COMPARING RESISTANCE TO OPEN DATA PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT: PUBLIC EDUCATION IN BRAZIL AND THE UK
| Author | OTAVIO RITTER,GREGORY MICHENER |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12293 |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
doi : 10. 1111/p adm .12293
COMPARING RESISTANCE TO OPEN DATA
PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT: PUBLIC EDUCATION
IN BRAZIL AND THE UK
GREGORY MICHENER AND OTAVIO RITTER
Much is known about governmental resistance to disclosure laws, less so about multi-stakeholder
resistance to open data. This study compares open data initiatives within the primary and sec-
ondary school systems of Brazil and the UK, focusing on stakeholder resistance and corresponding
policy solutions. The analytical framework is based on the ‘Three-Ps’ of open data resistance to
performance metrics, corresponding to professional, political, and privacy-related concerns. Evi-
dence shows that resistance is highly nuanced, as stakeholders alternately serve as both principals
and agents. School administrators, for example, are simultaneously principals to service providers
and teachers, and at once agents to parents and politicians. Relying on a different systems com-
parison, in-depth interviews, and newspaper content analyses, we nd that similar stakeholders
across countries demonstrate strikingly divergent levels of resistance. In overcoming stakeholder
resistance – across socioeconomic divides – context conscientious ‘data-informed’ evaluations may
promote greater acceptance than narrowly ‘data-driven’ performance measurements.
INTRODUCTION
The explosion of open data informed initiatives – multilateral efforts such as the Open
Government Partnership or rankings such as the Open Data Index – is representative of
a historic policy movement towards greater transparency, responsiveness, and account-
ability. Yet outcomes have not yet fallen in line with expectations (Almirall el Lun 2016).
Open data, broadly dened as data and content that can be freely used, modied, and
shared by anyone, for any purpose, has met with considerable stakeholder resistance
and citizen perplexity. Yet the resistance of suppliers, subjects, and consumers of open
data has received little targeted attention within the scholarly literature on public service
provision. There may be good reason for this: in the multi-stakeholder universe of open
data policies, principals are often agents and agents principals. Incentive structures are
less easily discerned than within the literature on resistance to transparency and freedom
of information, where the universe is typically divided into advocates and resisters
(Roberts 2006; Darch and Underwood 2010; Hood 2010; Berliner 2014; Michener 2015a).
What types of policy-specic resistance are challenging open data initiatives and how
serious are they? Policy-specic analyses of stakeholder resistance can help governments
save scarce resources by pinpointing points of contention and potential remedies.
This article analyses progress and resistance towards governmental data transparency
initiatives in the primary and secondary education sectors of Brazil and the UK. More
specically, it focuses on school performance and student personal data, providing a
broadly encompassing analysis of resistance to open data performance measurement and
assessing corresponding palliative measures. The literature makes clear the ubiquity of
stakeholder anxiety towards open data-based public evaluation (McGinnes and Elandy
2012), yet has not coherently elucidated how anxiety translates into different sources and
forms of resistance across countries.
Gregory Michener and Otavio Ritter are at the Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration (EBAPE), Fun-
dacao Getulio Vargas,Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Public Administration Vol.95, No. 1, 2017 (4–21)
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
RESISTANCE TO OPEN DATA PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT 5
This article’s analysis is based on ‘Three-Ps’ of open data resistance, identied during
extensive eld research on data transparency initiatives in the public education sectors of
Brazil and the UK: professional resistance, due primarily to workplace-related implica-
tions of data-driven performance indicators; political resistance bred of fears surrounding
disclosures and inadequate technical capacities; and resistance based on concerns regard-
ing personal privacy.
The research conveyed herein representsover 60 interviews (detailed in an online trans-
parency appendix1), as well as content analyses on media coverage, and a considerable
survey of the extant literature. Research adhered to a ‘most different systems’ (Przeworski
and Teune 1970) comparison between Brazil and the UK, which illuminates how similar
stakeholders in very different national contexts exhibit comparable rationales of resistance
towards open data-based policy evaluations.
In analysing different contexts –two countries known as much for their shared com-
mitments to open government as for their democratic and economic divides – this article
serves as a rst foray into building contextually specic hypotheses about forms of
resistance to a new administrative paradigm and how resistance may best be overcome.
At its most general, collected evidence suggests that ‘data-informed’ approaches to
implementing open data policies in education should displace those that are data-driven.
While data-informed approaches take into account contextual variables in addition to
data, data-driven approaches tend to treat data as an end rather than a means. At its
most specic, the evidence presented herein points to inverse relationships in stakeholder
resistance across two countries that vary on key indicators. Professional and personal
privacy resistance are more salient in the UK and less so in Brazil, whereas the opposite
holds true for political forms of resistance. These ndings highlight trade-offs germane to
open data-mediated policies (Davies and Bawa 2012; Singer 2014). For instance, citizens
in Brazil appear less likely to hold schools and governments to account, as well as more
likely to trade off personal privacy for access to performance-enhancing technologies.
This article proceeds as follows. The rst section briey outlines the empirical reality
and theoretical logic of resistance to open data in the educational sector. The research
design, including interviews, content analyses and methods of data analysis are exam-
ined in the second section. The third, fourth, and fth sections analyse the logic, evidence,
and implications of the ‘Three-Ps of resistance’ towards open data – professional, politi-
cal, and personal privacy concerns. The nal section summarizes ndings and elucidates
pathways for future research in this area.
SPECIFYING SOURCES OF RESISTANCE: OPEN DATA AND EDUCATION
Public sector open data is widely viewed as a strategic public asset (Uhlir 2004; Gurin
2015). Open data evangelists and advocates of open government list a host of positive
social, political, and economic externalities, such as greater democratic accountability
and participation, as well as innovation in the private and public sectors (OECD 2006;
McKinsey & Company 2013). Yet scholars and observers have increasingly noted open
data’s slow uptake and poor conformity with better practice format-related principles
(see for example, Thurston 2012; de Kool and Bekkers 2015; Godoy 2015).
On the adoption front, progress has been slow. Employing a strict ‘open denition’ (see
below) and surveying 15 categories of datasets in 92 countries, the 2015 Open Data Barom-
eter results indicate that just 10 countries have produced nearly half of all ‘open’ data sets.
Open Data Barometer’s ‘open denition’ is, admittedly, difcult to full: datasets must be
Public Administration Vol.95, No. 1, 2017 (4–21)
© 2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd.
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