Open government and open data are often presented as the Asterix and Obelix of modern government—one cannot discuss one, without involving the other. Modern government, in this narrative, should open itself up, be more transparent, and allow the governed to have a say in their governance. The usage of technologies, and especially the communication of governmental data, is then thought to be one of the crucial instruments helping governments achieving these goals. Much open government data research, hence, focuses on the publication of open government data, their reuse, and re-users. Recent research trends, by contrast, divert from this focus on data and emphasize the importance of studying open government data in practice, in interaction with practitioners, while simultaneously paying attention to their political character. This commentary looks more closely at the implications of emphasizing the practical and political dimensions of open government data. It argues that researchers should explicate how and in what way open government data policies present solutions to what kind of problems. Such explications should be based on a detailed empirical analysis of how different actors do or do not do open data. The key question to be continuously asked and answered when studying and implementing open government data is how the solutions openness present latch onto the problem they aim to solve.

We present the results of a 2014 survey of Canadian parliamentarians, journalists and bloggers in which respondents were asked to rank competing definitions of open government. Overall, respondents preferred to define open government in terms of access to information and sources. However, controlling for age, ideology and language, we also found that respondents in the different positions ranked definitions of open government differently. Journalists are more likely than any other group to define open government in terms of access to information and sources. In contrast, parliamentarians who were members of a governing party were as likely to choose definitions of open government that emphasized public participation as they were to choose definitions that emphasized access to information. Opposition parliamentarians share more similarities with government parliamentarians than with journalists. These results suggest that key actors in the Canadian policy landscape define open government in ways that are consistent with their institutional interests. We suggest that these results reflect ways in which open government operates more like a buzzword, which helps explain the common pattern whereby opposition parties make promises to be more open and, after taking power, operate in less open ways. Moreover, these results raise questions about the extent to which open government can actually operate as an organizing principle.

This research contributes to the expanding literature on the determinants of government transparency. It uncovers the dynamics of transparency in the Italian case, which shows an interesting reform trajectory: until the late 1980s no transparency provisions existed; since then, provisions have dramatically increased under the impulse of changing patterns of political competition. The analysis of the Italian case highlights that electoral uncertainty for incumbents is a double-edged sword for institutional reform: on the one hand, it incentivizes the adoption of ever-growing transparency provisions; on the other, it jeopardizes the implementation capacity of public agencies by leading to severe administrative burdens.