Commentary

Open government: Using data transparency as a driver of economic growth

The trend toward open government is increasing worldwide.

Jeff Myers, Anand Trivedi, Oludotun Babayemi

September 20, 2024 3:37 pm

4 min read

The trend toward open government is increasing worldwide. For example, the Open Government Partnership, formed in 2011 with just eight member countries, now includes 75 national governments along with many municipal entities. As part of this movement, open government websites are growing more common, with their intent generally attributed to promoting transparency, public engagement and government accountability. For instance, the U.S. government site Data.gov “aims to make government more open and accountable.”

However, since most of these websites allow users to access data without self-identifying, very little is known about who the users are, what uses they have for the data they access and what is really being achieved. Many governments just share what they have — data that is readily available, reliable and of good quality. In fairness, government investment of already tight resources is required to gather and clean data that is offered; however that curation process also results in more of a ‘supply-side’ perspective — delivering what is fastest and easiest. There may not be much effort put into identifying what potential users of government data actually want.

Who’s using open government data?

A recent panel discussion explored which open government datasets are most used — or at least accessed — in four countries: U.S., Finland, India and Nigeria. While the specific users of government data do not self-identify, the researchers profiled likely data use cases, exploring how the most frequently accessed datasets could provide value, what kind of value, and who might receive that value.

Commercial users and use cases seem to be the most prominent. Businesses are likely accessing government data to use in setting strategy and finding opportunities for growth. Among the top datasets being accessed in the U.S. are electric vehicle population data and motor vehicle collisions and crashes, clearly of interest to the automotive and auto insurance industries; supply chain greenhouse gas emissions factors for over 1000 commodities, relevant to product designers; and produce pricing, key to price setting and measuring inflation.
Personal decision-makers are the second-most prominent users, although it’s likely that media is the direct data user who then interprets its meaning for the public, as crime statistics and neighborhood walkability insights are most frequently accessed.
Academic and government researchers, as well as activists, utilize government data to understand where societal problems exist. Activists likely use some data sets to determine where they want to allocate their efforts, for instance seeking data on suicide rates and greenhouse gas emissions. Governments may also use their own open data to evaluate program design and effectiveness, or even to identify a need for new programs.

Given these are the top likely uses of the most accessed data sets, measuring public engagement and government accountability seems to fall far down the list or perhaps be just an incidental result of open government initiatives. While better distribution and stronger marketing of government data might improve those outcomes, it is difficult to even know which data might best contribute to them.

Given that, it makes sense to focus on the likeliest uses of open data that are already being made, and the value that can be achieved from them. Foremost among those is enabling business.

Open government data empowers economic growth

Open government data sets present potential significant value to commercial organizations, and could be a substantial contributor to economic growth, but have rarely been recognized by governments as offering such value. Not only do government agencies avoid measuring the value of open data to commercial organizations, they don’t invest in it to maximize that value.

However, economic drivers are changing: There is greater emphasis on the need for trusted data, especially with the explosive growth of data-dependent artificial intelligence. Refocusing government efforts on an open government strategy that prioritizes sharing data for businesses to leverage offers a new accelerator of economic growth.

By emphasizing efforts to share data that will be useful to all manner of businesses, governments can both better meet the needs of consumers and drive economic success and innovation. It is time to unleash the enormous volumes of data government collects, while respecting the bounds of individual rights and privacy, to power the economic growth that will benefit all citizens.

Jeff Myers is senior director of government contracts at REI Systems. Anand Trivedi is the artificial intelligence and machine learning competency lead at REI Systems. Oludotun Babayemi is a monitoring, evaluation and learning specialist at Cloneshouse.