Prof. Dr. Jörn von Lucke

The following article is dedicated to the potential of open government. Starting with some thoughts on the future of information, it looks at the world of open government. This quickly leads to open government and administrative action, i.e. to the not-so-easy implementation of the buzzword Open Government in Germany and in the German administrative culture. In this respect, the current status of implementation is also described. Special attention is then paid to the potential hidden in open data. Finally, the three main theses of the 28th Bremen University Talks are reflected in the context of these considerations as thoughts on media, communication, culture and society. What do Web 2.0 and increased transparency mean for the roles of experts and laypeople? How does the disclosure of data influence privacy and publicity? And what does increasing networking mean for the relationship between globality and locality?
1 Some thoughts on the future of information

This article will begin with some thoughts on the future of information. Firstly, the importance of data and information for knowledge has long been clear from a computer science perspective. Klaus North illustrates this clearly with his knowledge staircase (Fig. 1). If you give data a meaning, you get information. If information is networked, it forms the basis for knowledge. Skills, actions, expertise and competitiveness are based on this. Dealing with data is therefore fundamental and necessary, as it is the infrastructural basis for information processing and knowledge. Data and information will be extremely important for the digital future.

A second impulse results from considerations regarding the sustainable future city of Ulm. Zeppelin University is currently supporting the city of Ulm in a citizen-orientated design process for the city of the future (http://www.zukunftsstadt-ulm.de). This raises the question of what developments the city of Ulm can expect in the next 15 years. Without having prophetic gifts, it must be allowed to refer to Moore's Law (Moore 1965). According to this law, the computing capacity of circuits and chips doubles every 18 months. In 2015, it should be assumed that standard computers will have reached the capacity of the human brain by 2030. However, 15 years is not a long time. The megabit bandwidths currently demanded by politicians for data networks may still be laughed at for various reasons. Realistically, networking will already be in the gigabit range by 2030. This will of course open up an enormous increase in information and data as well as audio and video offerings. It will probably open up completely new possibilities that no-one dares to dream of today! A look back 15 years shows, for example, how positively new technologies have changed everyday life and living conditions since then. At the same time, the high level of satisfaction with the mobile phone networks, which were still new at the time, should not be forgotten. Looking to the future, we should certainly continue to be happy.

Thirdly, we need to take stock of the historical evolution of the Internet. A lot has changed in the past 25 years. The Internet of Systems has been brought to life in many different ways. With social media and second-generation web services (Web 2.0), the Internet for participation has even become the Internet of the people. In the meantime, the Internet of Data can already be observed, which is characterised by the increasing networking of existing databases. Tim Berners-Lee has described this approach as the "Semantic Web" (Berners-Lee/Hendler/Lassila 2001: 34-43). The Internet of Things and the Internet of Services are currently gaining in importance in line with the explanations on Industry 4.0. Many intelligently networked objects have transmitters, actuators and sensors that automatically generate and forward data. The public sector will also soon have to deal intensively with the new challenge of intelligently networked government and administrative action (Smart Government or Administration 4.0) (von Lucke 2015). However, we will first look at the potential that Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 offer for government and administration.
2 Open government

If we focus on open government as a trend in the following, we are talking about an opening of the state that is technically based on the Internet of People (Web 2.0) and the Internet of Data (Web 3.0) and whose potential for government and administration needs to be utilised. However, it must be pointed out at this point that one should never enter the German administration with Anglicisms. The official German language and language-related irritations and misunderstandings ensure that doors are quickly closed again. This is of course a major problem for trends with internationally established names. However, it also emphasises the resistance of public administration and its employees to change, especially when managers and employees themselves are unable to participate in shaping it. In this respect, it is logical to consider how such a globally widespread and accepted term in Germany can be characterised by a German-language term and shaped with its own focus and content at an international level.

