Government Information Quarterly 29 (2012) 492–503

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Government Information Quarterly

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/govinf

An Open Government Maturity Model for social media-based public engagement

Gwanhoo Lee a,⁎, Young Hoon Kwak b, 1
a
Department of Information Technology, Kogod School of Business, American University, Washington, D.C. 20016‐8044, USA
b
Department of Decision Sciences, School of Business, The George Washington University, Washington, DC 20052, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Available online 17 July 2012 Social media has opened up unprecedented new possibilities of engaging the public in government work. In
response to the Open Government Directive, U.S. federal agencies developed their open government plan and
Keywords: launched numerous social media-based public engagement initiatives. However, we find that many of these
Open government initiatives do not deliver the intended outcomes due to various organizational, technological, and financial
Social media challenges. We propose an Open Government Maturity Model based on our field studies with U.S. federal
Public engagement
healthcare administration agencies. This model is specifically developed to assess and guide open govern-
Maturity model
Data transparency
ment initiatives which focus on transparent, interactive, participatory, collaborative public engagement
Open participation that are largely enabled by emerging technologies such as social media. The model consists of five maturity
Open collaboration levels: initial conditions (Level 1), data transparency (Level 2), open participation (Level 3), open collabora-
tion (Level 4), and ubiquitous engagement (Level 5). We argue that there is a logical sequence for increasing
social media-based public engagement and agencies should focus on achieving one maturity level at a time.
The Open Government Maturity Model helps government agencies implement their open government initia-
tives effectively by building organizational and technological capabilities in an orderly manner. We discuss
challenges and best practices for each maturity level and conclude by presenting recommendations.
© 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Open Government is entering a new phase and becoming an important

The advent of social media has opened up unprecedented new
possibilities of engaging the public in government work and has
changed the public's expectations about how government work
should be done (Chun, Shulman, Sandoval, & Hovy, 2010; Lathrop &
Ruma, 2010; McDermott, 2010). In response to this trend, U.S.
President Obama issued a call for increased openness in government
on his first day in office (The White House, 2009). Subsequently, on
December 8, 2009, the White House issued the federal government's
Open Government Directive which emphasizes three principles of
open government—namely: transparency, participation, and collabora-
tion (Executive Office of the President, 2009). The Directive called upon
each federal agency to formulate a plan for how it intended to increase
openness and public engagement. Consequently, each federal agency
developed its own open government plan. In September 2011, the
Obama administration initiated the Open Government Partnership to
join forces with other countries in collectively pursuing transparent, par-
ticipatory government (www.opengovpartnership.org) and announced
the National Action Plan to lay out new initiatives (www.whitehouse.
gov/sites/default/files/us_national_action_plan_final_2.pdf). As a result,
⁎ Corresponding author. Fax: +1 202 885 1992.
E-mail addresses: glee@american.edu (G. Lee), kwak@gwu.edu (Y.H. Kwak).
1
Fax: +1 202 994 2736.
global agenda.
As social media is widely adopted by the public, it can play an im-
portant role in implementing open government (Noveck, 2009). Not
surprisingly, federal agencies put social media at the core of their
open government plans. Social media refers to a set of online tools
that are designed for and centered on social interaction (Bertot,
Jaeger, & Hansen, 2012). Social media can be classified into two differ-
ent groups depending on its main purpose (Kotler, Kartajaya, &
Setiawan, 2010). One group is expressive social media, which enables
people to express themselves by sharing with others text, picture,
video, and music. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, and
Foursquare fall into this category of social media. The other group is
collaborative social media, which enables people to work together
to achieve common goals through interactive and social processes.
Wiki and Google Docs are great examples of this type of social
media. In this article, we define social media broadly to include both
expressive and collaborative tools. As of July 2010, 22 out of 24 major
federal agencies had a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube
(Government Accountability Office, 2010). Indeed, social media
enables government to become a platform for public participation
and collaboration (Lathrop & Ruma, 2010). Nevertheless, social
media-based public engagement is an uncharted territory and govern-
ment agencies generally lack experience and knowledge about
implementing social media.

