Open data study shows progress, but a long road ahead for open government - O'Reilly Radar

A new report on the attitudes, quality and use of open government data shows strong support for the release of open data among citizens and government employees. While the success of New York State Governor-Elect Cuomo or Rhode Island Governor-Elect Lincoln Chafee in the 2010 election didn't provide sufficient data points in of themselves, this report showed that, by a 3 to 1 margin, the citizens surveyed are more likely to vote for politicians who champion open government. The full results of the open data benchmark study are available at Socrata.com.

"The findings of this study support what Sunlight has been seeing from our open government stakeholders in the public sector, the tech community and citizen advocates," said Ellen Miller, co-founder and executive director of the Sunlight Foundation in a prepared statement. "The current commitment among all of those working to advance open government shows that we are at a good starting point, but more hard work is still ahead of us in order to create the promise of a truly open government."

Supporters of the Sunlight Foundation's transparency work were no doubt pleased to hear that 67.9 percent of surveyed citizens and 92.6 percent of surveyed government employees indicated that if open government data is made public, it should be publicly available online.

"The transformative impact of Open Data will become self-perpetuating, but is not there yet," said Kevin Merritt, founder and CEO of Socrata in a statement. "The flywheel effect requires two things: significantly more high-value data that is universally accessible; and more active engagement between governments, citizens and developers."

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via radar.oreilly.com