Open government has a long-established tradition in Europe, which was characterised above all in the Scandinavian countries. It was primarily the Scandinavians who introduced topics such as openness, transparency and freedom of information into German law and the German understanding of law and administration via the European Union. Incidentally, US President Barack Obama is not the inventor of open government, even though he has massively promoted its implementation in the USA since 2009 and has also called for it, particularly with the support of new technologies. These issues have been practised and independently shaped in Scandinavia since 1766 (Grønbech-Jensen 1997: 185-199). Against this background, the question arises as to what political science and democratic theory potential arises through more transparency in everyday political life, through increased traceability of administrative action, through increased freedom of information and greater citizen participation. It will be exciting when players from the fields of information technology, administrative informatics and e-government take up these ideas and implement them using modern information and communication technologies. The starting point is the idea of how these two trends can be linked with the help of information and communication technologies and social media (social media, Web 2.0 services). The result, which has yet to be concretised and which is gradually emerging like a model on the new horizon, can best be described as Open Government 2.0.

Open government as a synonym for the opening up of the state and administration should really only be understood as a buzzword behind which a wide variety of terms are hidden. Everyone seems to favour their own definition, which includes or excludes different facets.

Some see open government primarily as the potential of open data. They focus on the opportunities that arise when data is made freely accessible to others. However, this does not clearly include personal data or data that requires protection and confidentiality. Rather, it involves the publication of data that is already freely accessible. It does not contain any secrets and is not subject to any diplomatic or military restrictions. Such open data sets, which could actually be made freely accessible at any time, harbour enormous potential for business, science, politics, administration and society. This idea is examined in more detail below.

Other players are tackling the challenge of how everyday political life can be made more transparent with the help of Web 2.0 technologies. Or they are addressing the question of what potential social media opens up for more intensive citizen participation in government and administration. Equally exciting is the potential offered by new forms of IT-supported collaboration with the help of social media. Examples include crowdfunding, open knowledge management and the joint implementation of activities (von Lucke 2012).

Open interfaces offer further opportunities for opening up business processes. Workflows and process chains can be reorganised electronically and proven business processes can be docked on. The difficulties in the administrative management of the refugee crisis between federal, state and local authorities show that Germany urgently needs to think about this.
Other initiators are calling for open statesmanship: What tools do young politicians actually need if they have to make decisions in open structures in the future? Who will actually train the future generation of politicians in dealing with open structures and open tools? What would the approach of open statesmanship pursued by Philipp Müller (2010) look like in concrete terms?

The approach of open innovation, in which development processes and idea generation are opened up to customers and partners, is familiar from the business world (Chesbrough 2006). But what potential does open innovation actually harbour for the state and administration? What opportunities are opened up by open social innovation if civil society is also much more involved in innovation processes? (Raffl et al. 2015) These questions are all the more pertinent in light of the fact that the state and administration can hardly afford their own innovation centres.
The debate about free access to information held by public authorities in terms of freedom of information is also worthy of further investigation. If we combine these considerations with related open data discussions on free access to research results from universities and research institutes around the world (open access), we can surmise the dormant productivity reserves that could contribute to innovation. Open standards and open interfaces, open hardware and open software (open source software code), which are freely accessible and can be further developed by interested parties, open up further potential.

This journey through the various fields emphasises that there is a great deal of potential in the concept of open government, but that this potential still needs to be exploited. And this is precisely one of the missions to which The Open Government Institute at Zeppelin University (http://togi.zu.de) in Friedrichshafen has committed itself. But what will change for the state and administration as a result of open government and the openings outlined above? Close co-operation with the political scientists at Zeppelin University suggests that these trends and changes should be illustrated using a six-stage policy cycle (roughly based on Laswell 1956). The starting point is a problem for which politicians put various solutions on the political agenda. At the end of the public opinion-forming process, politicians then make a decision on the solution to be adopted. The public administration now plays a central role, as it is tasked with implementing the solution that has been found. Everyone then looks at the implementation. This is monitored, assessed and evaluated in the hope that the problem has been solved.

What does open government change? With the help of modern information and communication technologies, a (geographically distributed) community can now form around any problem, for example on the basis of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter etc. These cloud-based services help people to organise themselves. A group can also use the internet to provide information. People, groups and institutions can use the internet and open data to provide very transparent information about the status of an issue or the condition of an object at any point in time within this cycle. With tools for open text processing, people can now write, edit and correct texts together in large groups. Other tools make it possible to create and design objects and artefacts together in large groups. Other services, such as those used by the Pirate Party, make it possible to discuss projects in large groups and thus foster a more open form of opinion-forming.

