Sustaining the Open Government Data Movement Worldwide: Insights from Developing Countries

We examine the adoption of an Open Government Data (OGD) transparency policy innovation in five developing countries: Brazil, Kenya, Moldova, Morocco, and the Philippines. We combine an innovative big data analysis of published OGD data with a qualitative study of key moments in the history of adopting the OGD innovation in the five countries of focus. We discover that in all five countries most OGD activity occurred on a handful of days, usually immediately before or after a standalone "OGD event" such as a visit by a key World Bank official, or a major policy announcement. In the final section of the paper, we pay close attention to Brazil, the only country where the OGD innovation appears to be sustainable thanks to strong domestic OGD demand and an existing, multi-layered, government-transparency legal framework that supports the OGD innovation.