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Scholars and policymakers claim open government offers a panoply of good governance benefits, but it also risks political abuse as window dressing or a smokescreen. To address this risk, this article builds on the meaning of openness through an examination of closed and open society in Karl Popper's theory. Four historic trends in open government reform are analyzed. The findings suggest a need for new attention to Popperian notions of the social technologist's piecemeal change and mechanical engineering aimed at serious policy problems. Without appreciation of these open society linkages, open governments will continue to paradoxically co-exist alongside closed societies.

AbstractBig data applications have been acclaimed as potentially transformative for the public sector. But, despite this acclaim, most theory of big data is narrowly focused around technocratic goals. The conceptual frameworks that situate big data within democratic governance systems recognizing the role of citizens are still missing. This paper explores the democratic governance impacts of big data in three policy areas using Robert Dahl's dimensions of control and autonomy. Key impacts and potential tensions are highlighted. There is evidence of impacts on both dimensions, but the dimensions conflict as well as align in notable ways and focused policy efforts will be needed to find a balance.

Public administration scholars have so far largely viewed big data as a kind of technocratic transformation. However, through citizens' digital records, use of service apps, social media, digital sensors, and other digital footprints, big data also gives policymakers insights into citizen choices and is therefore potentially supportive of public values such as participation and openness. Focusing on two underexplored countries, Germany and the Netherlands, this article develops a public values framework for big data that considers citizen values alongside technocratic ones. It takes the particular case of public information agencies such as ombudsmen and courts of audit, examining the functions they play and whether they have the capacity to address tensions arising between technocratic and citizen values. The study finds that, while capacity does exist, it is heavily tilted toward technocratic values, with no capacity to address participative values. Finally, five propositions are advanced, which describe where the tensions lie and therefore where the attention of public information agencies should best be focused.

Scholarly knowledge of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) has developed significantly in the private and public sectors. However, comparisons between sectors have not been advanced. This article aims to address the gap with hierarchical linear modeling of OCB antecedents across sectors, accounting for individual- and sector-level differences. The results show a significant association between public service motivation (PSM) and OCB, as well as several other central correlates of OCB in the public sector: goal clarity, job satisfaction, and leader–member exchange (LMX). In addition, although there are marginally higher levels of OCB in the public sector, the interaction effect of sector and PSM is not significant. This finding suggests the effect of PSM on OCB is important across sectors rather than solely being a function of public sector employment.

In the United States, there is mounting political pressure on public agencies to publish internal data. But transparency policy innovation brings a unique set of legal and normative challenges regarding how sensitive information will be used. It is therefore an open question as to what legal‐normative conditions favour innovation. Are there specific kinds of laws, rules, or normative conditions that are related to adoption of new, potentially risky, transparency policies? In this article, qualitative comparative analysis with secondary data from multiple sources is used to find out what configurations of conditions are associated with open data use in 122 police departments. Results show three different paths to innovation among police departments: mandate driven, city‐stakeholder convergence, and network learning. The findings are examined and developed through interviews with experts from a national police transparency initiative.

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This study assesses open government performance through three public administration perspectives - efficiency, democratic responsiveness, and legal-rational perspectives.