Open Government in the UK - The role of the government

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Communications - Media and Politics, Politic Communications, grade: 1, University of Salzburg, language: English, abstract: The progressing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are the main source for innovation nowadays and are causing a so called 5th economic cycle after the ones that emerged by the industrial revolution (1st cycle), the steam engine and coal (2nd cycle), steel and heavy engineering (3rd cycle) and automobile, oil, petrochemicals and mass production (4th cycle). According to Perez (cf. 2009: 12) the so called 'information revolution' has been enabled through cheap microelectronics, computers, software, telecommunications, control instruments, computer-aided biotechnology and new materials. ICTs are long since interweaving all parts of daily life and didn't stop at administration processes so that a new model of the interaction between the government and the citizens evolved. The new model of communication between the government and the citizens through ICTs is called E-Government and as part of this can Open Government (Data) be seen. Many states worldwide already took actions to put this into practice; especially well-developed countries. In the case of Open Government (Data) various stakeholders are involved like the government, citizens and consumers, media, businesses and NGOs. But as different parties want to take their advantages by Open Government there are different interests how to translate it into practice. This paper will focus on the role of the UK's government that started to implement Open Government in 2009 by highlighting the impacts caused through Open Government.