Design principles for creating digital transparency in government

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

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.

Information disruptions and disruptive information sources in the practice of law: Obstacles in gathering information, through an Israeli lens

Lawyers must provide their clients with competent legal services and professional representation. However, in many cases, lawyers find it difficult to attain the necessary information to resolve legal concerns under their inquiry. Disruptive sources of information and faulty information are understudied features of professional information behavior, especially in the information-rich legal profession. The current research aims to explore these complexities and promote a fuller and more realistic understanding of the information-gathering practices of legal practitioners. Israel was chosen as a case since it upholds a thriving and active legal sector. Data was collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a purposive nationwide sampling of 25 practising lawyers in Israel, covering together over thirty different fields of legal practice with a fair diversity of other personal and professional attributes. The findings portray accessibility, content, and usability disruptions in lawyers’ information practices, as well as accentuate seven troublesome information sources in their use during legal work and their distinctive aspects of disruption. This study provides important insights regarding legal professionals’ erroneous information engagement and experience and reveals some of its inherent drawbacks; hence, supporting a more rounded understanding of the role of information in professional work behavior. Hopefully, the presented concepts and insights could also benefit other service-oriented information workers.

Citizens' trust in government as a function of good governance and government agency's provision of quality information on social media during COVID-19

Evidence from literature reveals that good governance practices influence citizens' attitudes and behaviours towards the government. Therefore, grounded on the good governance theory, the current study aimed to empirically examine how good governance practices promote public trust with the underlying mechanism of perceived government response on COVID-19 (PGRC) and moderating role of government agency's provision of quality information on social media (GQS). The data was collected from 491 followers of the Facebook account, Instagram, and Twitter pages of a government news agency, i.e., Associated Press of Pakistan and were analyzed using measurement and structural model by employing SmartPls 3.3.0. The results revealed a direct and indirect association of good governance practices with the public's trust in government via PGRC as mediator. Likewise, results showed that GQS interacts with PGRC and augments public trust in government. This study tried to contribute to the body of knowledge while addressing the gap related to the dearth of literature regarding government use of ICT during the COVID-19 pandemic to harvest benefits from social media while communicating with citizens on a larger scale. Moreover, the current study offers valuable practical and strategical recommendations to agencies and policymakers.