Barriers to the Open Government Data Agenda: Taking a Multi-Level Perspective

A loose coalition of advocates for Open Government Data (OGD) argue that such data has the potential to have a transformative impact by catalyzing innovation across sectors of the economy and by fostering democratic participation and engagement. However, there is limited evidence to date of the OGD agenda having such a transformative impact. This article applies the Multi-level Perspective (MLP); an approach more typically applied to study transitions to a sustainable society, to explore the nature of the barriers currently faced by the OGD agenda. It argues that such barriers exist in two forms: implementation barriers and barriers to use. The empirical results presented include survey responses measuring the perceptions of U.K. OGD community members of 33 barriers to the OGD data agenda. These results are analyzed to identify implications for OGD policy and practice. The article concludes with a start at establishing a theoretical grounding for the study of barriers to the OGD agenda.