Technically, it is even possible to reach decisions and assignments in large groups in this way. Further potential arises from joint action and joint programming in large groups. The Linux operating system, to which many people around the world have contributed, is a very good example of distributed forms of collaboration. And via the Internet, every action and therefore every administrative action can be jointly commented on and evaluated in the corresponding platforms. Of course, this is just the beginning of a technical development that is likely to spread and develop much further in the coming decades with further open and collaborative tools. This new form of openness, publicity and transparency will change a great deal in government and administration. The state and administration would certainly do well to prepare for these changes at an early stage and look for suitable answers and solutions.
3. open government and administration

As part of a description of the situation, it is first necessary to establish how the state and administration in Germany act and react to these developments and how they approach these issues. From the point of view of administrative sciences, the first step should be to determine from the multitude of implementation options those that are suitable for open government and administrative action in Germany in order to fill them with life in the long term. The memorandum on opening up government and administration published by the "Informatics in Law and Public Administration" section of the German Informatics Society contains important impulses for open government in Germany: openness, transparency, a greater sense of responsibility, citizen participation, new forms of cooperation, coherence and benefits, added value and efficiency geared towards the common good (GI 2012). In Germany, the federal and state governments have come together at the same time and outlined their ideas on "open government and administration". In a key issues paper (Bund-Länder-Arbeitsgruppe 2012), they state that although they want to promote transparency, participation and cooperation, they do not actually have sufficient financial resources. This is why they are initially only starting with activities relating to open administrative data (open data).

Admittedly, it should be noted at this point that if there is no funding for the task, hardly any staff will be made available for implementation. In Germany, at the end of October 2015, one and a half employees at the Federal Ministry of the Interior were given the task of implementing open government, or actually only open data, at federal level. Around 600,000 euros have been made available for studies, legal opinions, a prototype and other pilot projects over the last five years. This was used to set up the joint data portal Govdata (https://www.govdata.de) for federal, state and local authorities on the basis of a data catalogue network. Our colleagues from the Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS in Berlin were very active in the winning consortium and were able to set the tone in a number of areas. But 600,000 euros for more than 80 million German citizens also means that not even one cent per German citizen has been spent on implementing open government. The catalogue opens up the open data stocks in Germany. Unfortunately, as of November 2015, the data catalogue only contains data from four federal authorities, six federal states, including the Hanseatic City of Bremen, and 29 of the more than 11,000 municipalities in Germany. So there is still a lot of potential in open administrative data. However, in order to utilise it, the existing data stocks would have to be systematically and comprehensively recorded. Within the politically prescribed framework of one and a half staff positions and 600,000 euros for investments, a lot has already been achieved, but the topic is not currently a high priority in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Other countries assess the potential differently. The UK, for example, invited the heads of state of the leading industrialised nations to the British Isles as part of the G8 meeting in 2013 to discuss the potential of open data for the economy and society. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was also invited.

In Enniskillen, the political leaders of the G8 countries agreed an Open Data Charter (G8 2013) because they consider the topic to be important for the economy and prosperity. Each participating major power undertook to draw up a national action plan to implement this Open Data Charter within three months. In Germany, however, the 2013 Bundestag elections were due first and this paralysed all activities. Citizens then had to wait 18 months. As part of the Federal Government's Digital Agenda, there is now a National Action Plan of the Federal Government to implement the G8 Open Data Charter (BMI 2014). However, this is actually only a federal plan and only affects federal authorities. Each federal authority has been asked to provide at least two data sets within an initial deadline. To put it bluntly, one and a half employees are allowed to take care of the indexing of two datasets per federal authority. It would at least be desirable for these employees to be retained for a while, but even this hope does not seem to be materialising. The federal states and local authorities will have to set their own priorities much more strongly here (see Köppl 2016 for more details).

