MeijerPotjer2018CitizenGenerated
Albert Meijer and Suzanne Potjer, "Citizen-generated open data: An explorative analysis of 25 cases"
Bibliographic info
⇒ Meijer, A., & Potjer, S. (2018). Citizen-generated open data: An explorative analysis of 25 cases. Government Information Quarterly, 35(4), 613–621. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.giq.2018.10.004
Commentary
⇒ In general, what about this text makes it particularly interesting or thought-provoking? What do you see as weaknesses?
I selected this article, because I started with the Backer article that elaborates on the de-centering of governance forms into multiplicity of forms due to AI. This article by Meijer and Potjer can be used to support Backer's argument, but in a positive manner, because they argue citizen-generated open data holds a positive potential for its use in governance. Therefore this article sparked my interest and I feel it provides with a practice oriented governance perspective. Meijer and Potjer provide us with the potential for public value creation that citizen-generated open data holds. The authors point to the fact that such data can raise questions, but in Public Administration their positive potential needs elaborating and is still not widely used. A point of criticism therefore entails that the criticisms are not widely known in PA either, but there is little attention paid to this. Especially in the governance arena, because citizens might not be aware that their data is used for governance, even though it can be accessible to anyone. It specifically raises privacy concerns for citizens, as well as the question of even if you don't have anything to hide, how much knowledge is it legitimate for a government to have? If citizens can generate data online on a wide array of topics and in different forms, does privacy from the government still exist? There is a reason our vote for parliament is anonymous and confidential, so how much use of citizen-generated open data for governance should we wish to allow? Questions like this I believe need to be answered, which this article does not do. This may be due to the fact that there is relatively little attention for these issues in PA at the moment.
Excerpts & Key Quotes
What is citizen-generated open data?
- Page 1:
Quotation here: "The starting point forms a definition and the literature does not yet provide a generally accepted definition of citizen-generated open data. For our study, we define citizen-generated open data as the data that individuals consciously generate and that are openly available for use in the public domain. Citizen-generated data are a specific form of user-generated data (Krumm, Davies, & Narayanaswami, 2008; Sieber & Johnson, 2015). The latter refers to data from individual users that are either generated consciously – e.g. Facebook posts, Google searches, Airbnb ratings – or unconsciously – e.g. geodata from smart phones and cookies."
Comment:
- I want to criticize the "consciously" generated part of citizen-generated open data, because it can be questioned to what extent citizens in fact create this data consciously and to what extent they consent to storing this data in open data bases that can be used by anyone (Schermer, Custers & van der Hof, 2014, this was course literature). Especially using such data in governance has important implications if they are used in policy that are affecting the everyday lives' of people, it must be unambiguous that the data was created consciously and with consent, due to the GDPR. Even though this is an important start for PA, I am unsure the general public really thinks about this with each post on Facebook for example.
Spaceless governance as public sphere
- Page 5:
Quotation here: "We found that, according to the information provided by platform owners, citizens are willing to generate data when they find it in their individual (8 cases), collective (10 cases) or political interest (12 cases) to engage. These are in line with Alford's (2002) motivations for coproduction in the public sector that we mentioned in the theoretical section."
Comment:
- I think this quote illustrates the potential uses of this data for governance. And especially, as opposed to the Backer (2018) article, it illustrates the positive uses of such data for spaceless and de-centered forms of governance, as opposed to mere social control. An important sidenote is that this is said by the platform owners, and not by citizens, which highlights the question of how "conscious" the data really is generated. However, if the majority are willing to generate data if it's in their collective or political interest, this can have a significant advantage in increasing the democratic factor and democratic values of multiple de-centered forms of laws and governance. AI may then really prove a heterotopia for democracy, in the sense of a Habermasian "Public Sphere".
(Replace this heading text for this passage)
- Page 6:
Quotation here: "Our analysis highlighted that from a government perspective the initiatives mostly contribute to better policy implementation through collaboration with citizens and platform organizations (11 cases) or more government legitimacy by having other actors scrutinizing government policies (10 cases). From a citizen perspective, different types of influence can be identified. The dominant influence are raising the attention for an issue in the governance network (7 cases) or tackling an issue through collaborative action between citizens and other actors (2 cases)."
Comment:
I chose this quote because it gives a practical view of what governance through data and AI might entail, in a democratic manner as well. This illustrates it's possible to envisage this in a matter where AI can increase legitimacy as well. However, I don't think this is completely different from current forms of governance. There are already mechanisms in place for citizens to raise issues for instance. But, digital technologies might make this easier and more visible.