Government open data and transparency: Oakeshott, civil association and the general will

Abstract

This article considers recent trends in government towards openness and transparency, particularly with respect to the publication of open data, in the context of Michael Oakeshott’s ideas of the nature of the state and the conditions for civility. It is argued that certain aspects of open data have pushed back against a trend towards the imposition of government goals upon its citizens, an imposition often justified in terms reminiscent of Rousseau’s doctrine of the general will. Oakeshott’s view of the state is contrasted with Rousseau’s, and the two frameworks used to locate recent innovations in digital government. Of these, only open data is supportive of civil association.

Keywords:

• transparency
• open data
• Oakeshott
• Rousseau
• societas
• universitas
• general will
• nudge
• e-government
• transformational government

Notes

1. There is, of course, a divide between those use ‘data’ as a plural (of ‘datum’), and those who use it as a singular mass noun. In this essay, I adopt the latter use, for three reasons. First, even if the former is grammatically correct, it flows less well and sounds pretentious to many. The latter is increasingly common in ordinary speech. Second, the latter is almost always used in the data analytics literature (as opposed, say, to the statistics literature where the former is prevalent). Third, all purists become inconsistent at some point. If ‘data’ is a plural, why not ‘agenda’, which is the plural of ‘agendum’? But if one talked about the agenda of a meeting in the plural, one would be considered barking mad.

2. Strictly speaking, the term was also used by Montesquieu and Diderot before Rousseau, but in a much vaguer and more casual way (Shklar 1969, 168–169).