Requirements for Open Political Information: Transparency Beyond Open Data
This work tackles the problem of limited access to political information for non-technical citizens, but it is incremental as it builds on existing open data efforts without introducing new technical solutions.
The study addressed the gap in open government data accessibility by identifying stakeholder needs through user interviews, leading to proposed foundational requirements for a functional political information system.
A politically informed citizenry is imperative for a welldeveloped democracy. While the US government has pursued policies for open data, these efforts have been insufficient in achieving an open government because only people with technical and domain knowledge can access information in the data. In this work, we conduct user interviews to identify wants and needs among stakeholders. We further use this information to sketch out the foundational requirements for a functional political information technical system.