In contrast, other countries around the world are working closely together on open government. The topic of open government is being explored in very different ways in the Open Government Partnership (OGP: www.opengovpartnership.org). More than 60 countries are now cooperating in this international partnership. However, neither Germany, Austria nor Switzerland participate in the OGP. One of the reasons given for the negative attitude was the argument that they had nothing to show and that they did not want to get involved without their own activities. This is one of the reasons for the speaker to work with other players in the working group in favour of Germany joining the Open Government Partnership, from which we believe Germany could benefit. The members of the working group are convinced that transparency, accountability, citizen participation and the fight against corruption are important for the common good and strengthen the state. However, there are opinions, such as those published by former State Secretary Göttrik Wewer, that the Open Government Partnership is not in Germany's interests. Rather, this is all just an attempt by the Americans to conquer world domination in order to take advantage of Germany with the help of their secret services and Californian capitalism (Wewer 2014). He thus called for a response in which the benefits for Germany were emphasised once again (von Lucke/Herzog/Heise 2014). Some federal states and local authorities take a similar view. The Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg has passed a Transparency Act and, with some investment, set up a transparency portal (http://transparenz.hamburg.de). The Hamburg Transparency Act is part of the second generation of freedom of information laws and makes the Hanseatic city a progressive and very transparent federal state, which fills open data with life and implements open government on a really broad basis. These approaches have also been implemented for several years in the Hanseatic City of Bremen, a city state with less extensive financial resources. The state of Bremen has already had its own transparency portal (http://www.transparenz.bremen.de) for several years and is systematically opening up its own databases. What further potential would arise if the open data approach were to be pursued even more intensively in Germany?

4 Potential of open data

The potential associated with open data can best be illustrated by analysing a few case studies. The greatest challenge for the state and administration, however, is the cultural paradigm shift associated with opening up state databases. The traditional German administrative culture has so far celebrated official secrecy. So far, everything that was not explicitly public was secret. Following the idea of opening up the state and administration, everything that is not explicitly secret should now be published automatically. For employees, this means a massive and fundamental cultural change, which should certainly be seen as a contribution to European integration, but which also needs to be persuaded and promoted.

After all, they are now expected to do exactly the opposite of what they have learnt in the course of their training in the administrative service and as legal trainees, as well as in their day-to-day work. Such a change takes time and energy. Secondly, authorities have so far decided for themselves when they want to make which data available for which purposes. Open administrative data also means a cultural change here. In future, authorities should proactively make all published data available in full as soon as it is published. In concrete terms, this means that the basic data will also be made available in addition to studies. This would allow everyone to check the studies promptly and, if necessary, point out errors. Thirdly, it used to be the case that authorities alone were authorised to dispose of the rights of use to published data. They decided who was authorised to work with the data. They often released data exclusively for private use. Authorisation for commercial use was always decided on a case-by-case basis. Open administrative data means that published data sets can be used by anyone for any purpose free of charge without having to ask an authority for permission. These three paradigm shifts emphasise the cultural change that is coming to German society.

In Bremen, it would be very interesting to carry out scientifically sound research into the consequences that a targeted opening could have for the public broadcasting system and for Radio Bremen.

The use of open data has already been observed in everyday life for some time. For example, OpenStreetMap (http://www.openstreetmap.de/karte.html) has been providing an open global digital map with many detailed entries since 2006, to which people and administrations from all over the world still contribute today. They supplement, check and correct the shared geodata, from which a wide variety of maps can be generated. For example, TRAVIC (Transit Visualisation Client: tracker.geops.de) uses OpenStreetMap to show where buses, trams and trains are currently running in Bremen. There are many such map-based visualisations that are based on the open geodata system of OpenStreetMap, as it offers use without payment of usage fees. Many apps also use this open geodata basis. Their developers can build on the open geodata and develop their own solutions without wasting time on their own geodata programming.

The fields of application in which open data leads to positive changes and makes the world a better place are socially relevant and quite remarkable. These fields of application include health data. In the UK, survival rates after operations and other clinical interventions have been collected and analysed for years. However, it was only a few years ago that this data was made freely accessible to the public. Citizens can now see how likely they are to survive open heart surgery in a particular hospital. What do the patients concerned do? Before an operation, they naturally make sure that they go to the hospital where the highest survival rates are currently observed. In fact, within a year, the hospitals realised that there had been a shift in demand. At the same time, one year after the data was published, survival rates across the UK increased by more than 50 per cent. How was this possible? Patients naturally favoured those clinics where the general conditions were particularly good. Research was carried out and it was discovered that most patients died in the evenings and at weekends when there were no doctors present. As a result, doctors' on-call times were adjusted everywhere so that doctors were also available in the evenings and at weekends. This is certainly one of the reasons why German doctors are increasingly to be found in the UK at weekends. If opening up databases can save lives, then this should be worth every effort.

