Do FOI laws and open government data deliver as anti-corruption policies? Evidence from a cross-country study

In election times, political parties promise in their manifestos to pass reforms increasing access to government information to root out corruption and improve public service delivery. Scholars have already offered several fascinating explanations of why governments adopt transparency policies that constrain their choices. However, knowledge of their impacts is limited. Does greater access to information deliver on its promises as an anti-corruption policy? While some research has already addressed this question in relation to freedom of information laws, the emergence of new digital technologies enabled new policies, such as open government data. Its effects on corruption remain empirically underexplored due to its novelty and a lack of measurements. In this article, I provide the first empirical study of the relationship between open government data, relative to FOI laws, and corruption. I propose a theoretical framework, which specifies conditions necessary for FOI laws and open government data to affect corruption levels, and I test it on a novel cross-country dataset. The results suggest that the effects of open government data on corruption are conditional upon the quality of media and internet freedom. Moreover, other factors, such as free and fair elections, independent and accountable judiciary, or economic development, are far more critical for tackling corruption than increasing access to information. These findings are important for policies. In particular, digital transparency reforms will not yield results in the anti-corruption fight unless robust provisions safeguarding media and internet freedom complement them.     

The influence of the PSI directive on open government data: An overview of recent developments

This paper looks at the role of the European Directive on re-use of public sector information in the current trend towards opening up government data. After discussing the PSI directive, it gives an overview of current policies and practices with regard to open government data in the Member States. It is argued that the success of the open government data movement in some Member States can be related to the confusion or ignorance about the relationship between traditional freedom of information legislation and the re-use of public sector data. If future information policies decide to follow this trend, they should always ensure that existing rights on freedom of information are not harmed.     

Reforms to counter a culture of secrecy: Open government in Australia

Governments for most of recorded history have surrounded their information and decision-making with a culture of secrecy. By the latter half of the 20th century western liberal democracies, driven by right-to-know movements, slowly moved away from secrecy towards more openness of government through public access to its information. Australia, with a series of reforms beginning in the late 1970s, declared in 2010 that government information was a national resource, and public access was the default position. This paper, by providing a history of the Australian Commonwealth legislative and regulatory reforms, their impetus and interpretations, explores the ebb and flow of openness and the intended and sometimes unintended, consequences for traditional government secrecy. Using the complete freedom of information datasets made available by these reforms, the paper presents an insight into government attitudes to openness by providing access to its information. These datasets also enable research into government and bureaucratic actions to pushback against these reforms for pragmatic or ideological reasons. The paper concludes that although there continues to be worrying vestiges of secrecy, on balance, Australia has achieved much in countering a culture of secrecy and the delivering more openness of government.     

Library Policy and Legislation: a European Perspective

Why, in the last 5 years, have at least three European organizations — the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and the European Commission — devoted so many studies, investigations and, finally, policy documents to library policy and legislation? The answer is in the enlarged scope for library and information work and in the new emerging factors that are permeating its policy and planning. These factors are: convergence, globalization and participation.The author examines the four areas in which library and information planners are called to focus their policies — freedom of expression and free access to information, libraries within national information policies, libraries and the knowledge industries, and the protection of library heritage — and how these areas are covered by policy documents, in particular by the recently issued Council of Europe/EBLIDA Guidelines on library legislation and policy in Europe.     

欧盟推进信息资源公共获取的模式及其借鉴意义

文章探讨欧盟及其成员国推进信息资源公共获取的策略，包括公共部门信息资源公开与再利用政策、大力发展电子政务以及鼓励开放存取等措施，并探讨了对我国的借鉴意义。     

欢盟政府信息公开制度评析

研究深入调查欧盟及其成员国的政府信息公开制度的建设,以及欧盟相关法律的执行状况,总结了欧盟政府信息公开制度的四个特点,并且比较中国的《政府信息公开条例》和欧盟的第1049／2001号规章的差异,最后为中国的政府信息公开制度提出一些建议。     

Cataloging and Archiving State Government Publications

The academic libraries in Alabama have been hampered in their ability to provide government information to researchers by the lack of a functioning state depository system. Digital publishing can make timely distribution and widespread accessibility of state government information possible if these online documents can be captured and archived before they are removed from agency Web sites. This article describes a year-long project to capture, archive, and catalog government publications by a catalog unit.     

Latent transparency and trust in government: Unexpected findings from two survey experiments

Transparency is popularly believed to enhance the public's trust in government, yet experimental studies have found mixed results. One explanation is that public trust may respond more positively to a kind of “latent transparency” in which citizens highly value the mere potential for open access to government information, even if they may have more negative reactions when presented with the particular content of actual government information, documents, or data. To test this hypothesis, we designed two survey experiments in which samples of US adults were primed with general information about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or the existence of open government data.Compared to controls, we find that awareness of FOIA rights and requirements (latent transparency) tended to be unrelated, or even slightly negatively related, to trust of government agencies, contrary to our expectations. Our findings, combined with prior evidence, suggest that—even in the case of latent transparency—the popular belief in transparency's positive effects on citizen trust needs a more critical examination. Implications for the theory and practice of transparency are discussed.     

