Worthy’s article (2015) highlights the successes and issues that have arisen from U.K.’s Transparency Agenda. Although the U.K. coalition government is providing transparent open data about government spending, Worthy argues that “it is more complex, more unpredictable, and more political than the rhetoric around Open Data indicates” (788). After watching a promotional video regarding government open data (http://opengovernmentdata.org/), I agree with Worthy, the idea of government open data seems simple to develop and is for a good cause, but there are many details that need to be considered. For example, Worthy states that the Agenda’s aim to create “‘armchair auditors’” (i.e. citizens that can hold the government accountable for certain issues) and incorporate participatory “involvement” has rarely occurred, indicating that open data may not necessarily encourage participatory behavior. I believe this failure propagated because the relationships between the government and the citizens need to be transformed. Similar to how VGI has difficulty convincing people that amateur citizen data can be utilized for spatial information, governments have a hard time accepting citizens’ contributions. A lack of bilateral communication between the government and the citizens prevents humans-as-sensors who can provide useful spatial information for a variety of government applications. If implemented efficiently and successfully, bilateral communication can eventually cause governments to cut certain jobs to save money.** However, in the article’s case, little has occurred to encourage the U.K. citizens to provide their own feedback on the government’s open data and their own spatial information to the government, rather “‘neutral’ technology” has hidden the potential for a “neo-liberal view of state-society relations” (789).
Even if the U.K. government encouraged more citizens to provide feedback on their open data, citizen participation may not occur due to lack of interest or knowledge. Although Professor Sieber pointed out to me last class that some VGI scientists may not want citizens to know that their public/open spatial information is collected, I think it is important and ethical to inform citizens of their contributions and there should be approaches to encourage citizens to want to contribute spatial information for government purposes. For instance, if citizens can see that their contributions are valuable and needed for good reasons, then maybe more people will want to participate. Also, providing government spending is certainly transparent, but this type of open data may not be of interest to the common citizens. I honestly would take no interest in how governments personally spend their money, I rather see government data on social or economic phenomena within my residing city/province/country, like crime or poverty.
One last point, this article is a case study that is more relevant to Western democratic governments. Different types and levels of government across the world vary on the amount and type of open data released. Types of democracy in governments vary; for example: in China the government disallows their citizens from accessing Facebook or Google, thus preventing certain open data to be easily accessible to their citizens. Even within Western governments that usually have similar governmental infrastructures such as Canada and USA, there are various regulations on what governmental open data is released or not.
-MTM
** (Note: outsourcing responsibilities to the citizens to cut governmental jobs may not necessarily be ethically, but it could be an incentive to encourage governments to consider citizens’ amateur geospatial information.)