In the UK, there is also a strong focus on data-driven innovation and data-supported innovation competitions. For example, the Ordnance Survey (http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk) regularly organises the Geovation competition (https://www.geovation.org.uk), which is dedicated to innovative questions to solve problems using geodata-based solutions. In recent years, for example, the question of how the UK could feed itself in the future or how the transport system in the UK could be improved on the basis of existing transport data has been posed. The organisers receive a large number of constructive suggestions in a very short space of time, which are considered further.
In Germany, this innovation potential has not yet been systematically tapped and utilised. However, freely accessible data harbours enormous development potential for the economy and society. In this context, open and freely accessible data refers to databases that companies or citizens make freely available to others. This includes image collections, music data, publication data and lexical data, research data and medical research results, as well as stock exchange, company, production, trade, financial, geographic and administrative data.

In the context of administrative data, the state and administration have long been sitting on a wealth of data that could be gradually opened up. Examples include cultural data, education data, school data, geodata and budget data. However, it is no longer enough for the administration alone to think about which data sets are available, which need to be opened up and which need to be made accessible. Instead, the question must be asked as to how an open school policy can actually be organised on the basis of open and freely accessible school data. How can school quality data and performance data be used to review and specifically improve the quality of current school education? Lesson cancellations and a reduction in teaching provision are certainly not in the interests of pupils and parents. The question also arises as to how an open transport policy or an open environmental policy can be filled with life. In essence, therefore, it is a question of developing a business area from a state perspective around open databases. This will lead to substantial changes in politics and administration, which can be expected on a broad front in the coming years when the basic data sets are freely available to citizens and the press.

A study by Gruen/Houghton/Tooth 2014 commissioned by the G20 shows that open data is also of interest to the economy. With relatively little effort, countries can contribute to national economic growth by opening up their databases. In a 2014 study, the Warsaw Institute for Economic Studies found that, in an ideal scenario, open data and big data could lead to additional economic growth of up to 206 billion euros in the European Union in 2020 (WISE 2014). The Technology Foundation of the State of Berlin proclaims in the title of a study that Berlin is sitting on digital gold (TSB 2014). And while Germany has one and a half employees at federal level dedicated to open data, the UK is not only investing in an independent research institute for open data by setting up an Open Data Institute (http://theodi.org), but is also supplementing this with an incubator for new companies. New start-ups are now being systematically developed in the UK to generate new business and revenue on the basis of freely accessible data. This is being done in the expectation that markets will be developed and dominated in future by those economic players who succeed in gaining the largest share of these new markets first. The British are taking a very strategic and systematic approach.

Another example shows that economic potential can also be measured in financial terms. The company climate.com (The Climate Corporation: www.climate.com) has been collecting climate data of all kinds for years and intersecting them with each other. They must have been very successful with their approach, because Monsanto bought it for 1.1 billion US dollars in 2013. The agricultural company Monsanto decided to make the purchase because open data science can be expected to deliver substantially better results for its own core business, enabling it to serve its customers even more effectively in future on the basis of data and data analyses (Monsanto Company 2013).

Open data and open administrative data will certainly open up a large number of attractive business areas. The Federal Republic of Germany should have an interest in ensuring that these new types of companies are not only founded in the UK. Otherwise there would be a serious risk of the German economy losing touch with this international development.
5 Implications for culture and society

What does this development mean for the relationships raised in the key questions? In general, there are important implications for culture and society.

