Open Government Movement Research Articles

E-participation in Local Self-Government in Croatia

Today, cities play a crucial role as drivers of global change, as well as leaders in implementation of UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. They must capture and satisfy diverse needs of their citizens. On the other hand, e-participation adoption is crucial in open government movement as it allows the government to involve the public in their work, making it more transparent. This can be achieved through e-information, e-consultation and e-decision making as levels of e-participation adoption. This research puts focus on e-participation adoption in Croatian local governments and explores supply side of e-participation adoption with local governments’ officials. After consulting relevant literature, public sector and ICT experts, a questionnaire (i.e. measurement items) has been developed to assess e-participation levels in cities/municipalities with over 8,000 inhabitants. More than 240 responses have been collected from local governments’ heads of departments and departmental managers. The results show that the adoption of e-participation at the local level is modest with a score of 59%. E-participation sub-levels show very good adoption of e-information (e-information services widely available), mediocre results for e-consultation (mostly only compliance with respective law), and a low level of adoption of e-decision-making. The differences in adoption levels of e-participation are statistically significant between smaller and larger cities/municipalities. Therefore, the population size of the city/municipality has proven to be significant, with larger cities having higher adoption rates, especially of e-consultation practices. The author suggests a greater variety of tools and formalization of e-participation at strategic and operational levels to achieve higher levels of adoption. In addition, local governments should adopt more advanced engagement tools to enhance citizens’ (and other stakeholders’) e-participation (with voting and rating options), as current utilization is still low.

KUALITAS LAYANAN PORTAL OPEN DATA BANDA ACEH (ODBA) DALAM KETERBUKAAN INFORMASI PUBLIK DI DINAS KOMUNIKASI INFORMATIKA DAN STATISTIK KOTA BANDA ACEH

One of the goals of the reform program in Indonesia is the realization of good governance. The Indonesian Open Government Movement (OGI) is a form of movement between the government and the community to realize good governance, namely through principles based on public information. One of the OGI programs to achieve this is through the open data project portal, one of which is the Banda Aceh Open Data Portal (ODBA). This study aims to find out how the quality of ODBA Portal services in public information at the Department of Communication, Informatics and Statistics (Diskominfontik) of Banda Aceh City and the strategy of Banda Aceh Diskominfotik to improve the quality of ODBA Portal services. The research method used is descriptive qualitative. Informants in this study were determined by purposive sampling technique. Data were collected by interview, observation, documentation, and triangulation techniques. Data analysis techniques used are data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. The theory used is based on three dimensions of the quality of a portal site proposed by Rocha (2012: 374-382), namely content quality, service quality, and technical quality. The results showed that the service quality of the ODBA Portal was quite good. However, there are several things that need to be improved on the ODBA Portal, such as the availability of features for proposing datasets, features for feedback, special personnel to handle open data portal maintenance, and others. To make the ODBA Portal have a better quality, the Department of Communication, Informatics and Statistics of Banda Aceh City needs to provide expert programmers, especially in the field of maintenance and add the main features that must exist in an open data portal. The City of Banda Aceh Diskominfotik has also implemented several strategies to improve the quality of the ODBA Portal service.
 Keywords: ODBA Portal, Open Data, Open Data Portal, Public Information Disclosure, Quality of Website Portal

In the Shadow of Platforms

In the Shadow of Platforms

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

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.

Administrative Reform in Indonesia: How Far is The Citizens Online Complaints-Handling System (LAPOR!) About to Reach The Open Government Agenda?

Indonesia is one of the most prominent countries that have a strong interest in implementing open government agendas. In 2011, the Indonesian government along with seven other country leaders took the initiative to form a global network movement called Open Government Partnership (OGP) as a platform in making their governments more open, accountable, and responsive to citizens. To connect the international agendas with national bureaucratic reforms agenda, the Indonesian government also establish the movement called Open Government Indonesia (OGI). Under the national public complaints management system, LAPOR! was established as the flagship of the open government movement to encourage a "no wrong door policy" guaranteeing the right of the people to file any complaint to be channeled to the authorized public service provider. The purpose of this paper is to assess how far the LAPOR! is being implemented to support open government agenda. The topic will be analyzed using Governance approach, given that Open Government movement is a new and more efficient way of doing governance. Three main dimensions will be the main focus of the discussion, namely; public participation, collaboration, and transparency. This research is conducted by using a qualitative descriptive method. Data are collected through official documents or publications, and other various written sources including journals, news, articles related to the topic of discussion. The findings of this research reveal that the implementation of LAPOR! is still facing challenges. There are still some challenges that need to be addressed.

Open data and its intermediaries: a cross-country perspective on participatory movement among independent developers

ABSTRACTThe open government movement as a socioeconomic phenomenon is experiencing a fundamental shift in its development due to the recent diffusion of various independent open data-driven startups all over the world. The promotion of the projects through various professional developers’ networks is the most promising way to advance the concept, first of all, as a participatory movement, yet it is the least studied in related academic and professional literature. The growing collaborative trends among local enthusiasts, coders, computer experts and even technically savvy citizens around open data phenomena, whose obscure yet, as it turned out, really important proxy support plays a crucial role in launching such data-driven initiatives, is one of the areas of study that is ripe for investigation. In this respect, the invisible mechanism of collaboration and networking among independent developers, which is presumably conducive for the development of related projects, is of special interest in this research.

