The Enabling Effects of Open Government Data on Collaborative Governance in Smart City Contexts

The term "smart city" has been strongly promoted since the late 1990s, yet its concrete meaning remains blurry. In this article, we shed light on two elements that many "smart cities" claim to integrate: open data and collaborative/participatory governance. Notably, we investigate whether the common claim in the smart city literature that open data can promote more participative and collaborative forms of governance passes the test of additional theoretical interrogation. We criticize that while this literature has noticed the importance of participation and collaboration, the meaning of the concepts has remained vague. Therefore, we introduce a concrete yet comprehensive framework of collaborative governance from which we derive three theoretical assumptions regarding the potential influence of open data on collaborative processes in a smart city context: overcoming knowledge asymmetries, facilitating joint fact finding and enabling trust building. We conclude by outlining how our theoretical framework could guide further empirical research on the exact relation of smart cities, collaborative governance and open government data.