Enhancing open government information performance: a study of institutional capacity and organizational arrangement in China

Abstract

Governments around the world are attempting to ameliorate communications with citizens in order to enhance their trust and confidence in the bodies that govern them. However, better communication between citizens and government can only be achieved by increased government transparency, which is the purpose of various Open Government Information (OGI) initiatives. Unfortunately, these initiatives are not compatible with performance measurement as they are practiced in the contemporary context. Such incompatibility casts doubt on the real ability of OGI to improve the transparency of government. Based on the model of the third-party performance measurement of the implementation of the OGI regulation in China, this study explores how performance management and OGI initiatives could work in tandem. In addition to describing the integration of these two promising agendas, this study further examines the factors that promote variance in the performance of OGI, which is measured by the sum of the self-initiated information disclosure by government and the requested information disclosure by the public. The agencies' institutional capacity determines the performance of OGI. However, organizational arrangement fails to explain the performance of OGI in agencies. Based on the findings, the managerial implications for both the Chinese government and other governments are discussed.