From Open Source to Open Government

Open source democracy was already theorized by Douglas Rushkoff in 2003 (Rushkoff, 2013, Tacz, 2012). When the topic of Open Data was also taken up by politicians at the end of the 2000s, this was a major turning point for the movement. The Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government , which US President Barack Obama adopted when he took office in 2009, is well known. In it he declares the information of the US federal government to be a national good and elevates transparency, collaboration and participation to the principles of Open Government in the USA.

This was followed by international agreements to open up government and administrative data such as the G8 Open Data Charter 2013, which was also signed by the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2014, the German Federal Government published a national action plan leading to the implementation of the G8 Open Data Charter in Germany (BMI, 2014). In this action plan, the Federal Government commits itself to measures to open administrative data, in particular to approximate the principle that administrative data should be open by default. Open administrative data not only create transparency for governments and account for their actions, but also have a high economic potential. The European Commission estimates the market volume generated by open data in the EU between 2016 and 2020 at €325 billion.