# **II. LITERATURE REVIEW**

The central research question proposed above sits at the intersection of a wide range of theoretical and empirical literature relevant to modern public-sector management and international development. In particular, this research touches on previous work related to the delineation of “Big Data,” of which “Open Data” and “Open Government Data” are extensions. Taken further, OGD as a concept can be viewed as a more specific element of a larger issue area related to government transparency and accountability initiatives (TAIs), which may take a myriad of manifestations including, among others, open budgeting, asset disclosure, and declassification initiatives, as well as freedom of information (FOI) and access to information (A2I) legislation. For its part, the literature on transparency is often tightly linked with literature on government accountability, including key theoretical concepts such as democratic accountability, social accountability, and social capital as well as those related to citizen voice, participation, and engagement. Underpinning these conceptions of accountability is a large body of literature on public management and administration, including that related to new public management, public choice theory, and welfare economics, which provides a theoretical foundation for analyzing the public provision of social services.

Given the diversity of themes surveyed, the literature review that follows is presented in two parts. The first element is a theoretical section, which provides an overview of the key concepts, including Open Government Data, transparency, accountability, and service delivery. Given that there is significant conjecture among authors on the exact meaning of these terms, this first section seeks to provide a plurality of perspectives, as well as to specify the definitions that will be used throughout this analysis, including the conceptual framework put forth in the following section. The second part of the literature review presents the available qualitative and quantitative empirical literature, which highlights the current understanding of the relationships between OGD, transparency, accountability, and service delivery.

# **_Theoretical Perspectives, Definitions, and Differentiations_**

The primary topic of this research—Open Government Data (OGD)—touches on a very active and ongoing contemporary debate on the boundaries of a number of concepts which have emerged over the past decade. While not entirely scholarly in its nature, numerous governments, international institutions, and private sector entities have proffered differing definitional propositions with respect to terms such as “Big Data,” “Open Data,” and “Open Government Data,” albeit with significant overlap and interconnection. Accordingly, as a first step, it is necessary to disentangle the various concepts to best specify a clear, working definition of OGD, which is the main topic of this research.

Distinctions in terminology have been provided by various sources, with differing levels of conceptual specificity. For instance, McKinsey and Co., refer to “Big Data” as data sets that are “voluminous, diverse, and timely,” with modifier “big” referring to the size and complexity of these sets. “Open,” in McKinsey’s definition, describes how liquid the data are—that is, how “transferable” these data are across platforms and users.<sup>22</sup> Relatedly, the World Bank’s research on the topic posits that the term “Big Data” describes very large and complex data sets that must be processed using advanced analytic techniques, whereas the key defining characteristic of “Open Data” is that it is made available as a public good.<sup>23</sup> These distinctions are related to those of other authors, such as those of the Open Data Barometer, who describe knowledge “as ‘open’ if anyone is free to access, use, modify, and share it—subject, at most, to measures that preserve provenance and openness.”<sup>24</sup> Drawing on these notions, the Open Data Institute likewise highlights centrality of shareability and access in its definition of Open Data as “Data that is made available by

> 22 McKinsey Global Institute, _OGD: Unlocking Innovation and Performance with Liquid Information_ (October 2013).

> 23 World Bank, _Open Data for Sustainable Development_ (March 2016).

> 24 World Wide Web Foundation, _OGD Barometer Global Report_ , 2nd Edition (January 2015).

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