Researching the democratic impact of open government data: A systematic literature review

4.1.1 Expected impact

In order to have a well-functioning democratic society citizens should be able to monitor government processes [4]. By providing access to relevant information, OGD can provide insight into government processes and mechanisms [27, 28, 20] and increase transparency of these processes [29, 30, 31, 27, 32, 33, 34, 35, 4, 36]. Indirectly, OGD is expected to contribute to a more accountable government [37, 18, 30, 27, 38, 39] reduce corruption [40, 4] and enhance public trust [41]. Furthermore, Meijer [39] argues that information access should be combined with enabling environments for collective action in order to generate impact on accountability. Finally, some authors [42, 34] are more critical towards the impact of OGD on democratic societies. Birchall [34] argues that the publication of government information will put certain responsibilities in the hands of citizens: they are asked to be auditors, analysts, translators and programmers. She expects that ‘ordinary’ citizens cannot fulfill these responsibilities. Moreover, if the data are open, the question rises whether it is then considered the fault of the monitorial citizen if anomalies, abuse or corruption are not noticed [34].

4.1.2 Indicators for impact

Scholars use a broad variety of indicators (see Table 1), to measure the impact of OGD on monitorial processes. From a government perspective, Zuiderwijk and Janssen [33] develop a framework for assessing open government data policies. They make a distinction between performance indicators (the usages of publicized data, risks and benefits of publicizing data) and impact in terms of the realization of public values, thereby referring to the seven types of impacts identified by Harrison et al. [18]: financial, political, social, strategic, quality of life, ideological and stewardship. Other scholars [41, 35] focus on the role of government and how opening of data or information could have an impact on daily work processes or rule-making procedures of government agencies. Worthy [21] makes a distinction between direct and indirect effects of OGD. The direct accountability effects refer to professionalization of the system, improved information flows and a greater understanding internally. Indirect effects refer to accountability effects that involve network and feedback effects of attention and decay regarding OGD.

Other studies focus on the role of citizens [29, 4] or intermediaries (journalists) [30, 43]. OGD should be relevant for citizens, allowing them to scrutinize and reuse the data and monitor policies and government initiatives [4]. For citizens the robustness of access in the form of physical access, intellectual access and social access, are a strong determinant of the levels of freedom given in a society [29].

Several authors focus on information. Fung [30] distinguishes four principles that articulate the conditions under which information can produce consequences desirable for a democratic society such as transparency: availability, proportionality, accessibility and finally information or data should catalyze action. Other transparency information-based indicators mentioned are stewardship and usefulness [41], but also timeliness, the presence of Freedom of Information rules, relevance of location, primariness and machine readability [30, 40].

The authors who empirically research the impact of OGD on monitorial democratic processes find varying impacts. In terms of government related impact, some scholars argue that changes in transparency of government processes are connected and interrelated with societal and political changes [39, 44]. Bates [42] from a critical point of view finds that the UK Open Government Data agenda is not only being used as democratization project to increase transparency and citizens engagement but also to fuel a range of broader and more controversial policies, aimed at a neoliberal form of state. Other scholars find a positive impact. Jaakola et al. [35] for instance find that open government data can lead to improved internal government processes in terms of producing, unlocking, sharing and using data. Parycek et al. [27] find that OGD is perceived as contributing to employee motivation due to more interaction with stakeholders. They also find that OGD can contribute to more insights in activities of government, more information for voting, diversity of opinion and to an improved public image of government agencies. Other scholars [33, 21] find limited impact on government processes. Dawes et al. [5] take an ecosystem approach to open government data initiatives and find that in one of the two cases in their study that progress was made toward political and strategic goals of transparency, public service and good management along with improvements in stewardship and agency mission accomplishment. Regarding accountability, Worthy [21] examines the democratic impact of the publication of the UK’s Transparency agenda and finds that the local government spending data have driven only some accountability and information transmission [21].

Taking intermediaries as point of departure, Felle [43] finds that the accountability role of journalists as watchdogs is strengthened by the use of data reporting methodologies and digital tools to investigate and to tell stories in the public interest. Finally, Murillo [40] finds limited impact in his international comparative study in Latin America. He finds a moderate release of data relevant to areas where corruption generally takes place but its contribution to providing meaningful information to the citizenry is in fact minimal.

4.1.4 Challenges

In order to realize the monitorial democratic impact of government data scholars point out several challenges. First of all, the impact of OGD is more complex and political than advocates proclaim [21]. Political support for OGD might be limited with only a few OGD enthusiasts [21]. Janssen and van den Hoven [36] point out the complexity of balancing the two democratic values, transparency and privacy. Second, several authors point out the gaps in society in terms of access and skills for using technology [29, 34, 40, 27, 37]. Finally, Birchall [34] explores the implications of what she calls the info-capitalist-democracy and argues that citizens may not have the skills or time to realize the social value of OGD and will therefore outsource to entrepreneurs. Consequently, “the rationality of the market extends to the democratic contract between representatives and the represented itself. We become reliant upon the market to close the circle of democratic representation and accountability upon which it is based” [34, p. 191].

