Abstract
This article contributes to the growing body of literature within public management on open government data by taking a political perspective. We argue that open government data are a strategic resource of organizations and therefore organizations are not likely to share it. We develop an analytical framework for studying the politics of open government data, based on theories of strategic responses to institutional processes, government transparency, and open government data. The framework shows that there can be different organizational strategic responses to open data—varying from conformity to active resistance—and that different institutional antecedents influence these responses. The value of the framework is explored in two cases: a province in the Netherlands and a municipality in France. The cases provide insights into why governments might release datasets in certain policy domains but not in others thereby producing “strategically opaque transparency.” The article concludes that the politics of open government data framework helps us understand open data practices in relation to broader institutional pressures that influence government transparency.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 260-274 |
| Number of pages | 15 |
| Journal | American Review of Public Administration |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Apr 2020 |
Funding
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2907-1454 Ruijer Erna 1 Détienne Francoise 2 Baker Michael 2 Groff Jonathan 2 Meijer Albert J. 1 1 Utrecht University, The Netherlands 2 Telecom ParisTech, France Erna Ruijer, Utrecht University School of Governance, Utrecht University, Bijlhouwerstraat 6, 3511 ZC Utrecht, The Netherlands. Email: [email protected] 12 2019 0275074019888065 © The Author(s) 2019 2019 SAGE Publications This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ( http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ( https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage ). This article contributes to the growing body of literature within public management on open government data by taking a political perspective. We argue that open government data are a strategic resource of organizations and therefore organizations are not likely to share it. We develop an analytical framework for studying the politics of open government data, based on theories of strategic responses to institutional processes, government transparency, and open government data. The framework shows that there can be different organizational strategic responses to open data—varying from conformity to active resistance—and that different institutional antecedents influence these responses. The value of the framework is explored in two cases: a province in the Netherlands and a municipality in France. The cases provide insights into why governments might release datasets in certain policy domains but not in others thereby producing “strategically opaque transparency.” The article concludes that the politics of open government data framework helps us understand open data practices in relation to broader institutional pressures that influence government transparency. Open government data transparency organizational strategic responses politics H2020 Innovation In SMEs https://doi.org/10.13039/100010675 645860 edited-state corrected-proof typesetter ts1 The authors would like to thank their ROUTE-TO-PA colleagues for their valuable contributions. Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 645860. ORCID iD Erna Ruijer https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2907-1454
Keywords
- Open government data
- organizational strategic responses
- politics
- transparency