0740-624X/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.giq.2012.06.001
 G. Lee, Y.H. Kwak / Government Information Quarterly 29 (2012) 492–503
Open government implementation may require non-trivial invest-
ment and commitment on the part of agencies as they need to acquire
new skills, train employees, purchase technologies, and upgrade
network infrastructure. Therefore, huge stakes are involved in open
government implementation. One important problem is that federal
agencies are under tremendous pressure and expected to implement
three principles of open government (transparency, participation, and
collaboration) in a relatively short period of time. As a result, agencies
tend to launch too many projects simultaneously which their current
capabilities and resources cannot adequately support. Our observation
indicates that there is a strong tendency for agencies to stretch them-
selves too thin, compromising the success of their efforts, and possibly
undermining the performance of their open government initiatives.
For example, senior executives of federal agencies launched their
blogs to directly engage the public. However, due to the substantial
time commitment and resources required to maintain the blogs, many
senior executives found it difficult to respond to citizen comments in
a timely manner and eventually discontinued their blogs. Failure of
open government initiatives can have serious consequences such as
monetary loss, damaged reputations, and reduced public trust on
government. Therefore, agencies should carefully think through various
challenges and risks before they launch multiple open government
initiatives. For example, agencies need to attend to issues related to
technology and culture as the former is a key enabler and the latter is
a critical barrier (Luna-Reyes, Zhang, Gil-García, & Cresswell, 2005).
Based on our field studies with U.S. federal healthcare administra-
tion agencies and our review of prior literature, we propose the Open
Government Maturity Model (OGMM) for guiding government agen-
cies through their journey to open government enabled by social
media and other relevant technologies. We argue that there is a logical
sequence for advancing open government and that, by following this
sequence, agencies can minimize risk and harness the power of social
media effectively in order to increase public engagement. The Maturity
Model can prevent government agencies from pursuing ineffective or
disorderly open government initiatives.
Prior studies have proposed several stage/maturity models for
developing e-government (Valdés et al., 2011). For example, Layne
and Lee (2001) proposed a four stage growth model that focused
on functionality and technical capability/integration of e-government.
Andersen and Henriksen (2006) extended the Layne and Lee model
by using an activity and customer-centric approach. Gottschalk (2009)
proposed a five level maturity model for interoperability in digital
government, focusing on interoperability of system, process, knowledge,
value, and goal. Based on dynamic capability perspective, Klievink and
Janssen (2009) developed a five stage model for realizing joined-up
government. Although these stage/maturity models can be useful for
implementing e-government in general, they are not specifically designed
to guide open government initiatives which focus on transparent, interac-
tive, participatory, collaborative public engagement that are largely
driven by the Open Government Directive and enabled by emerging
information and communication technologies such as social media
and Web 2.0. One notable exception is a recent Gartner Group report
proposing a maturity model for open government (Di Maio, 2010).
While this industry report identifies building blocks of technological
and organizational capabilities for open government, there is a need
for a theory-driven, empirically-validated Open Government Maturity
Model that not only identifies technological and organizational capa-
bilities but also addresses a comprehensive set of dimensions such as
culture, regulation, policy, leadership, processes, outcomes, challenges,
opportunities, metrics, and best practices. This research aims to fill
this gap.
Our Open Government Maturity Model defines five maturity levels
of open government, starting from initial conditions (Level 1), and then
moving on to data transparency (Level 2), open participation (Level 3),
open collaboration (Level 4), and ubiquitous engagement (Level 5).
The Maturity Model allows the government agency to assess its current
493
maturity level (Valdés et al., 2011). If adopted by multiple agencies, the
model can be used as a standardized tool for benchmarking as well as a
common language and framework for open government planning and
implementation. The model informs government agencies of the focus-
es, capabilities, processes, outcomes, challenges, best practices, and
metrics for each maturity level.
2. Research methodology
2.1. Model development
We inductively developed the Open Government Maturity Model
primarily based on five case studies with the U.S. Healthcare Administra-
tion agencies. These case studies included multiple field interviews with
government executives, managers, and contractors as well as analysis of
archival data. To obtain a broad perspective, we also conducted several
interviews with managers from other U.S. federal agencies, including
Chief Knowledge Architect of Federal Aviation Administration and
Director of New Media at Federal Communications Commission.
Each interview was semi-structured with guiding questions and
lasted about one hour and a half. The interviewees spoke about their
agency's open government plans, current status of open government
initiatives, challenges, risks, benefits, best practices, and metrics. All
the interviews were transcribed for data analysis. In addition, we
reviewed and analyzed a wide range of government memorandums,
strategic plans, reports, white papers, websites, blogs, and
government-run social media sites. The interview and archival data
were analyzed to discover recurrent common themes through a num-
ber of iterations between the two co-authors until no new theme is
found (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Content analysis of those data
produced useful insights for developing our maturity model. Finally,
our model was informed by prior literature on e-government, open
government, and various maturity/stage models.
2.2. Model validation
To validate our proposed maturity model, we first asked two
previous interviewees to evaluate the validity and usefulness of the
model. We then hosted a focus group discussion with social media
specialists and managers from federal agencies. The focus group
discussion took place in a university in Washington D.C. with which
the first author is affiliated. The fourteen participants in the focus
group included members of social media/new media teams from
several U.S. federal agencies including Department of Commerce,
Department of Homeland Security, Department of the Interior,
Department of State, Department of Transportation, and General Ser-
vices Administration. We asked them to provide verbal and written
feedback on the following questions: (1) Does the sequence of the
maturity model make sense and represent logical stages toward
open government? And (2) are the major elements of each level of
the maturity model such as focuses, capabilities/processes, outcomes,
and metrics well defined and articulated? Overall, these feedback
data demonstrate that our maturity model is valid and applicable
for evaluating and implementing open government initiatives and
that it is a useful framework that informs government agencies of ca-
pabilities, challenges, risks, benefits, outcomes, metrics, and best
practices associated with open government initiatives. We used the
feedback to refine and revise the model.
3. Open government cases in U.S. healthcare
administration agencies
We analyze and discuss five open government cases in the U.S.
Healthcare Administration agencies. Through these cases, we identify
key capabilities, outcomes, opportunities, challenges, and issues for
open government initiatives, which in turn helped us develop the
494 G. Lee, Y.H. Kwak / Government Information Quarterly 29 (2012) 492–503

