A Stewardship Approach to Theorizing Open Data for Development

Early open data for development (OD) work was premised on the assumption that ITenabled open data would decentralize power and enable public engagement by disintermediating knowledgeintensive processes such as education, decisionmaking, innovation, cultural production, health care, and publishing (Smith, Elder, and Emdon 2011, iv). With this in mind, OD practitioners and researchers have tended to focus their efforts on the distribution of data rather than its production or uptake (Smith and Seward 2017). However, in practice, public engagement in open data has been insufficient (Mutuku and Mahihu 2014), as well as asymmetrical or inequitable (Benjamin et al. 2007) in developing countries, suggesting that much greater attention should be paid to the forces shaping production and uptake of data. There is increasing recognition that uneven uptake of open resources is more than just a problem of inadequate publicity or capacity. Writing about the World Development Report 2016: Digital Dividends, Yochai Benkler (2016) argues that policymakers need to focus their attention on the growing power of platforms to mediate our access to economically productive digital resources. Rather than giving people the skills necessary to access, use, and appropriate open data, says Benkler, governments need to start creating regulations that prevent these platforms from controlling the economic, social, and political opportunities available to citizens through open processes. We are seeing growing recognition of the need to analyze the motivations and agendas of key actors within the open data field. For example, Tyson (2015, n.p.) argues that “data intermediaries will play a critical role in the post2015 development agenda” because they will determine whether and how to measure the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development 2 A Stewardship Approach to Theorizing Open Data for Development