The first key question deals with the change in the relationship between experts and laypeople in the course of media change. The participatory Internet (Web 2.0) offers new forms of collaboration, transparency and openness. Many issues are becoming transparent for all interested parties in a new way that was previously hardly imaginable. Greater user participation is possible at the touch of a button. This changes the mobilisation possibilities of the individual, creates greater openness and generates new networking effects. All of this has consequences for both laypeople and experts. It is becoming increasingly easy for laypeople to acquire expert knowledge and thus quickly become an expert. At the same time, the expertise of experts is openly questioned by laypeople. This often involves obscure arguments that have been googled or found on Wikipedia. On the other hand, ideas and knowledge are experiencing an enormous acceleration in diffusion thanks to the internet. Disruptive innovations and changes must be expected. The developments of recent years offer a foretaste of the changes that the Internet of Things will bring in the next five to ten years. At the same time, the position and role of customers, citizens and the public is changing. Some scientists now speak of prosumers instead of consumers, i.e. citizens who produce and consume at the same time (Toffler 1980 and Leitl 2008). Wikipedia has become important for the personal knowledge management of many people. If they don't know what to do, they look it up on Wikipedia, even if they know that anyone can change the content at any time. Some of them even actively contribute to this online encyclopaedia themselves. Wikipedia is not only characterised by a lot of good information, but also by entries with high relevance in search engines. Many people often start their research on Wikipedia and with the help of the Google search engine in order to gradually find the right sources and information. In addition, new experts and creators are also appearing that no one had really reckoned with before. In issue 10/2015, the news magazine Der Spiegel pointedly formulated the headline: "The world government - How Silicon Valley controls our future". The following questions must therefore be allowed from a German perspective: Do we actually still have the creative power and the creative force in our hands? Are we only being managed by our government? Who should be allowed to shape things? Do we want to be able to shape our own lives again? How should we invest specifically in strengthening our creative power? To summarise, openness and transparency will lead to shifts in the relationship between laypeople and experts.

The second key question deals with the contrast between privacy and publicity in the course of media change. With the increasing spread of the Internet, a very large structural change in the public sphere can also be observed. Things, affairs and events are becoming transparent, almost in real time. Everything is constantly updated. People increasingly feel guilty when something happens somewhere but they are no longer aware of it. In addition, many things are intelligently networked. However, smart things also have side effects, as they can also inform third parties about the owner and their activities in real time, mobilise them and even control them in a targeted manner. Smart things thus invade people's privacy and make it open and transparent, unless they are deactivated. These are signs of a fierce battle for people's privacy on the open internet and in an increasingly open society. Defenders of German-style data protection law are getting scared when they can already imagine the future surveillance possibilities on the Internet of people, data, things and services. For the young Facebook generation, however, this concern does not seem to arise. They have grown up in a world without data protection (Kirkpatrick 2010: "The Age of Privacy is over") as a matter of course. In job interviews at Zeppelin University, you often hear that they have nothing to hide. The surveillance of the internet by the US, Russian, Chinese and German secret services, on the other hand, is causing massive mistrust among large sections of the population. The political discussions and decisions on data retention and net neutrality show that this mistrust will remain with citizens in the long term. To summarise, every opening contributes to more publicity, especially if little value is placed on privacy. However, as privacy is rightly still highly valued in Germany, it should be weighed up whether the benefits justify possible losses before opening up certain data sets.

The third key question addresses the changes in the relationship between locality and globality. Society is increasingly characterised by very different types of openness: technical openness, social openness and content-related openness. Added to this is the famous zero marginal cost phenomenon (Rifkin 2014). The initial creation of a digital artefact costs a lot, but the additional costs incurred for its use via the internet are actually close to zero. It doesn't matter how many people will use it. Marginal costs close to zero make investments attractive. In addition, there are a whole range of network effects and network effects. Even in a diaspora, it is suddenly possible to network players with each other so that they no longer feel like "individual believers among a bunch of unbelievers", but as part of a "globally well-organised group of true believers". Locality thus takes on a completely different meaning. People can network worldwide to form local and global networks. Glocalisation can also be observed here. On the one hand, we can observe a worldwide cultural convergence that is reflected in similar products, services and artefacts. At the same time, local specialities, for example in terms of language, dialect, region or religion, can also be felt in such developments. In this global Internet, locality takes on an identity-forming function in a wide variety of places. This creates a simultaneity of locality and globalisation. Interestingly, this also strengthens regionalisation. In summary, glocalisation will be able to set new accents in the relationship between locality and globality.

In view of these comments on open government and administrative action, open data and the upcoming digitalisation, many changes can be expected in the coming years. These will not only give rise to new media, but will also put traditional media under very strong pressure to change. Finally, it should not be forgotten that in terms of technological progress, humanity is still only at the very beginning of a development that will bring many unforeseeable innovations over the next 100, 200 and 500 years. By opening up data, information, knowledge and resources, the economy, state and society will become more successful and innovative. So let's utilise this potential in a positive way!

Prof. Dr. Jörn von Lucke

The potential of open government - thoughts on the future of information