A Data-driven Approach to Assess the Potential of Smart Cities: The Case of Open Data for Brussels Capital Region

The success of smart city projects is intrinsically related to the existence of large volumes of data that could be processed to achieve their objectives. For this purpose, the plethora of data stored by public administrations becomes an incredibly rich source of insight and information due to its volume and diversity. However, it was only with the Open Government Movement when governments have been concerned with the need to open their data to citizens and businesses. Thus, with the emergence of open data portals, these myriad of data enables the development of new business models. The achievement of the benefits sought by making this data available triggers new challenges to cope with the diversity of sources involved. The business potential could be jeopardized by the scarcity of relevant data in the different blocks and domains that makes a city and by the lack of a common approach to data publication, in terms of format, content, etc. This paper introduces a holistic approach that relies on the Smart City Ontology as the cornerstone to standardise and structure data. This approach, which is proposed to be an analytical tool to assess the potential of data in a given smart city, analyses three main aspects: availability of data, the criteria that data should fulfil to be considered eligible and the model used to structure and organise data. The approach has been applied to the case of Brussels Capital Region, which first results are presented and discussed in this paper. The main conclusion that has been obtained is that, besides its commitment with open data and smart cities, Brussels is not mature enough to fully exploit the real intelligence that smart cities could provide. This maturity would be achieved in the following years with the implementation of the new Brussels’ Smart City Strategy.

Opportunities and Challenges of Policy Informatics

Contemporary societies face complex problems that challenge the sustainability of their social and economic systems. Such problems may require joint efforts from the public and private sectors as well as from the society at large in order to find innovative solutions. In addition, the open government movement constitutes a revitalized wave of access to data to promote innovation through transparency, participation and collaboration. This paper argues that currently there is an opportunity to combine emergent information technologies, new analytical methods, and open data in order to develop innovative solutions to some of the pressing problems in modern societies. Therefore, the objective is to propose a conceptual model to better understand policy innovations based on three pillars: data, information technologies, and analytical methods and techniques. The potential benefits generated from the creation of organizations with advanced analytical capabilities within governments, universities, and non-governmental organizations are numerous and the expected positive impacts on society are significant. However, this paper also discusses some important political, organizational, and technical challenges.

Privacy and Open Government

The public-oriented goals of the open government movement promise increased transparency and accountability of governments, enhanced citizen engagement and participation, improved service delivery, economic development and the stimulation of innovation. In part, these goals are to be achieved by making more and more government information public in reusable formats and under open licences. This paper identifies three broad privacy challenges raised by open government. The first is how to balance privacy with transparency and accountability in the context of “public” personal information. The second challenge flows from the disruption of traditional approaches to privacy based on a collapse of the distinctions between public and private sector actors. The third challenge is that of the potential for open government data—even if anonymized—to contribute to the big data environment in which citizens and their activities are increasingly monitored and profiled.

Stars and Webs: Can Networks Solve Public Sector Problems?

Public Administration ReviewVolume 73, Issue 4 p. 658-660 BOOK REVIEW Stars and Webs: Can Networks Solve Public Sector Problems? Noah Isaacs, Noah Isaacs ImperativeSearch for more papers by this author Noah Isaacs, Noah Isaacs ImperativeSearch for more papers by this author First published: 06 June 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12088 Noah Isaacs is a consultant at Imperative, where his work focuses on the intersection of health and food policy and the Open Government movement. He received his master's degree in public administration at the Wagner School of Public Affairs at New York University. Prior to his graduate studies, he worked for the New York City Council and in the nonprofi t sector in Zambia. E-mail: noah.isaacs@nyu.edu Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume73, Issue4July/August 2013Pages 658-660 RelatedInformation

Open Government, Technological Innovation and the Politics of Democratic Disillusionment: (E-)Democracy from Socrates to Obama

There is an intriguing dissonance between the optimistic democratic vision underlying the open government movement, which seems to be driven by a belief in the transformative power of technology, and the actual achievements of the e-democracy movement in changing the praxis of democratic engagement. The present article explores this dissonance in order to develop a better understanding of the potential and limits of the Internet in fostering democratic engagement. The article begins with a discussion of the competing theoretical concepts that drive the debate on open government and e-democracy (Section II). In this context, it contrasts between the political model of Plato in The Republic (governance by philosopher king) and the open government (OG) model, especially as envisaged by President Obama. The subsequent Sections (III-V) provide an in-depth study of three e-democracy projects involving three Canadian agencies and a transnational organization (AccountAbility). Together the three case studies expose some of the critical challenges facing the e-democracy movement. The article then proceeds to develop a new model of citizenship that I term 'punctuated citizenship', which seeks to capture the dissonance underlying the e-democracy movement, through a more nuanced understanding of political engagement (Section VI). The article concludes with a discussion of the pragmatic challenges facing the open government and e-democracy projects. I argue that the findings of the case studies discussed in this article (as well as preliminary assessments of Obama's OG initiative) demonstrate that the success of e-democracy projects depends on hierarchical coordination in matters that cover both technical and non-technical issues. This hierarchical intervention creates an agency problem that does not receive sufficient attention in the open government discourse. The open government project has to develop, I argue, new administrative law structures, which can cope with the inevitable dependency of e-democratic initiatives on hierarchical ordering. I consider in this context the possible emergence of a new form of hybrid regulatory mechanisms that bring together legal institutions and web-based agents and examine the problems underlying this phenomenon.