability. Theoretically and empirically, we discuss the vision and execution of the OGD policy in these countries since 2009 and demonstrate that the movement took a different path than the one chartered by the original policy makers. We then propose a new path for the OGD movement to better support the democratic ideal of improved accountability of public sector agencies. Keywords: (Open Data; Accountability; Open Government; Transparency; Disclosure) Copyright : Copyright is held by the authors. 1 Introduction The conceptual origins of the open government data (OGD) movement 1 and freedom of information (FOI) legislation are rooted in a desire to improve public accountability. However, the OGD movement blurred the original intent, combining the goal of accountability with concepts such as participation, collaboration, innovation and improvement of public service. The latter may have no significant impact or even contradict accountability (Peled, 2011; Yu & Robinson, 2012). We therefore ask: Do the designs of US and UK OGD policies demonstrate an understanding of how to harness the potential of OGD to improve public sector accountability? If not, what can be done to fulfill OGD’s promise to improve accountability? We propose that open government programs must be evaluated according to three dimensions: informational, explanatory and enforcement. By empirically examining US and UK OGD datasets, we found a divergence between the OGD vision and its execution since 2009 in these two countries. We explain how the OGD movement grew to its current state of ‘release any data now’ disconnected from the accountability goal. We also propose to provide incentives to agencies to release even less datasets but ones that are more closely aligned with the goal of accountability. Critics may propose that ‘improved accountability’ is but one goal competing against other, no less valuable goals (Robinson et. al. 2009). We propose that the goal of ‘improved accountability’ is so demanding that it sets the ‘OGD bar’ very high. To meet this bar, agencies will be forced to publish information that is better linked to other information, better documented, and embedded in richer context. Such information will therefore also contribute to the attainment of additional OGD.