Paper Info
Title
Open government objectives and participation motivations
Abstract
Open government aims, among others, at improving engagement of citizens in public sector activities. To realize this potential, we need to understand citizens' motivations to engage in the many different variants of open government. This article identifies motivations for open government participation from the free/libre open source software (FLOSS) and crowdsourcing literature. The literature gives two dimensions of open government aims: innovation objectives (high or low) and managerial level (political versus administrative). The results of our survey with 168 participants revealed different motivations for participation in open government projects related to three objectives of open government projects: collaborative democracy, citizen sourcing, and citizen ideation & innovation. We found indications that socio-economic characteristics of citizens do not influence the willingness to participate in open government projects—contrary to findings in other forms of government participation—and therefore open government opens a great potential for enlarged citizen engagement. Our survey also indicates that open government projects with lower ambitions result in more participation than more ambitious projects, which implies that considerable steps need to be taken to realize the full potential of open government.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1016/j.giq.2014.10.002
Government Information Quarterly
Keywords
Field
DocType
Open government,Citizen ideation,Open innovation,Collaborative democracy,Citizen sourcing,Open government engagement motivation
Public administration,Ideation,Economics,Public relations,Crowdsourcing,Open government,Forms of government,Open innovation,Public sector,Democracy,Politics
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
32
1
0740-624X
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
21
0.82
14
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Fons Wijnhoven115115.68
Michel L. Ehrenhard2243.69
johannes kuhn3210.82