ACCORD - Anti-Corruption Consultations on Open Research Data

Open Government is a central theme today for both effective governance and sustainable development. Discussions and reforms in this field were accelerated by the launch of the Open Government Partnership (OGP) by the Obama Administration and other ventures like UNESCO’s Open Solutions initiative. It is believed that open mechanisms such as transparency, participation and accountability lead to better policy design, greater impact and enhanced democratic legitimacy. Openness is viewed as a particularly effective tool to deal with hidden policy deviances such as corruption. Unfortunately, empirical research on the impact of open data on corruption is still scarce. One cause is the fact that there are only a few datasets available through governments; datasets that are often small or too poorly structured to be used for empirical research. As for data generated by scholars and civil society, it is fraught with low comparability and proprietary issues. In this broad community, Open Research Data (ORD) is not on the radar. To address these issues, this project aims to identify the data needs of scholars and practitioners dealing with governance and anticorruption. By addressing the demand side, rather than the usual governmental institutional supply side, this project will clearly structure the practical requirements for conducting impactful evidence-based research in an ORD logic. In addition, it will assess the level of ORD maturity in this community and by association in the broader governance field. A collaboratively written manual will document both the data needs and ORD maturity level of this field.