A handful of cities have invested considerable time, energy, and tax-dollars into building an exciting new kind of public infrastructure only for it to be abandoned and fall into disuse shortly after completion. Like the ghost-town villages and crumbling stadiums of Olympic host cities, open data portals were built and celebrated only to be forgotten after the thrill of newness faded away. Local governments are reacting and responding to demands from their constituencies to be more open, accountable, and effective.

Today, many portals have become a cache of unorganized and aging government data. Far from the heralded hub of modern local government, open data portals are now yet another layer of government complexity purposeful only to a small and specialized set of people.

When portals are used, it’s by journalists whose job it is to sort through dozens of datasets before giving up and inevitably submitting an open-records request. Or by watchdogs, searching for scandals in pay schedules and personnel data. Not exactly the utopic front door to local government that was promised.

The article's full-text is available here.

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