Open Government, Governance and Sustainable Development: a vision in the post-COVID-19 era

The idea of Open Government, centered on the pillars of transparency, collaboration and participation, has been embedded in many governments to strengthen the creation of democratic governments in accordance with the demands that are immersed in information societies today and that act based on to the principles of accountability, transparency and access to information of general interest. In this sense, through a documentary methodology, the objective of the article is to theoretically describe the influence of Open Government framed governance and sustainable development. Public administration in today's world demands flexibility, creativity, effectiveness, efficiency, participation, cooperation and co-responsibility. Open government is transversal to the 2030 Agenda, because SDG 16 proposes to configure a new public governance framework and a renewed state architecture that allow the promotion of peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, facilitate access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.

Dados governamentais abertos sobre a COVID-19 no Brasil: avalia??o do potencial de re?so

In the COVID-19 pandemic, access to data on the disease has become strategic for controlling public health measures. Faced with the health emergency, a large volume of data needed to be minimally organized and made available in a quick and automated way, composing the open government data. After two years of a pandemic and in order to present an overview of the publication of open data by the federal government of Brazil, on COVID-19, this study sought to evaluate the open government data made available through the Application Programming Interface (API). The methodology involved the identification of datasets on COVID-19 in Brazil, in Application Programming Interface, until April 2022, the analysis of the documentation and the evaluation using the DGABr metric. The evaluation considered the five perspectives of the metric that measures fundamental elements about the open government data, essential for interoperability and consequently reuse of the data and was based on the published documentation. As results, the open government data on COVID-19, made available in Application Programming Interface, presented a good score in the metric, reaching level 4. This result indicates that the use of APIs was an important and agile technological resource for the organization and availability of open government data, promoting its reuse. However, it is important to highlight that this availability to society was late, it needs constant improvements, mainly in technical issues such as the connection of data with other sources, and that the effective reuse actions were limited to data visualization panels on COVID-19.

Effects of Visual Communication Design Accessibility (VCDA) Guidelines for Low Vision on Public and Open Government Health Data.

Since 2019, the Korean government's investments in making data more accessible to the public have grown by 337%. However, open government data, which should be accessible to everyone, are not entirely accessible to people with low vision, who represent an information-vulnerable class. Emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, decrease face-to-face encounters and inevitably increase untact encounters. Thus, the information gap experienced by low-vision people, who are underprivileged in terms of information, will be further widened, and they may consequently face various disadvantages. This study proposed visual communication design accessibility (VCDA) guidelines for people with low vision. Introduced screens enhanced by accessibility guidelines were presented to 16 people with low vision and 16 people with normal vision and the speed of visual information recognition was analyzed. No statistically significant difference (p > 0.05) was found due to the small sample size; however, this study's results approached significance with improved visual recognition speed for people with low vision after adopting VCDA. As a result of the intervention, the visual information recognition speed of both normal and low-vision people improved. Thus, our results can help improve information recognition speed among people with normal and low vision.

Open government data for crisis management: Rapid information sharing and co-creation of services

During the COVID-19 pandemic, open government data (OGD) was often used as a valuable crisis management resource. Unfortunately, there is limited research that explores how OGD can be used during times of crisis as a crisis management tool. To ensure that OGD can be used effectively in future crises, there is a need to understand how it may be used and what benefits its usage may bring. This paper brings new insight into this topic by conducting a comparative exploratory case study of three Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries – Czech Republic, Estonia and Latvia, where OGD was used at different levels to help manage different aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of this research, three contributions are made: (1) it integrates OGD into previous crisis management literature, offering new and initial conceptual propositions;(2) it demonstrates how OGD enables the co-creation of new services that create public value during times of crisis;and (3) it provides empirical examples of OGD-driven co-created services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Information Polity: The International Journal of Government & Democracy in the Information Age is the property of IOS Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