User experience of government documents: A framework for informing design decisions

People still use documents in many everyday government processes. From tax payments to passport requests, citizens have to interact with low-interactivity information artifacts such as reports, maps and datasets, among many others. Despite efforts to improve information delivery in the public sector, effective information usage remains a critical topic of action and research. The user experience of government documents has rarely been assessed, despite them being regularly published and frequently used. Considering this, the two following research questions arise: 1) How can government documents be classified (or grouped) in terms of user experience? 2) How can the user experience of government documents be monitored over time in order to inform design decisions? Working with a public agency in Chile, we develop and test a classification and monitoring framework based on two online surveys (N?=?338 and N?=?298). We then propose a framework for understanding user experience of government documents in these three dimensions: interaction goal, volume of information and ease of understanding. Using a graphical representation to classify user experience provides greater visibility of the current status of information produced by a public organization. Furthermore, by monitoring the user experience of a government document at different times, organizations can understand the effect of their design decisions and improve their service quality by implementing user-centered processes.     

欧美政府信息资源公益性开发利用研究

首先,对欧美在政府信息资源开发利用过程中的主要信息类型进行介绍,然后,分别从开发主体和开发方式两个方面,对欧美政府信息资源的公益性开发利用情况进行分析和总结,同时,列举出部分典型案例.简要分析了欧盟和美国在政府信息资源公益性开发利用中的相同点和不同点,最后,总结出欧美政府信息资源公益性开发利用的经验以及对我国的启示.     

国外开放政府数据描述规范的调查与分析

[目的/意义]对开放政府数据进行规范描述有利于将政府数据资源相关联,提高政府数据资源的公众发现和重用,从而推动我国政府数据统一开放门户建设,促进尚处于起步阶段的我国政府数据开放共享的实现。[方法/过程]采用文献调查法,对开放政府数据水平较高的英国、美国、加拿大、澳大利亚、新西兰、欧盟的政府数据开放门户及其相关公共部门的元数据描述规范进行调研。[结果/结论]由国外情形,建议我国开放政府数据描述规范采用国际通用标准拟定本国元数据标准草案、适应网络特点编写控制词表、统一元数据格式,并提出我国开放政府数据元数据元素集草案,以期更好地实现政府数据开放共享。     

EUROPEAN ATTITUDES TO THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITY AND TO 1992

Most Europeans are now and have been strongly in favor of theircountry's participation in the European Community. The conspicuousexceptions are the British and Danish publics who are scepticalof the benefit they will derive from their countries' involvementin the Community. The advent of 1992 and closer European integrationis focusing the minds of governments, political institutions,business organizations and pressure groups, if not really thepublics of the member states. It is certainly having an impacton strategic thinking in other areas of the world, includingespecially EFTA countries, the Eastern block countries, theUSA and Japan. Over the nearly two decades in which the Europeans'views of their country's membership of the Common Market hasbeen measured by the EC's Eurobarometer, the average level ofsupport has been 57 per cent with only about one EC citizenin ten opposed. The pace of European economic integration hasquickened with the agreement of the EC countries on economicharmonization by the target year, 1992. This has the supportof most Europeans and many also support further social, economicand political harmonization and even integration in the comingyears. The focus on 1992 has been only slightly deflected bythe recent events in the Eastern European countries, and mayhave the effect of strengthening and, over the long term, quickeningthese goals.     

Access to Online Local Government Public Records: The Privacy Paradox

Local governments are required to provide open access to their records as a matter of law; however, there is growing public concern about the security of private information found in these files. Before the advent of the Internet, individuals enjoyed a level of practical obscurity, as viewing public records required the time and effort of a visit to the records' physical location and prevented easy access to details of individual files. However, the introduction of the Web and the availability of digital documents have caused an unavoidable conflict. On the one hand, the government is required to provide the public with a transparent view of its activities by offering open access to its records, and on the other hand, local governments need to secure their citizens’ right to privacy. Especially since September 11, 2001, and the problems associated with identity theft, finding the right balance between accessibility and privacy is not a simple task. The purpose of this article is to report on the accessibility and extent of personal information found within online local government records and to understand how local governments are managing the dichotomy between providing open access to their records with maintaining the privacy rights of the public.     

