Open government: connecting vision and voice
| Date | 01 March 2012 |
| Author | Albert J. Meijer,Maarten Hillebrandt,Deirdre Curtin |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852311429533 |
| Published date | 01 March 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
78(1) 10–29
! The Author(s) 2012
Open government: connecting
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852311429533
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Albert J. Meijer
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Deirdre Curtin
University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Maarten Hillebrandt
Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Abstract
The term open government is often used to describe initiatives of putting government
information on the Internet. This conceptualization is too restricted since open gov-
ernment is not only about openness in informational terms (vision) but also about
openness in interactive terms (voice). On the basis of an analysis of 103 articles, this
article provides insight into the concepts of openness, transparency and participation,
their interactions, and the manner in which they have been discussed in the literature.
This analysis shows the differences and similarities between economic, political science
and legal perspectives on open government and argues that a multidisciplinary approach
needs to be taken. The authors conclude that open government is much too important
to leave it to the ‘techies’: scientists and practitioners with backgrounds in law, eco-
nomics, political science and public administration should also get involved to build
sound connections between vision and voice that facilitate active citizenship.
Points for practitioners
This article provides guidelines for the realization of open government: (1) design open
government for synergistic or complementary relationships between transparency and
participation, (2) design open government for a diverse population, (3) design open
government for direct and indirect effects, (4) design open government acknowledging a
variety in desirables and (5) design for continuous learning about effects and side-
effects. The authors emphasize that a diversified approach to the design of open gov-
ernment will be more fruitful in the long run than merely understanding it in terms of
making information publicly available.
Corresponding author:
Albert J. Meijer, Associate Professor, School of Governance, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Email: A.J.Meijer@uu.nl
Meijer et al.
11
Keywords
open government, participation, transparency
1. Open government: more than access to information
Over recent years, the term open government has become extremely popular
among politicians and policy makers since it is expected to bring a broad variety
of benefits such as efficiency, a reduction in corruption and increased government
legitimacy. The European Union prominently features open government in the first
articles of its foundational Treaty, and President Obama signed the Open
Government Directive on his first day in office. The term ‘openness’ is easily ban-
died about but what do policy makers and scientists actually mean when they use
it? In practice, the term open government is often used to describe initiatives of
putting documents and government information on the Internet. New technologies
drive open government and they are being used to facilitate access to information
through, for example, the EU portal and opendata.gov in the US.1 Website devel-
opment seems to be at the heart of open government and ‘techies’ are taking the
lead. These practices narrow down the meaning of open government since it is not
only about the availability of information but also about interactions between
government and citizens. Put differently: open government is not only about open-
ness in informational terms but also about openness in interactive terms. Separate
practices of access to information and access to decision-making arenas need to be
connected in fruitful ways. How can that be done?2
In the academic literature, the two dimensions of openness (transparency and
participation) are mostly considered separately. The literature on transparency
revolves around terms such as freedom of information, Internet, active dissemina-
tion of information, access to document and usability of websites, whereas in the
literature on participation one will find terms such as interactive policy-making,
consultations, dialogue and stakeholder involvement. Curtin and Mendes (2011)
refer to these components of open government as vision and voice. Citizens need
information to see what is going on inside government and participation to voice
their opinions about this. The crucial question for vision is: what is being made
visible? The literature discusses, among other things, the nature and scope of trans-
parency, the usefulness of information, and the timing of the release of documents.
The central question for voice is: whose voice is heard? Empirical and theoretical
analyses focus on inequalities in access to participation meetings. Vision and voice
come together in the idea of informed debate: participants can voice their opinions
on the basis of knowledge about decision-making processes.
The link between vision and voice may seem self-evident but is rarely explored in
the literature. Sometimes, in research into government transparency the question is
raised whether information is actually used to strengthen participation, but gener-
ally this does not feature prominently in the debate. Likewise, some of the research
into participation does pay attention to the question whether citizens have been
12
International Review of Administrative Sciences 78(1)
informed properly and can have access to the information they need to participate
but, again, this is the exception rather than the rule. Although openness is widely
propagated by political leaders and in policy documents, the academic discourse is
only beginning to focus on this concept as a whole. Noveck (2009) presents an
interesting – and very techno-optimistic – plea for ‘wiki government’ and connects
access to information to new forms of citizen participation. She argues that tech-
nology will help to overcome limitations to both transparency and participation
and thus will facilitate open government. Similarly, Lathrop and Ruma (2010a)
edited a rich volume with a broad range of (mostly techno-optimistic) papers about
the value of technology for open government, in the sense of both transparency and
participation. These perspectives are strong and provocative but consist of general
assertions not yet founded in empirical study. Our argument builds upon these
salient analyses and grounds them in a thorough review of the literature on trans-
parency and participation to provide a conceptual framework for studying and
developing open government.
The aim of this article is to provide more insight into the concepts of openness,
transparency and participation, and their interactions, and the manner in which
they have been discussed in the literature. We map the variety in positions and,
consequently, we aim to contribute more conceptual precision in the way that the
concepts of openness, transparency and participation are used in future debate.
The precision is needed to develop forms of open government that actually con-
tribute to a stronger democracy and more active citizenship (Barber, 1984). The
central question of our contribution is: what can we learn from the literature on
transparency and participation for the realization of open government? We
acknowledge the importance of studying practices of transparency and participa-
tion from a multidisciplinary perspective and we believe that a more explicit con-
ceptualization of open government is needed to facilitate a multidisciplinary
exploration of it. Combining insights from legal, political, organizational and eco-
nomic sciences will help to deepen our understanding and explain practices of open
government and provide a more solid basis for the further realization of open
government.
This contribution starts off by identifying the constitutive elements of open
government and discussing the relationships between vision and voice. We then
justify the manner in which we have selected a corpus of scientific articles that have
enabled us to draw lessons about open government in general. On the basis of an
analysis of these articles, we will articulate the general lessons we have drawn about
how government works and how open government should be valued.
2. Open government as vision and voice
In the literature on access to information and in practical usage, openness and
transparency are often used interchangeably (Bertot et al., 2010; Heald, 2006a:
25). Piotrowski (2007: 10), for example, states that ‘governmental transparency
equates to open government’. Usually such statements are made in the context
Meijer et al.
13
of research that only addresses access to information, in which case it makes no
analytical difference to distinguish between transparency and open government.
Some authors do make an explicit distinction. Heald (2006a: 26), for example,
conceptualizes openness as a characteristic of an organization, whereas transpar-
ency also requires external receptors capable of processing the information. Specific
literature on access to government software and computer data uses the term ‘open
code’ as a practice and transparency as the desirable end: open code provides in this
view more transparency (Lessig, 1999: 224, 225).
The literature on decision-making, in turn, uses the term ‘openness’ to refer to
access to decision-making arenas. Klijn et al. (2008), for example, refer to openness
as wider access of other actors to management...
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