BIG DATA FRAMEWORK TO EVALUATE AND ANALYSE NOTATIONAL COVID-19 IMMUNIZATION PROGRAMMED (NCIP) IN MALAYSIA: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Many governments around the world have launched their open government data (OGD) portal to improve the government's transparency by sharing their data with the public such as National Covid-19 Immunization Programmed (NCIP), which has been published at https://github.com/CITF-Malaysia/citf-public. However, increasing the number of datasets, data types, volume and complexity will be raised the integration issues. There-fore, it is essential to evaluate and analyses those huge amounts of these datasets. NCIP provides multiple data sources and datasets. These may raise the Big Data (BD) issues and pose various evaluation and analysis problems to produce valuable information. To generate meaningful linked data to support the purposes of this research study, the relationship between these disparate datasets needs to be identified and construct a comprehensive framework. In order to understand the causes of OGD development of big data, this study involves a detailed examination and comparison of existing theories and actual approaches to handle public sector open data concerns. According to the review, the framework was dominantly adopted over architecture, infrastructures, theoretical and conceptual framework in previous research to examine the revolution of government public accessible data. According to the findings, most existing frameworks do not con-sider the demand for public open data in health such as NCPI. Previous re-search on OGD for health has a lesser number of advanced BD frameworks. In the public sector, there is still a lack of investment and use of Big Data. The findings will aid academics in doing empirical research on the revealed need, as well as offer decision-makers with a better understanding of how to leverage OGD adoption in health by taking relevant actions. © School of Engineering, Taylor's University.

Open Government Data as a panacea against corruption and Mismanagement: An analysis of Open Public Data on COVID-19-related procurement at the sub-national level

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge impact on public purchasing. As a response to the necessity to react quickly and procure goods that were urgently needed, governments set new rules allowing for quicker procurement processes. Those processes often seemed opaque and incomprehensible, creating a space for corruption and inefficiency. Publishing information as open data helps shine a light on procurement data. This paper aims to assess how transparency policies and open data strategies can allow civil society to monitor government expenditures, particularly expenditures made in moments of crisis. The authors looked deeper into procurement data at the regional level, exemplified by the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). In an analysis which includes the compliance with international standards such as the Open Contracting Standard and the level of completeness of the data published, the authors found an incomplete data landscape with little information available. Major concerns for the data quality are poorly written documentation, lack of data standardization and law enforcement, and missing information on key variables. © 2022 Owner/Author.

Open innovation during the COVID-19 pandemic policy responses in South Africa and Kenya.

Most governments upscaled technological adaptations and integration into public service delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic policy responses globally. This article analyzes the context of open innovation (OI) applications and initiatives that characterized public innovation trends and impacted government agencies' responses to contain different consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in four critical areas: economic recovery strategies, logistics and supply chain, digital health-care partnerships, and collaborations. We show how policy responses increased the uptake and upscaling of OI strategies in Kenya and South Africa. In both countries, government agencies, among other things, upgraded innovative or created online integrated portals for instant data sharing and used knowledge management platforms to monitor the COVID-19 pandemic prevalence in transportation systems and the delivery of vaccines. These enabled effective policy communication and tracing of COVID-19 patients, organizing the population for the vaccination drive, and generating timely data for further action in the four mentioned sectors. Related Articles: Lachapelle, Erick, Thomas Bergeron, Richard Nadeau, Jean-François Daoust, Ruth Dassonneville, and Éric Bélanger. 2021. "Citizens' Willingness to Support New Taxes for COVID-19 Measures and the Role of Trust." Politics & Policy 49(3): 534-65. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12404.Liu, Zezhao, and Zhengwei Zhu. 2021. "China's Pathway to Domestic Emergency Management: Unpacking the Characteristics in System Evolution." Politics & Policy 49(3): 619-50. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12407.Pelizzo, Riccardo, and Abel Kinyondo. 2014. "Public Accounts Committees in Eastern and Southern Africa: A Comparative Analysis." Politics & Policy 42(1): 77-102. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12062.