Open Government Maturity Model. We selected the open government
portal of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and
four flagship initiatives of the Department (U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, 2010). We used the Grounded Theory Approach
to analyze the case data. We identified capabilities, outcomes, opportu-
nities, and challenges from the first case and then analyzed the second
case to modify the initial results. We analyzed the third, fourth, and
fifth cases one at a time to further modify and refine the results. By
so doing, we confirmed that our results were becoming stable and con-
verging over time. We briefly discuss the cases below. Detail analysis
results are summarized in Table 1.
3.1. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) Dashboard
The Center for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) keeps track of exten-
sive data associated with Medicare services. In the past, much of this
data was available to the public in the forms of scattered hard copy
and electronic publications. Analysis of the data required retrieval of
it from disparate sources and users had to have its own computer
programmer and an in-house Medicare expert to pull it together.
Further, the publication lag time of the data was up to 18 months.
Due to the inconvenience of data retrieval and the long time lag of
data availability, Medicare data traditionally has not been highly
utilized by the public. To eliminate such barriers to access Medicare
data, CMS launched the CMS Dashboard (www.cms.gov/Dashboard)
on CMS's website in April 2010.
The main objective of the Dashboard is to allow the public to visu-
alize and analyze Medicare data with ease. CMS Dashboard currently
consists of four dashboards including Medicare Inpatient Hospital
Dashboard, Medicare Enrollment Dashboard, Medicare Prescription
Drug Benefit Dashboard, and Part B Physician/Supplier Dashboard.
The current Medicare Inpatient Hospital Dashboard allows the public
to track Medicare inpatient hospital spending in terms of payment,
volume, and average inpatient payment per claim from 2007 to the
current year by state and by the top 25 diagnosis-related groups.
The public can choose states, diagnosis-related groups, and fiscal
years to produce customized results to meet their needs. Data is pres-
ented in both table and graph forms. The data publication lag time has
been reduced to as short as 3 months, a big improvement compared
to the previous 18-month lag time.
The other three dashboards are currently in the beta version
phase. The Medicare Enrollment Dashboard currently presents
numerous statistics on Medicare enrollment at both the national
and state level for the last five years, as well as historical trend data
on overall Medicare enrollment from 1966 to the current year. The
Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Dashboard currently shows the
Prescription Drug Event data as it relates to drug costs and utilization.
The Part B Physician/Supplier Dashboard offers various statistical
views of the Part B data as it relates to the allowed services, allowed
charges, and they payment amount. These Dashboards together pro-
vide the public, researchers, policymakers, and health care providers
with important information about Medicare services, which will

