Measuring the Effects of Open Data on the Level of Corruption

Abstract

The Open Government movement has been building around the world with the primary aim to enhance the availability of public data and increase the government’s transparency and accountability. Theories of corruption then suggest that higher levels of transparency are associated with lower levels of corruption. Thus, this paper is focused on the potential effects of open data in reducing the level of corruption. For this purpose, different related open data and corruption indices from two different time periods are examined. In contrast to previous studies, the use of open data indices to verify this relationship is new in research on e-government development. Findings indicate that there is a positive correlation relationship between selected corruption and open data indices. Thus, higher levels of open data availability are associated with lower levels of corruption in the compared countries, especially in the case of Open Data Barometer index. It was also found out that the methodologies behind open data indices may affect the results, because they are still evolving due to the increasing effects of open data in the society.