La mayoría de los gobiernos mejoraron las adaptaciones tecnológicas y la integración en la prestación de servicios públicos durante las respuestas políticas a la pandemia de COVID­19 a nivel mundial. Este artículo analiza el contexto de las aplicaciones e iniciativas de Innovación Abierta (OI) que caracterizaron las tendencias de innovación pública e impactaron las respuestas de las agencias gubernamentales para contener diferentes consecuencias de la pandemia de COVID­19 en cuatro áreas críticas: estrategias de recuperación económica, logística y cadena de suministro, digital asociaciones y colaboraciones de atención médica. Mostramos cómo las respuestas políticas aumentaron la aceptación y la ampliación de las estrategias de OI en Kenia y Sudáfrica. En ambos países, las agencias gubernamentales, entre otras cosas, mejoraron o crearon portales integrados en línea innovadores para el intercambio instantáneo de datos y utilizaron plataformas de gestión del conocimiento para monitorear la prevalencia de la pandemia de COVID­19 en los sistemas de transporte y la entrega de vacunas. Estos permitieron una comunicación política efectiva y el rastreo de pacientes con COVID­19, organizando a la población para la campaña de vacunación y generando datos oportunos para acciones futuras en los cuatro sectores mencionados.

A knowledge elicitation approach to traffic accident analysis in open data: comparing periods before and after the Covid-19 outbreak.

Extracting knowledge from open data of traffic accidents has been attracting increasing attention to policymakers responsible for road safety. This article presents a knowledge elicitation approach to exploring the determinants of traffic accidents from open government data of an urban area in Taiwan. The collected open dataset contains 34 decisional attributes and one predictive attribute (i.e., type of injury, including head, breast, leg), and 47,974 cases. Prediction models using a classification-oriented mechanism and generated rules that considered datasets from before (B-dataset; 30,116 cases) and after (A-dataset; 17,868 cases) beginning to combat the Covid-19 pandemic in an urban area of Taiwan were compared. The findings showed that prediction accuracy was acceptable but not high, at 70.73% for B-dataset and 74.77% for A-dataset. Determinants in the human and vehicle categories revealed higher classification ranks than those in the temporal and environment categories. Traffic accidents involving motorcycles were 5.13% higher in A-dataset, whereas those involving cars were 4.11% lower. Injury on leg or foot was 3.46% higher in A-dataset, whereas other types of injury were up to 1.00% lower. The average support for rules in the A-dataset rule base and the simplicity of the A-dataset decision tree were higher than those of B-dataset. The research demonstrates the value of open government data in prediction model development and knowledge elicitation to support policymaking in the traffic safety domain.

Data Quality Applied to Open Databases: “COVID-19 Cases” and “COVID-19 Vaccines”

To increase transparency, encourage citizen participation in decision making, and to respond efficiently, governments make a very important set of information available to their community. This information became even more relevant during COVID-19. However, if these data do not have a high level of quality, information loses reliability. An evaluation to measure data quality of two public files was conducted: “COVID-19. Cases registered in the Argentine Republic.” and “COVID-19 vaccines. Doses administered in the Argentine Republic.” using the model provided by the ISO/IEC 25012 standard and the evaluation process defined by ISO/IEC 25040. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Development of an Open Government Data (OGD) Evaluation Framework for BIM

Open government data (OGD) provide an opportunity for developing various services by disclosing information monopolized by the government to the public so that the private sector can use it. The private sector is utilizing this to improve the work efficiency and productivity by collecting, analyzing, and reprocessing OGD for various work steps of a BIM-based design project. However, most studies on OGD focus on the functionality and usability of data portals and the factors for evaluating the data itself such as openness, accountability, and transparency. This study aims to provide an evaluation framework for OGD for the AEC industry to assess the data utilization environment in order to improve the productivity of BIM-based projects. Several OGD principles found within related literature are discussed, and from them we extract evaluation framework levels. Then, we validate the proposed framework by applying it to a case of developing a BIM-based design support system using OGD datasets. This research concludes by suggesting that to effectively utilize OGD in the construction industry, the private sector should simply view data after collecting them, create an institutional environment for creating new values by reprocessing data, and build an active data utilization roadmap based on this environment.

