Paper short abstract:

Our paper examines different approaches to participatory open government data initiatives, their claims to increased citizen participation, transparency and accountability. In particular we are interested how such initiatives re-imagine their cities differently to more traditional e-participation projects.

Paper long abstract:

Governments around the world are opening their data repositories and re-organise their work processes in order to be able to provide open data to their citizens. Yet the provision of open government data does not directly translate into more transparent or accountable city administrations and governments. Rather somebody has to do something meaningful with the data. In times of considerable budget cuts in the public sector, more and more public authorities are turning to civic hackers to help them meet citizens' expectations with respect to reduced administrative burden and more efficient services (e.g. European Commission, 2014). Such civic hackers are "deploying information technology tools to enrich civic life, or to solve particular problems of a civic nature" as Hogge (2010, p. 10) noted in a study commissioned by the Open Society Foundation.

Participatory open data initiatives aim to engage citizens (also with non-technical backgrounds) in practices relating to different levels of open data use such as the requesting, digesting, contributing, modelling, and contesting of open data (Schrock, 2016). They may involve anybody 'who is willing to collaborate with others to create, build, and invent open source solutions using publicly released data, code and technology to solve challenges' relevant to their neighbourhoods, cities or states. Our paper will examine different approaches to participatory open data projects. We will present a survey of such initiatives, their methodology and respective claims to increase citizen participation, transparency and accountability. In particular we are interested how such initiatives re-imagine their cities differently to more traditional e-participation projects.