Table 1
Open government initiatives for U.S. public healthcare administration.

Initiative Capabilities Outcomes/opportunities Challenges/issues

CMS Dashboard
(CMS.gov/Dashboard)
FDA Transparency Initiative
(FDA.gov/FDABasics)
FDA TRACK
(FDA.gov/FDATrack)
HHS OG portal
(HHS.gov/Open)
Health Data Initiative
• Visualizing Medicare spending
• Comparing Medicare inpatient spending
by state, by diagnosis-related groups
(DRG), by hospitals, and by public
policy goals
• Data is published within three months
• No end-user customization capabilities
• Broadcasting basic information
(so-called FDA Basics) with very limited
feedback capabilities
• RSS and email updates
• Proactive disclosure of information
• Providing industry with real-time
answers to their daily challenges
• Webinar series
• Video clips on important issues
• Agency-wide program performance
management
• Monitoring 90+ FDA program offices
through key monthly performance
measures
• About 40 online dashboards
• Allowing users to submit comments
• A portal to all HHS open government
applications, capabilities, and data
• Blogs by CTO
• Widgets and RSS tools
• Sharing the HHS OG Plan and getting
public feedback and comments
• Publishing record management procedures
and policy
• Hyperlinks to HHS’ Facebook, Twitter,
Youtube, Blogs, and Flickr sites
• A public–private effort that aims to help
Americans understand health and health
care performance in their communities and
to help spark and facilitate action to improve
performance
• Interactive health maps, social networking
applications, idea contests, online games
for public education, etc.
• Increased visibility, transparency
• Positive feedback and compliments from
the public
• The public makes informed decisions
• Cultural shift towards openness
• No tangible benefit has been reported
• Increased public awareness and knowledge
• The public is better educated about what
FDA does and how the work gets done
• Increased transparency to regulated
industry
• Early public reactions have been positive
• Increased agency accountability and
transparency
• Improved performance over time
• Knowledge-sharing among offices
• Identifying common issues and
interdependencies across program offices
• One-stop portal service
• Increased public awareness and engagement
• Increased visibility, transparency
• Feedback from the public on the HHS OG
plan and CTO blogs
• Limited interactions among the public
and HHS
• No quantitative results have been reported
yet
• Creating a network of health data suppliers
and “data appliers” to create applications
to (1) raise awareness of community health
performance, (2) increase pressure on
decision-makers to improve performance,
and (3) facilitate action to improve
performance
• Sharing best practices
• Budgeting issues
• Data accuracy
• Timely update of data
• No dedicated staffer
• Lack of flexibility in data format
• Accidental disclosure of confidential,
private information
• Deciding what information to share
or disclose
• Data quality
• Lack of resources for maintaining and
expanding services
• Accuracy and timeliness of performance
data
• Too much focus on numbers
• Integrated governance on program
performance
• Lack of public participation mechanisms
• Creating and sustaining public interest
and participation
• Timely and consistent responses to
public comments
• Striking a balance between control and
autonomy
• Level of time commitment from top
executives to posting blogs and responding
to public comments
• Creating and sustaining public interests
and engagement
• Attracting a critical mass of data/applications
suppliers and consumers
• Creating effective public–private working
relations
 G. Lee, Y.H. Kwak / Government Information Quarterly 29 (2012) 492–503
generate useful insights for improving the health care system. CMS
uses social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to in-
crease public awareness of these online data. The agency collects pub-
lic comments and feedback from these social media sites as well as
from the Dashboard website. However, the Dashboard and the social
media sites remain largely un-integrated.
3.2. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Transparency Initiative
In the past, stakeholders have complained about FDA's lack of