Rendición social de cuentas en España. El papel de las organizaciones de la sociedad civil en la promoción de buena gobernanza durante la pandemia derivada de la COVID-19

El éxito en la construcción de buena gobernanza necesita de la confluencia de, al menos, tres variables: a) una coyuntura crítica;b) reformas iniciales que generen organizaciones de accountability horizontal, y c) una coalición de diversas fuerzas políticas y sociales con suficiente capacidad para superar los obstáculos de la acción colectiva y los puntos de veto del sistema. Este trabajo indaga en la labor de las organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONG) en esa coalición durante la pandemia provocada por la COVID-19. Utilizando una metodología propia del enfoque de la grounded theory, se usaron dos conceptos de sensibilización: el de buena gobernanza y el de social accountability. Con todo ello, se pudieron identificar veinte ONG para narrar la actividad de control sobre la integridad de la gobernanza en España. Se definió como unidad de estudio objetivo las campañas y, tras un análisis teórico y de revisión de literatura, se identificó qué se podía considerar éxito en este tipo de actividades de control social. Finalmente, desde la propia visión de los sujetos de estudio, se analizaron dos campañas desarrolladas durante la pandemia. En ellas se pudo comprobar la importancia que dan las ONG a un enfoque estratégico frente a la mera confrontación, y muy esencialmente, la importancia de trabajar en coalición interna y con los actores públicos dedicados a labores de accountability horizontal.Alternate : Success in building good governance requires the confluence of at least three variables: a) a critical juncture;b) initial reforms to generate horizontal accountability organizations;and c) a coalition of diverse political and social forces with sufficient capacity to overcome the collective action obstacles and the veto points of the system. This article investigates the work developed by NGOs in this coalition during the pandemic caused by COVID-19. Following the grounded theory approach, two sensitization concepts were used, namely, «good governance» and «social accountability». With all this, twenty NGOs were identified to narrate the control on governance integrity in Spain. Campaigns were defined as the target unit of study and, after a theoretical analysis and literature review, the understanding of success in this type of social control activities was established. Finally, two campaigns developed during the pandemic were analyzed from the NGOs’ point of view. These campaigns showed the importance that NGOs in this field give to a strategic approach instead of mere confrontation and, more in particular, the importance of working in an internal coalition and with public actors engaged in horizontal accountability.

Collaboration and public safety digital resources. Improving citizen self-protection

This paper shows and analyzes the incorporation of open government into public security policies based on relevant and pioneering cases put into practice at a global level. Public safety is presented as an inalienable need of societies, in the face of threats such as terrorism, crime, catastrophes and episodes of collective violence. The current state of open government as a style of government is briefly reviewed and the main organizations responsible for the matter on the international scene are identified. The high potential for applying open government to public security policies is highlighted, being especially useful for developing anti-corruption, crime prevention and police efficiency measures, among others. Cases such as the USAID Global Development Laboratory, the search portal for dangerous criminals Europe's Most Wanted Fugitives and the missing persons portal of the CNDES, the Alertcops police application or the Covid-19 contagion tracking applications such as Corona-Warn-App They exemplify a growing interest of governments to promote the participation and collaboration of civil society in maintaining social peace and protecting the community itself.

Open data for accountability at times of exception: an exploratory analysis during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose: At exceptional times, governments are entrusted with greater authority. This creates significant concerns over governments’ transparency and accountability. This paper aims to pursue a twofold objective: assessing the patterns of open government data during the extraordinary time initiated by the COVID-19 pandemic drawing relevant policy and managerial implications regarding the future development of open data as a mechanism of accountability at times of exception. Design/methodology/approach: The study follows exploratory research, relying on a web content analysis. The empirical setting is provided by 20 Italian regional governments during the COVID-19 pandemic as a shock that has triggered an exceptional time for governments. Findings: Results on the desirable (extrinsic and intrinsic) characteristics of the data analyzed show that in the empirical setting investigated, open data does not enable to properly address the accountability concerns of a demanding forum at times of exception. Research limitations/implications: The paper enriches the state of the art on accountability and provides both scholars and practitioners (e.g. policymakers, managers, etc.) a current reading of data-driven orientation as a stimulus to the accountability of public administrations during exceptional times. Originality/value: The paper investigates open data as a condition of public accountability, assessing whether and how Italian regional governments have concretely opened their data to enable their forums to elaboration of an informed opinion about their conduct during the ongoing pandemic. This fosters the understanding of how accountability is deployed in times of exception in light of the possibilities offered by the availability of online platforms. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Smarter Open Government Data for Society 5.0: Are Your Open Data Smart Enough?

