Researching the emerging impacts of open data

Abstract

Through the Open Government Partnership, governments from more than 50 countries have committed to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance, emphasizing open data as a means to achieve this. Yet reliable evidence on the impact of open data initiatives remains scarce. This paper argues we can only understand open data in general if there’s detailed understanding of how it operates in specific situations. Only a very small proportion of government datasets are currently openly licensed and accessible online, highlighting the need to develop clear evidence and research approaches towards better informed dialogue.