The Relationship Between Open Data and Corruption: A Country-Cluster Analysis

Abstract

Transparency and the right to access public data are critical principles to foster democratic participation and to prevent corruption. The objective of this paper is analyzing whether the relationship between open data and corruption differs among countries and is related with the human development level. To achieve these goals, a 93-country sample for the year 2018 is used to conduct a cluster and comparison of media analysis. Secondly, the paper explores if these clusters are correlated with different ICT development and innovation levels. Results obtained show that there are three groups of countries: a first group of high corruption, low open data, and medium to low HDI; a second group of medium corruption, low open data, and medium to high HDI; and a third group of low corruption, high transparency, and high to very high HDI. Results show that open data is an instrument against corruption in countries with high human development. In countries with low human development, there are not significant differences in corruption based on transparency or open data (almost all of these low HDI countries exhibit high levels of corruption). Besides, countries’ ICT development and innovation are statically different between groups.