Discussing Open Government as a Concept: A Comparison between the Perceptions of Public Managers and Current Academic Debate

Edgar A. Ruvalcaba-Gomez, J. Ignacio Criado, J. Ramon Gil-Garcia
June 8, 2018

Abstract

Open government is definitely not a new concept. 

For almost a decade, countries around the world have been implementing open government initiatives as a way to increase transparency, improved accountability, fight corruption, or foster economic development.

However, there is still no consensus about the constitutive dimensions of open government and how they are perceived by public managers in different contexts. Based on a systematic literature

review and a survey administered to Spanish local governments, this paper discusses the concept of Open Government (OG) and its dimensions.

According to our results, public managers working on OG initiatives perceive OG through three different lenses:

a) democratic values of co-responsibility

b) technological innovation

c) availability and access to information

This new categorization of OG perspectives provides a valuable contribution to the scientific debate about what OG is and how this new public management strategy is perceived by local government managers.