If delivery is the strategy, did it? Or is delivery maybe a principle of operating and transforming?

A former Sunlight Foundation (RIP) person recently shared some ideas on the promise and failure to deliver of the open data movement, and it was a good challenge and a good read. I see plenty of evidence that supports Tait’s perception, and I also have some aligned and some differing perceptions of that time and the time since. Indulge me, I haven’t written much for years so anything that makes me put down thoughts is a win, for me anyway. Best of luck to you!

So, has open data delivered on any of its promises?

I now work at a public agency, after being a trouble maker on the outside for decades. That agency, clumsily, has shared some really critical data on the county open data site- outside of the otherwise lengthy, technical PDFs we publish. This open data site exists because vendors offered a product, because we (residents, hackers etc) lobbied for open data policies and tools, because hackathons helped make tech officials look ever so slightly cool and gave them a chance to embrace something new, edgy, interesting and open, and because Sunlight and others helped foster a community of people who thought government COULD do better.

I recently ran into two county colleagues- one recalled me as having brought them into the first hackathon they participated in. The other was a pain in my ass who gave many excuses as to why open source and open data were too much. Open data is now a default for both their agencies, and a lot has been possible because of that shift in attitude.

When I consider the claim that real transparency hasn’t materialized, I think that the mileage vaies by city and state, and mostly that’s the truth- it has not. I’ve also seen journos tackle new things after pulling some open data, but I have not seen many smoking guns from it- the radical transparency of early access open data on things like land-use decisions has not materialized for a few reasons:

1- we’re not keeping up the pressure specifically,

2- deals are still done before much public discussion happens and,

3- no-one is making a case politically that this should happen, and also why not more reasons?

4- because some of this is pretty hard to pull off, and so without sufficient motivation, nope.

I think you could argue this represents a mainstreaming of an idea, which inherently makes it less radical, but also ensures the default has changed- have govtech companies made this a product to gain entry to scale sales, yes, for sure, and has open data become a more benign part of the Public Information Officer world, sure, in part. Are these things failures? Not particularly, they represent an adoption of ideas that are slightly more transparent, where norms have shifted towards open, and this is healthy for our democracy. What IS seriously different in 2025 than in 2010? There was a strong, growing movement of advocates pushing for open government, and Sunlight, OKF and others were the standard bearers. We now have open government as a product line, but not the same advocacy movement- without that passion, that leadership, that funding, experimenting, we should expect the formula to come up short.

I do remember how freaking hard it was to find data as an advocate and researcher- this has changed, a lot, but not everywhere, not all the time, not all at once either.