[open-government] Is Open Data a Good Idea for the Open Government Partnership?

[Pranesh Prakash]

Dear all,
The differences of opinion on this question are captured well in Becky
Hogge's [Open Data Study][] for the Transparency and Accountability
Initiative.

Regards,
Pranesh

  [Open Data Study]: http://goo.gl/oPVVF

=====

Is Open Data a Good Idea for the Open Government Partnership?
Submitted by Global Integrity on 15 September 2011 - 12:41pm

As we’ve blogged before, Global Integrity is working to promote the new
[Open Government Partnership][] by serving as the [OGP’s Networking
Mechanism][], which aims to connect aspiring OGP governments with
providers of open government expertise (whether governments, civil
society organizations, or private companies) to help those aspiring
governments develop innovative, “stretch” open government commitments.

An interesting (though not surprising) trend that has quickly emerged in
our conversations with the “supply side” providers of open government
expertise is the heavy focus on technological interventions. I haven’t
done a precise count yet, but close to half of the nearly 40 providers
that have already expressed interest in working with governments under
the OGP Networking Mechanism are software vendors, developers, or other
providers of technology solutions for open government challenges,
particularly web-based solutions. Many of them are involved with “open
data” projects, which seek to unlock and put online a range of
government data in machine readable, mashable formats.

The obvious explanation (in my mind) for why “open data” gets so much
attention in the context of “open government” is that it is the sexiest,
flashiest reform of the bunch. It’s much cooler (and frankly less
politically controversial) for any government to put government health
databases online (along with an iPhone app! Android coming soon!) than
it is for the same government to provide greater transparency around the
financing of political parties in the country.

But it does raise a core concern that we at Global Integrity (and others
involved in the early discussions around OGP) have voiced several times
before: does the OGP risk becoming a platform on which to proselytize to
the world about the virtues of data.gov and similar open data projects?
We worry that this isn’t enough by itself.

Why I mention this in the context of OGP is that there is a concern
shared amongst some of us involved that open data provides an easy way
out for some governments to avoid the much harder, and likely more
transformative, open government reforms that should probably be higher
up on their lists. Instead of fetishizing open data portals for the sake
of having open data portals, I’d rather see governments incorporating
open data as a way to address more fundamental structural challenges
around extractives (through maps and budget data), the political process
(through real-time disclosure of campaign contributions), or budget
priorities (through online publication of budget line-items).

Granted, you can make a counter argument that open data is the “gateway
drug” to much deeper and challenging open government reforms, but until
I see that happen in practice I’ll remain a healthy skeptic.

So when I see the [Kenyan government’s new open data portal][] (over
which many behind the US and UK data sites are absolutely gushing, and
at the time of this posting was actually down!), I can only wonder
whether the time, expenses, and political capital devoted to building
that website were really the best uses of resources. To vastly
understate the problem, Kenya has a range of governance and open
government challenges that go far beyond the lack of a website where
citizens (many of whom are not online) can chart government datasets.

We’ve started to hear similar concerns from some of the technical
providers involved with building the US and UK open data projects (many
of these providers have expressed their willingness to work with other
governments under the auspices of OGP). The basic message has been,
“Yeah, there’s been plenty of excitement at political levels for these
projects, but it’s hard to say how significant the use or uptake [of the
data] has been.” A similar refrain has been “Everyone expects the
private sector to simply jump in and build a bunch of ‘apps.’ But we
aren’t really seeing that and don’t expect too much to happen apart from
apps using geospatial data.”

Sobering stuff. The open data movement is clearly still in its infancy
and major successes may be yet to come. But in the interim, some caution
may be in order before we launch a global campaign to liberate every
last bit of government data out there, especially in lower-income
contexts where the opportunity costs may be massive.

— Nathaniel Heller

  [Open Government Partnership]: http://opengovpartnership.org
  [OGP’s Networking Mechanism]:
http://www.globalintegrity.org/blog/call-for-ogp-networking
  [Kenyan government’s new open data portal]: http://opendata.go.ke/

-- 
Pranesh Prakash
Programme Manager
Centre for Internet and Society
W: http://cis-india.org | T: +91 80 40926283

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