Institute of Development Studies.
Bio
Author Biography
Rosie McGee is a Research Fellow at IDS. She works on citizen engagement in governance and social change processes, focusing on accountability, responsiveness and power. Rosie has co-led a major impact review of transparency and accountability work, conducted research on citizen agency in fragile and violent settings (especially Colombia and Mozambique), and is actively involved in monitoring, evaluation and facilitating learning in complex governance programmes.
Institute of Development Studies.
Bio
Author Biography
Duncan Edwards is Programme Manager for the research, evidence and learning component of Making All Voices Count at IDS. His work focuses on building an evidence base on citizen engagement and accountable responsive governance. His current research interests include the use of research knowledge in development, and the roles of innovation and technology in governance, voice, transparency and accountability work. A long-standing advocate of opening up IDS data and knowledge, he has supported partner organisations by strengthening their technical capacity and articulating their theories of change and the role of data in them.
Volume 47
Number 1
Published: January 24, 2016
Open government and open data are new areas of research, advocacy and activism that have entered the governance field alongside the more established areas of transparency and accountability. This article reviews recent scholarship in these areas, pinpointing contributions to more open, transparent, accountable and responsive governance via improved practice, projects and programmes. The authors set the rest of the articles from this IDS Bulletin in the context of the ideas, relationships, processes, behaviours, policy frameworks and aid funding practices of the last five years, and critically discuss questions and weaknesses that limit the effectiveness and impact of this work. Identifying conceptual ambiguity as a key problem, they offer a series of definitions to help overcome the technical and political difficulties this causes. They also identify hype and euphemism, and offer a series of conclusions to help restore meaning and ideological content to work on open government and open data in transparent and accountable governance.