4.2.1 Expected impact

Moss and Coleman [49, p. 411] define deliberation broadly as communication that induces reflection on preferences and perspectives in a non-coercive way with the aim of achieving inclusive, informed and negotiated policy formation and political decision-making. In this dimension diversity of opinions, and debate are perceived as societal benefits [27, 45]. OGD can contribute to informed citizenry [46, 47], who are able to make informed arguments based on the analyses of OGD [48], enabling deeper contributions to deliberative debate on policy issues, leading to increased feedback and engagement from citizens on governments workings [35, 4, 49, 47]. Indirectly, OGD can lead to better and informed decision making, as well as facilitating social stability by developing a sense of community [37, 50].

4.2.2 Indicators for impact

A broad variety of indicators are used to measure the impact of OGD on deliberative processes (see Table 2). Roy [47] identifies in his study three inter-related dimensions that influence deliberative processes: 1) individuals and the way they make decisions, 2) information itself and 3) institutional processes that refer to the structures and cultures of the political arena and the division of roles and responsibilities of government. At the government level, several scholars [51, 49, 48] focus on engagement by indicating whether citizens were involved in selecting policy options and whether feedback options were provided.

From the perspective of citizens, Jaakola et al. [35] analyze whether it is possible for citizens to track a particular issue, make comparisons, post comments and annotations and read the contributions made by others. Furthermore, an increase in citizens’ feedback on public policy is indicated by an increasing use of data downloads and exchanges of comments on that data [35]. Similarly, Felle [43] uses better story telling by journalists, in the form of visualizations, interactive maps and applications as an indicator to analyze whether this allows the audience to tailor their stories and influences their engagement. In addition, he analyzed the diversity of the audience, whether it concerned a new technical elite or a more diverse audience that read data based stories.

From a technological perspective, Sivarajah et al. [46] study how OGD and e-participation as part of community learning can be leveraged for evidence-based policy decision-making in local government. A tool should take into account the public’s view when setting priorities, help decision makers evaluate impact of different decisions for a scenario and enable users to view different priorities and the impact of policy decisions by means of visualizations.

The empirical studies find mixed results of OGD on the role of government aimed at facilitating citizen deliberation. Some scholars find limited [49] to some impact [47]. Moss and Coleman [49] find that online deliberative initiatives have only been adopted sporadically and argue that micro deliberative practices that engage publics around specific policy issues could be much more widely established. By contrast, focusing on citizens, Jaakola et al. [35] do find impact. They provide examples of outcomes of OGD usage in terms of citizens being able to provide feedback and follow the decision-making of the city in real-time backed up by fresh information. Felle [43] finds that digital data journalism is being widely practiced across all media platforms thereby making stories available to a wider demographic than before. Furthermore, he indicates that visualization of data makes stories easier to read and understand for citizens and allow readers to engage.

From a technology perspective, several authors [46, 45] point out in their empirical studies that tools and OGD have the potential to increase citizen participation in political and public sector processes. Sivarajah et al. [46] find that OGD via tools can potentially “foster communication and interaction between politicians and civil-society, simplifying decision-making processes, demystifying legislative texts, and allowing to effectively visualize arguments and impacts of proposed decisions” [46].

4.2.4 Challenges

Several challenges are pointed out. First of all, there is the challenge of diversity and representativeness [45]. This according to some scholars [45, 49] should be an explicit aim of the deliberation process; ways need to be found to recruit and consult the broadest possible range of participants. Second, several authors refer to the digital divide [47, 49, 45] and plead for a transformation of e-democracy towards equity and social justice [52]. There is a need to bridge the gap between data providers and consumers by using data intermediaries [4].

4.3.1 Expected impact

The participatory dimension assumes a horizontal, non-hierarchical, two-way relationship between government and citizens in more collaborative and networked systems [45, 53]. New technologies enable citizens to engage in democratic processes and enable citizens to organize their own forms of public value production, resulting in new forms of cooperation between government and citizens [54, 19]. OGD platforms are expected to facilitate partnership leading to collaborative information production and policy making [55, 56, 19, 53, 39, 48, 57, 45, 44]. Collaboration in this sense has a formal framework thereby distinguishing it from informal networks and interest groups [44]. Citizens can become co-producers of information, knowledge and platforms; they can enhance data quality through feedback [56, 4, 58, 50, 5, 59]. Indirectly, OGD is expected to contribute to empowerment of citizens, influence and participation in policy formulation and collective action [55, 56, 47, 32, 60, 61].

