Whose open data is it anyway? An exploratory study of open government data relevance and implications for democratic inclusion

Kayla Schwoerer

doi:10.3233/ip-220008

journal article Dec 15, 2022

Whose open data is it anyway? An exploratory study of open government data relevance and implications for democratic inclusion

Kayla Schwoerer

Information Polity Vol. 27 No. 4 pp. 491-515 · SAGE Publications

View at Publisher Save 10.3233/ip-220008

Abstract

Open government data (OGD) is believed to enhance democratic outcomes by empowering citizens with the information necessary to participate in meaningful ways. Nonetheless, questions remain about whether OGD is indeed empowering citizens to participate or if the data that governments publish is more reflective of the interests of non-citizen stakeholders. Using the metadata of 2607 publicly available datasets scraped from New York City’s open data portal, this exploratory study employs qualitative content analysis to identify what types of data are published and what the data say about OGD’s potential as a tool for advancing inclusion in democratic processes. The analysis focused particularly on the datasets’ relevance to five particular stakeholder groups: citizens, private sector firms, nonprofits, researchers, and the city’s internal agencies. Findings showed that non-citizen-relevant datasets not only outnumbered citizen-relevant datasets by a large margin but they were also viewed and downloaded at higher rates too. I discuss the implications for inclusion in democratic processes, including power imbalances among OGD user groups, the discretionary power data publishers possess, and, ultimately, whether the types of data cities publish is sufficient for empowering an informed citizenry, as an effective democracy demands.

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Published: Dec 15, 2022
Vol/Issue: 27(4)
Pages: 491-515

Authors

K

Kayla Schwoerer

University at Albany

Cite This Article

Kayla Schwoerer (2022). Whose open data is it anyway? An exploratory study of open government data relevance and implications for democratic inclusion. Information Polity, 27(4), 491-515. https://doi.org/10.3233/ip-220008

Whose open data is it anyway? An exploratory study of open government data relevance and implications for democratic inclusion

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