# **_Based on the evidence currently available, to what extent and for what reasons is the use of OGD associated with higher levels of accountability and improved service delivery in developing-country contexts?_**

To begin to answer this question, this research will first attempt to determine whether a statistical association actually exists to support the purported relationships between the variables. In doing so, the research will rely on a unique data set that operationalizes OGD, government accountability, and service delivery—including both provision and outcomes—while operationalizing other intervening variables that capture critical conditions for improved accountability and service delivery. Given the paucity of _crosscountry_ comparative studies on this topic, this research will utilize data for over 25 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa over a time horizon for which data currently exist.

# **_Significance and Contributions_**

The present research aims to investigate the relationship between OGD, accountability, and service delivery in order to provide one of the first statistical assessments of the available evidence in a cross-country comparative context. Importantly, it is not the intent of the present research to provide a _definitive_ or _causal_ assessment of the relationship among OGD, accountability, and service delivery. Rather, given the limitations of the data available, the empirical contribution of this research is to flesh out potential correlations between variables in order to provide an _initial_ assessment of OGD’s efficacy. In doing so, this research attempts to identify key indicators—which operationalize a conceptual framework gleaned from the literature—to test what associations may exist between variables. Moreover, the empirical contribution of this research seeks to tease out and test the effects of a number of intervening variables, as suggested by the literature, in order to have a fuller sense of the political economy dynamics at play.

In addition to this empirical contribution, however small, this research also seeks to make a contribution to the theoretical literature by providing a conceptual framework, which captures current discussions and debates on OGD, transparency, accountability, and service delivery. In addition, this research seeks to contribute to the collective understanding of the necessary and sufficient conditions that support OGD, government accountability, and improved service delivery more broadly. In particular, this research hopes to demonstrate the enabling role that access to information and political participation can play in terms of leveraging sources of OGD to hold governments answerable and accountable to citizens. Likewise, in political environments where these factors are legally and institutionally constrained, this research seeks to test alternative hypotheses with respect to public service delivery, including the managerial role played by bureaucrats themselves as well as transparency and social accountability movements more broadly.

A final practical contribution of this work is to provide a better understanding of how OGD is released and utilized in developing country contexts with respect to accountability and service delivery. As such, the countries included in this assessment were chosen given that OGD has the potential to more significantly “move the needle” with respect to accountability and service delivery in these environments than in highincome country contexts, where sophisticated accountability institutions and service delivery structures are already in place.<sup>21</sup> Finally, and perhaps most significantly, the focus of this research on developing countries is especially salient as these often represent the weakest governance environments, which are in most need of improvements to public accountability and service delivery institutions.

> 21 The logic behind this stems from the notion of marginally decreasing returns to investment, whereby investment in low-income countries yields higher returns than in more advanced economies due to the scarcity of capital; however, these initial returns quickly decline as levels of investment increase. As such, OGD performance in the sample countries is currently very small as are indicator scores measuring accountability and service delivery. Accordingly, this research argues that in these developing country contexts, the potential growth of OGD may have a significant bearing on broader governance outcomes than in countries on the frontier in terms of accountability and service delivery performance.

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