Open government and e-government: Democratic challenges from a public value perspective

We argue that the Obama Administration's Open Government Initiative blurs distinctions between e-democracy and e-government by incorporating historically democratic practices, now enabled by emerging technology, within administrative agencies. We consider the nature of transparency, participation, and collaboration, suggesting that these processes should be viewed as means toward desirable ends, rather than administrative ends in themselves, as they appear to be currently treated. We propose alternatively that planning OG initiatives be addressed within a "public value" framework. The creation of public value is the goal of public organizations; through public value, public organizations meet public goals with respect to substantive benefits as well as the intrinsic value of better government. We extend this view to OG by using the framework as a way to describe the value produced when interaction between government and citizens becomes more transparent, participative, and collaborative, i.e., more democratic.