Nowadays, governments launch open government data (OGD) portals that provide data that can be accessed and used by everyone for their own needs. Although the potential economic value of open (government) data is assessed in millions and billions, not all open data are reused. Moreover, the open (government) data initiative as well as users' intent for open (government) data are changing continuously and today, in line with IoT and smart city trends, real-time data and sensor-generated data have higher interest for users. These "smarter" open (government) data are also considered to be one of the crucial drivers for the sustainable economy, and might have an impact on information and communication technology (ICT) innovation and become a creativity bridge in developing a new ecosystem in Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0. The paper inspects OGD portals of 60 countries in order to understand the correspondence of their content to the Society 5.0 expectations. The paper provides a report on how much countries provide these data, focusing on some open (government) data success facilitating factors for both the portal in general and data sets of interest in particular. The presence of "smarter" data, their level of accessibility, availability, currency and timeliness, as well as support for users, are analyzed. The list of most competitive countries by data category are provided. This makes it possible to understand which OGD portals react to users' needs, Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0 request the opening and updating of data for their further potential reuse, which is essential in the digital data-driven world.

Open government data, uncertainty and coronavirus: An infodemiological case study.

Governments around the world have made data on COVID-19 testing, case numbers, hospitalizations and deaths openly available, and a breadth of researchers, media sources and data scientists have curated and used these data to inform the public about the state of the coronavirus pandemic. However, it is unclear if all data being released convey anything useful beyond the reputational benefits of governments wishing to appear open and transparent. In this analysis we use Ontario, Canada as a case study to assess the value of publicly available SARS-CoV-2 positive case numbers. Using a combination of real data and simulations, we find that daily publicly available test results probably contain considerable error about individual risk (measured as proportion of tests that are positive, population based incidence and prevalence of active cases) and that short term variations are very unlikely to provide useful information for any plausible decision making on the part of individual citizens. Open government data can increase the transparency and accountability of government, however it is essential that all publication, use and re-use of these data highlight their weaknesses to ensure that the public is properly informed about the uncertainty associated with SARS-CoV-2 information.

The first statewide, open access dataset tracking public records requests in New Jersey.

State freedom of information laws are vital mechanisms for providing public access to government records and supporting civic engagement through the effectuation of a public policy of transparency at the state level within the United States, not unlike their federal counterpart, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). New Jersey state law facilitates public access to government records under the Open Public Records Act (OPRA). Codified at N.J.S.A. 47:1A-1 et seq., OPRA applies to state, county and local public authorities but exempts the judicial and legislative branches from its disclosure requirements. Since OPRA took effect in 2002, it has been difficult to track the full extent of law's impact across New Jersey's 21 counties, 565 municipalities, and numerous state agencies, school districts and independent authorities, all of which must individually respond to requests under the law. To the best of the author's knowledge, no official source has compiled detailed metadata tracking the content and disposition of OPRA requests at the state, regional and municipal levels within New Jersey using individual requests, and authorities rarely proactively disclose their responses to requests they receive, necessitating further data collection to support research into the impacts of this law. This article presents the OPRAmachine dataset: data containing detailed metadata on public records requests submitted to state & local public authorities in New Jersey since October 2017 collected through the implementation of information and communication technologies (ICT) to facilitate the freedom of information request process. The data was collected using an open-source web interface that allowed users to submit an OPRA request to public authorities, with responses stored in a database and made available via the internet. After their request received a response, users were asked to answer a single survey question describing the status of their request, with their answer used to classify the request. Descriptive statistics, tables and frequencies were produced for the dataset and are included in this article. These data will assist state policymakers and other interested parties with assessing trends in OPRA requests across multiple types of public authorities & geographic regions. These data can inform more efficient government records management procedures, foster civic engagement by increasing government transparency and can inform the development of possible reforms to the OPRA law by showing trends in requests & responses that can be used to evaluate the law's implementation throughout the state.