Unless we change the way we think about transparency, open data is unlikely to have a significant political impact at the local level

Open data and transparency have long been heralded as welcome innovations by policymakers and politicians, and the current Government has made it a priority at both a national and local level. But when it comes to the latter, how effective has it been and how much have citizens made use of it? Mark Frank argues that local authorities continued use of the ‘passive transparency’ model threatens to limit the potential of open data and transparency.