Seven Percent for a Decade: What Open Data Portals Actually Delivered

Governments spent a decade building open data portals and calling it transparency. The Open Data Barometer assessed 1,725 datasets across 15 sectors in 115 countries — and found just 7% were fully open, the same figure as the first edition. This episode digs into why portals became "ghost towns," what the Barometer's audit found about where good data actually lives, and what a genuine publishing obligation would require: automated publication embedded in departmental systems, cadences written into law, and quality-of-service commitments. We look at the closest thing to a citizen SLA that exists — EU Regulation 2023/138's high-value datasets regime, with its meteorological annex specifying update frequencies down to five-minute intervals — plus the IMF's data dissemination standard, and why the benchmarks that rank governments disagree about what they're even measuring.

Key sources:

• Open Data Barometer, 4th Edition Global Report, World Wide Web Foundation — https://opendatabarometer.org/4thedition/report/

• ODIN 2024/25 Biennial Report, Open Data Watch — https://odin.opendatawatch.com/biennialReport2024

• OECD OURdata Index annex, 2025-06-19 — https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/government-at-a-glance-2025_0efd0bcd-en/full-report/ourdata-index_2eaaccc9.html

Episode 6054 — myweirdprompts.com/n/6054 (permanent short link: myweirdprompts.com/646008)