Nam [56] propose that citizen participation can be evaluated in terms of a process and as an outcome being the ‘products’ of a participatory process (see Table 3). In this line, Lakka et al. [57] analyze participation as an end product of E-Government maturity. Other scholars focus on processes of collaboration e.g. Citizen-to-Government, Citizen-to-Citizen, Government-to-Citizen [60, 45, 44]. The new roles and responsibilities of government [55, 60, 59] within these processes can be considered as indicators. Similarly, Sieber and Johnson [59] distinguish four roles of government in data provision: 1) a status quo data over the wall form of government data publishing, 2) a form of code exchange with government acting as an open data activist, 3) open data as a civic issue tracker where government accepts direct feedback from citizens on issues, and participatory open data, 4) where government-citizens co-produce data. Especially, the latter forms explicitly promote transparency, rights and democratic objectives [59]. They require from the public sector a role of facilitating and orchestrating, providing tools, managing assets (including data), ensuring public value and providing rules [55, 60]. It requires from citizens and communities to take on more responsibility [55, 59]. Among stakeholders, the degree of formal and direct and the degree of power may vary thereby affecting the outcome [31].

Janssen and Helbig [48] focus on the role of citizens in the policy process. The indicators for impact in their study are linked to the policy process where citizens identify problems based on OGD, put issues on the political agenda, are involved in policy development, collaborative implement policies and finally monitor the issue in terms of policy enforcement.

From an information perspective, Taylor [62] takes a holistic approach, which he describes as the information polity. The information polity consists of two intertwined trajectories: information intensifying government and attempts to strengthen representative democracy through the use of ICT’s as direct forms of democracy.

Finally, some scholars take a more general holistic [38] or ecosystem approach to OGD [5, 51] consisting of interdependent components: data producers, context that includes policy, strategy, organizational culture and legal frameworks, data publication, portals and use, feedback and communication, benefit generation and advocacy and interaction among stakeholders (both inside and outside government).

4.3.3 Found impact

From a government perspective, mixed impact is found. Several studies indicate that technology and OGD can be an enabler of e-government maturity [57, 53] resulting in a more open and participatory government [53]. Janssen and Helbig [48] find that new forms of collaboration have led to new roles for policy makers: 1) orchestration to ensure consistency among tasks and to oversee whether the various stakeholders work in concert to contribute to meaningful engagement; 2) assuring quality of engagement, legitimacy of the process and the usability of the data and information; 3) aggregating and reporting the data collected through new forms of connection and communication [48]. In addition, Baka [50] finds that technology was perceived as creating opportunities to influence the political agenda. She finds a two-fold impact through participatory democratic practices: affecting both society and governance institutions. Furthermore, Ohemeng and Ofosu-Adarkwa [61] find an impact on the supply side regarding the Ghana open data initiative. By contrast, De Blasio and Selva [44] analyze the implementation of open government policies of four EU nations and find that scarce attention is paid to participation and collaboration.

From a citizens’ perspective, scholars [21, 31, 61] find limited impact. For instance, Gonzalez-Zapata and Heeks [31] find in their case study on the Chilean Open Data initiative that the voice of citizens is largely absent. They conclude that the political perspective aimed at democratic change, public participation and empowerment is so far largely aspirational. Similarly, Ohemeng and Ofosu-Adarkwa [61] find the level of civil societal involvement to be abysmal in the Ghana open data ecosystem and conclude that the Ghana ecosystem does not bode well for effective participation. Finally from a holistic perspective, Taylor [62] predicts based on his analysis of past and present developments in the UK, that no major impact will be realized.

4.3.4 Challenges

Several challenges are pointed out. First of all, new forms of collaboration could result in empowerment of citizens or in elite domination [19, 53]. Citizens are expected to make informed arguments but Janssen and Helbig [48] point out that citizens often have limited time and expertise. Therefore it is likely that infomediaries provide services to help citizens. In this light, several authors point to a gap in representativeness; participation might be driven by those who are already engaged [56, 21, 55]. Second in terms of processes, collaboration involves a transfer of decision rights to external parties, which may cause reluctance from public sector actors towards such initiatives [53, 60]. It might even require government to move outside the strongly regulated and entrenched procedures [59]. Finally, there is the quality argument related to citizens’ generated data [58]. However, Craglia and Shanley [58] argue that crowdsourcing can have excellent results but that the outcome depends on the process of designing the project and the active participation of citizens. A bigger challenge they argue is to sustain the commitment of the participants throughout the project.