Does open government work?

Open government reforms have in recent years emerged as an area of intense activity and fervent hope for some of our largest societal aspirations: to improve public services, to expand public knowledge of governmental processes, to save public money, and to make government more participatory and inclusive. But does it actually achieve those objectives, and if so, under what conditions? In a word, does open government actually work?

In our new report, we assess the evidence. Drawing from hundreds of reports, articles, and peer-reviewed academic studies, we bring together the most rigorous research on open government reforms, including everything from right-to-information laws in India, to grassroots monitoring of health care in Uganda, to federal audits in Brazil, to election monitoring in Ghana, to school-quality report cards in the United States. From this extensive body of research, we derive six features of open government programs that give these reforms the highest likelihood of success.