‘Data.gov-in-a-box’

Abstract

Given that the Obama Administration still relies on many strategies we would think of as on the side of secrecy, it seems that the only lasting transparency legacy of the Obama Administration will be data--driven or e--transparency as exemplified by the web interface 'data.gov'. As the data--driven transparency model is exported and assumes an ascendant position around the globe, it is imperative that we ask what kind of publics, subjects, and indeed, politics it produces. Open government data is not just a matter concerning accountability but seen as a necessary component of the new 'data economy'. To participate and benefit from this info--capitalist--democracy, the data subject is called upon to be both auditor and entrepreneur. This article explores the implications of responsibilisation, outsourcing, and commodification on the contract of representational democracy and asks if there are other forms of transparency that might better resist neoliberal formations and re--politicise the public sphere.

Transparency and mistrust: Who or what should be made transparent?

“…This suggests that rather than simply making information available the ultimate aim should be context-specific "legibility" (Fenster, 2006). Legibility is complicated by big data and "e-transparency," with the need for secondary representation of data via visualizations (Galloway, 2011) or its compilation into high-quality "machinereadable" data sets on websites like Data.gov (Birchall, 2015).…”

“…The dire state of government accounts over history and ongoing struggles with financial accountability motivate recurrent popular campaigns for more documents. In the context of intermittent electricity supply and pay-per-byte mobile data plans, data come at a cost and the imagined role of the citizen-auditor (Birchall, 2015) in scrutinizing data is especially burdensome. At the same time, there are popular suspicions with whether representations and the language used to communicate them can be trusted, leading to alternative but recognizable demands for transparency made tangible.…”

Accountability as strategic transparency: Making sense of organizational responses to the International Aid Transparency Initiative

“…Ultimately, these themes point to the essentially strategic value of transparency as a tool for influencing the international environment. First, it should be clear that the information selected in the IATI standard is not pre-political or pre-ideological (Birchall, 2015), but rather reflects a drawn-out, highly politicized process of adapting norms into standards. On the political side, this is representative of a form of structural influence over the behaviours and choices of others often referred to as soft power (Nye, 1990;Pamment, 2015).…”

“…The publication of transparency data is an example of the ways in which neo-institutionalism promotes the "illusion of control" over managerial decision-making for the purpose of securing social legitimacy (Wehmeier, 2006, p. 216;Ebrahim, 2005Ebrahim, , 2007. Transparency is not simply about revealing the realities of organizational activity, but also of the ritualized social construction and legitimization of a form of manageable reality (McGee, 2013;Birchall, 2015;Wehmeier, 2006;Christensen & Cornelissen, 2015).…”

Fatores influenciadores da divulgação de informação e do acesso à informação dos municípios

“…A facilidade de acesso à informação abriu as organizações públicas ao escrutínio dos cidadãos, contribuindo para a melhoria da confiança em relação às atividades e ações desenvolvidas na Administração Pública (Styles;Tennyson, 2007;Birchall, 2015;Moreno-Sardà;Molina-Rodríguez-Navas;Simelio-Solà, 2017;Piñeiro-Naval;Mangana;Serra, 2018). Vários países comprometeram-se com promover iniciativas de transparência nas organizações públicas, procurando tornar a Administração Pública mais aberta, responsável e receptiva aos cidadãos (García-Tabuyo; Saez-Martin; Caba-Perez, 2017; Rebolledo; Zamora-Medina; Rodríguez-Virgili, 2017; Serrano-Cinca; Muñoz-Soro, 2019; Wasike, 2020).…”