This article looks at the complex effects of open data in the case of the UK government. The rationale of Open Data in this context was to democratize government, and devolve power to the people. With government spending open to the public, surely there would be more accountability, participation, and information transmission. As mentioned last week by CRAZY15, will the “certainty, validity and utility” of the data decrease as the quantity increases? I feel that similar to the way people behave on social media, governments will become more performative as their actions become more shared and open. The author states that governments have redacted sensitive information, and what is published lacks context. The result is that overall engagement by the public is low, and those who do engage have specific interests. One of the most successful examples of engagement was through a website created by mySociety.org. This organization claims to “make websites that empower citizens worldwide”. An example of one of their other projects is “FixMyStreet”, an open source tool for reporting infrastructure problems to city council. I think that organizations like this are an example of progressive toolmaking in GIS, where VGI can be integrated with open data and effect change. Simply publishing data will not create armchair auditors; we need to create the tools to understand the data.
__AnonTarian__