The negative effects of open government data - investigating the dark side of open data

Reports and research appears to assume that the benefits of open data dominate open data's negative consequences. Moreover, much of the existing research discusses benefits and disadvantages on a high level without providing much detailed insight in the underlying processes. Yet many governments are reluctant to open their data, as they are afraid of possible negative consequences of opening data. The objective of this policy paper is to better understand the aspects of the dark side of open data and contributes to the literature by providing a more realistic perspective on open data. We conducted nineteen in depth interviews with public sector officials and data archivists and identified sixteen categories of negative effects. For the dark side inherent to open data efforts the research suggests that a context and dataset dependent decision-making model needs to be made weighing the benefits of open data on the one hand (e.g. creating transparency, the possibility to strengthen economic growth), and the risks and disadvantages of open data (e.g. violating privacy and possible misuse and misinterpretation of data) on the other hand.