Hello everyone!,
My name is Rosamaria Bitetti and I am a researcher at Luiss University, in Rome, and a member of the OKFN open economics working group (silent for a while).
I am looking for expert opinions to answer a survey about the vitality of the Open Data environment in several countries, and I would really appreciate if you could spare a few minutes of your time to answer it, or forward it to other experts in your country.
You can take the survey by following this link: Open Data: transparency and civil society involvment
Longer explanation:
I am working on a comparative study about the Open Data ecosystem in different countries, with the belief that while the government has an important role in opening up its database, the open government culture is developed in a broader ecosystem, in which the civil society, meaning economic actors, research centers and intellectual entrepreneurs play a vital role in elaborating data into information and making them meaningful and useful for the rest of the society. Third-party elaboration has indeed an intrinsic value, because civil society can contribute to a better public debate with an independent creation of information and knowledge. But it also allows for a faster elaboration of data into information, since non-governmental actors have more flexibility in updating their technologies and better display information. Finally, citizens have larger opportunities to engage in the public debate with fact-based opinions. The open policy ecosystem can be described with two directional channels for the information to run: top-down, from the government to the citizens, or conversely bottom-up.
While is relatively easier to track the top-down channel (the open data index does a great job at that http://index.okfn.org/) I am trying to assess whether there is civil society involvement: if apps are developed by third parties, if the general public uses them, and even harder, if politicians use its feedback.
You can read more in the survey, and if you leave your email will keep you updated about my research. Thank you so much in advance!
