Open Government Initiative

[2] Since the rapid pace of technological growth at the turn of the century has given rise to the mass distribution of information, so too has the demand for the United States Government to increase the transparency with which they make decisions and create legislation; many civil servants share this sentiment with the public.

[3] There exist a few schools of thought regarding why Open Government Data (OGD) would benefit the public, but these can generally be broken into two parts: 1) the general public deserves the information that is being used to represent them and 2) the private sector will be able to create better social and economic conditions with access to this data.

He summarized three principles that previous proponents for OGD had advocated for: the idea that government should be transparent, participatory, and collaborative.

[6] Later, the Privacy Act Amendments of 1974 created the classically modern version of the FOIA under President Ford.

[5] As mentioned, the advocates for OGD typically fall within two schools: those who derive socioeconomic benefits from OGD in the belief that new competitors can penetrate the marketplace with access to government data and those who believe that is a social right that the general public has access to government data, public policy, and the decision makers of the latter using the former.

[8][11] The various forms of liquid democracy and public policy forums were created with similar beliefs as the Open Government Initiative.

The countries within the partnership have agreed to execute the guidelines within the Open Government National Action Plans.

The first is sustainability; many initiatives offer no revenue for the governments that attempt to make their data transparent to the public.

Once again, this shortcoming is related to the fear that only those already at the highest socioeconomic level will derive benefit from access to governmental data.