Looking for datasets to open: An exploration of government officials' information behaviors in open data policy implementation

In recent years, more and more government administrations around the world are participating in open data policy implementation. Government officials who are charged with implementing this new policy usually need to look for related information for deciding what datasets to open to the public. Accordingly, a research gap exists in understanding government officials' information behaviors in implementing open data policy. By using a qualitative approach to conduct semi-structured interviews with government officials who have extensive experience in implementing open data policy, this study explores government officials' information behaviors in searching and selecting datasets for open data publication. Specifically, this research investigates government officials' information needs, the employed information sources, and the intervening variables that influence their information behaviors. While open data is an ongoing policy implementation, government officials' information behaviors form an iterative cycle where information needs continually occur, information seeking activities are conducted by using a variety of information sources, and the obtained information is used to satisfy information needs. The findings and discussions of this study are expected to provide insights of government officials' data search and selection to practitioners and to enrich the current literature of open government data.     

Disinformation,the Exxon Valdez,and the Search for Truth:

Prior investigations have indicated that government documents are a relatively underutilized resource by most librarians. Almost invariably, these studies have been of academic libraries and librarians. It is highly probable that scholars use documents unobtrusively and may be overlooked in many surveys, but it must be assumed that they are assisted in their use by knowledgeable documents librarians. A survey of documents use by public reference librarians serving 25 geographically dispersed population centers revealed that there was substantial awareness and use of U.S. government documents. Respondents indicated that they believed accredited programs in library education should provide reference librarians with the backgrounds necessary to assist with reference questions which concern current, but historical issues. Privatization or the commercialization of federal information sources is discussed as the possible consequence of the lack of knowledge and use of documents which can be used for reference purposes, as opposed to those which provide technical information. A Current Issues Seminar for programs of library education is proposed. Using current issues of the day as examples, the content of a typical seminar is reviewed.     

Searching FOIA Libraries for government information

FOIA Libraries are the repositories for many documents released under the FOIA¹ (Freedom of Information Act), i.e., “responsive documents,” by federal agencies and their sub agencies. Awareness of search terminology for FOIA Libraries or electronic reading rooms can assist the public and researchers to locate publicly available government information, including responsive documents. Responsive documents are the responses to FOIA requests that can be posted (in full or with redactions) by federal agencies. FOIA responses may not be easily findable by major web search engines. The goal of this article is to educate readers about government and non-government FOIA resources and declassified document repositories for discovery. It is important for researchers, journalists and citizens to use “FOIA Libraries,” “Electronic Reading Room,” or “FOIA tag” to search for documents concerning government activities and operations that are released under the FOIA on the web. In addition to aiding in the research process, access to responsive documents information furthers democratic goals of transparency and supports findability of government information by the public.     

Technological transformation of United States government documents librarianship

The United States Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) is a government mandated program that distributes government information to the populace through designated “depository” libraries. From the 1970s until today, due to advancing technology, government documents librarianship has undergone several transformative changes. Beginning with distribution of government information on microfilm through the appearance of electronic information in the 1980s exponentially increased the amount of information available to users, information that often came with a large learning curve to use. The proliferation of government information transformed government documents librarianship from a self-contained, stand-alone, bibliographically focused entity to a more forward-facing, user-centric focus.The depository community is largely led by academic institutions, which account for 72% of depositories. They have lobbied the FDLP for increased access, better training, improvements in delivery, and assurances that electronic information would be found, captured, and preserved. In addition, their efforts have ensured digitization of the historic print depository collection is largely complete. However, until federal statutory legislation changes, significant amounts of born-digital government information is being lost to time.     

Promoting European Union depository collections in the United States through bibliographic instruction

The European Union (EU) maintains a system of depository libraries in the United States. This study surveyed 55 of the U.S. European Union depositories concerning the scope of their efforts to provide bibliographic instruction for the EU collection. Survey respondents were also asked about other promotional efforts. The study found that librarians responsible for the European Union collections were enthusiastic about the applicability of the materials to a variety of research questions, but that the time available for instruction in their use was limited. In designing an instruction program, respondents indicated that it is important to include information about the structure and function of the EU, as well as information about the use of the major reference tools.     

Open government

Access to government information in electronic form is essential to the realization of a civil society, democratization, and a rule of law. Freedom of information issues are centrally important in countries around the world, and the Internet's World Wide Web offers the potential to provide freedom of information at low cost. Achieving a sound information policy to promote open government requires constant vigilance by those who care about the goal. The greatest threat is state sponsored monopoly. State sponsored monopolies are inimical to open government and rule of law because they open the possibility of censorship, because they raise prices and increase cost, and because they deprive the public of new technology developments. Agencies should never seek to restrict redissemination or to prescribe prices at which information may be distributed to redisseminated. Copyright law may be interpreted to exclude the possibility of copyright in basic public information. Finally, the proposed database protection treaty now pending before the World Intellectual Property Organization should be opposed, unless drafters add a compulsory license provision to mandate multiple sources and channels for public information locked up by intellectual property and database rights.