Die Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) wagt sich an den Versuch, mit dem Open Knowledge Index „Offenheit“ in verschiedenen Ländern zu quantifizieren und zu vergleichen.
Bevor man misst, muss definiert werden, was Offenheit ausmacht. Grundlage sind hier die three dimensions of open knowledge:
I) Capability: Following Sen (1999), capability measures whether individuals have the capability to access and process data and knowledge. The availability of data and tools does not necessarily imply that citizens have the knowledge about how to access and understand the information. This problem, known as the Digital Divide, is particularly evident in the stark differences between the high income and lower income countries. As capability is difficult to measure directly, we proxy these dimensions using:
– Total communication access paths per 100 inhabitants (OECD)
– Newspaper circulation rate (World Bank)
– Press freedom (Reporters without Borders)
– Tertiary education rate (World Bank)
II) Legislation: Open public administration is one of the most important administrative law principles (Bugaric 1975). An open government allows citizens to acquire information and is fundamental to the democratic legitimisation of the government. Legislation, empowering citizen access, provides the legal framework de jure, yet the effective access in terms of shorter times and costs for acquiring information proxies the citizens’ access in practice.
– Years since first Freedom of Information legislation (OECD “Citizens as Partners”)
– Depth of Freedom of Information legislation (OECD)
– Open Budget Index (Open Budget Partnership)
– Effective access to information (World Bank)
III) Open Knowledge Society: Civil society, as the fourth pillar, has become increasingly involved in activities traditionally occupied by governments, international organizations and established NGOs (Develtere and De Bruyn 2009). Grass-root activities often possess contextual knowledge, alleviating vertical information asymmetries between large organizations and the “ground”. Access and use of social media, as well as crowd-sourced knowledge are characteristics of a open knowledge society which are captured using:
– Number of Wikipedia edits per 100.000 inhabitants (Wikipedia)
– Open Source Index (Red Hat)
– GI Civil Society Index (World Bank)
– (Number of twitter users per 100.000 inhabitants)
Deutschland steht im Ranking überraschend gut da. Ein Blick auf die Kriterien lohnt da sicherlich. So sagt beispielsweise die Zeit, seit der ein Informationsfreiheitsgesetz erlassen wurde, sicherlich nichts darüber aus, wie gut es umgesetzt ist.
Der jetzige Index wird als „vorläufig“ veröffentlicht. Das die Kriterien mit der heißen Nadel gestrickt sind, sieht man nicht nur an der entfernten Twitter-Quote und daran, dass es zwar nur drei Säulen gibt, bei der Open Knowledge Society jedoch von der „Civil society, as the fourth pillar“ gesprochen wird. Die Mitglieder des OKFN-Teams fragen jedoch ausdrücklich nach Verbesserungsvorschlägen, wie man den Index verbessern kann.
