Benchmarking Open Data Availability across Europe: The Case of EU Structural Funds

Abstract

Although Open Government, Government 2.0 and Open Government Data have been at the centre of the debate on e-Government policy over the last two years, the European Union still lacks comparable data on transparency. European Regional Policy is the ideal context to test a Benchmarking 2.0: it involves all Member States and EU regions, influences national and regional policies and can push the transparency agenda in those areas of Europe where administrative culture and capacity is traditionally low. In this paper the datasets on beneficiaries of European Structural Funds provided by the Managing Authorities of the Operational Programmes of EU27 are evaluated through a scheme based on the 8 principles of Open Government Data. The paper compares the performance of the European Countries for the first time and sets new targets that could be considered as possible requirements for the next programming period.