transparency for their activities and decision-making. In response to
this issue, FDA launched its Transparency Initiative in June 2009.
The main objective of the FDA Transparency Initiative is to make the
agency more transparent and open to the public. FDA strives to
improve data transparency in the following focal areas: (1) emerging
safety issues regarding FDA-regulated products, (2) information
about product applications that are abandoned or withdrawn, (3) deci-
sions about pending product applications, and (4) relevant information
for regulated industry. To that end, the agency implements the Trans-
parency Initiative in three phases:
• Phase 1: FDA Basics (beginning in January 2010). FDA launched a
web-based resource called FDA Basics (www.fda.gov/FDABasics).
This resource includes questions and answers about FDA and the
products that the agency regulates, videos that explain agency
activities, and conversations with agency officials about the work
of their offices. Users can rate the helpfulness of the information
provided and suggest additional information for inclusion. Feed-
back provided by the public is used to update the resource.
• Phase 2: Public Disclosure (beginning in May 2010). This phase
relates to FDA's proactive disclosure of information the agency has
in its possession, and how to make information about agency
activities and decision making more transparent, useful, and under-
standable to the public. The information that FDA considers disclosing
to the public proactively include: (1) Detailed explanation about the
rationale when the agency declines to approve medical products,
and (2) Summary data on safety and effectiveness from medical prod-
uct applications.
• Phase 3: Transparency to Regulated Industry (beginning in January
2011). This phase enhances the agency's transparency to regulated
industry. Increased transparency is expected to foster a more effec-
tive and efficient regulatory process because it allows the members
of the regulated industry to reduce misconceptions and misunder-
standings of the regulatory process and the agency's decision and
to learn from detailed data.
FDA uses social media sites such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter,
and Flickr to increase public awareness of its online data. The agency
collects public comments and feedback from these social media sites
as well as from the FDA Basics website. However, similar to the CMS
Dashboard case, these social media sites and the website are not
well integrated yet, lacking lively conversations about the published
data.
3.3. FDA-TRACK
FDA-TRACK is the new agency-wide program performance man-
agement system. It monitors over 100 program offices through key
monthly performance measures. Each of the program offices is respon-
sible for collecting and providing data in preparation for reporting
performance via the FDA-TRACK dashboard. The dashboards are
presented to senior leadership through quarterly briefings and then
posted to the FDA-TRACK website (www.fda.gov/FDATrack) for public
access. Currently, over 50 dashboards are published online. This initia-
tive enables FDA to achieve a higher level of transparency in program
performance. FDA-TRACK publicly reports performance indicators in
495
the following four categories (U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services, 2010).
• FDA-wide common measures such as the total number of em-
ployees who have completed the Incident Command System (ICS)
training in the month
• Center-specific measures such as the percentage of employees who
receive training each month
• Program-specific measures such as the percentage of 510(k) decisions
made on time during the month
• Project-specific measures such as the development of a new
risk-based approach for evaluating safety, effectiveness, and quality
of new animal drugs
The FDA-TRACK initiative strives to enhance accountability and
knowledge sharing through transparent performance data shared
online. The key for the success of FDA-TRACK is accuracy and timeli-
ness of performance data. One risk is that FDA-TRACK may lead the
agency to focus too much on quantitative performance measures
and to lose insights on intangible and qualitative dimensions of its
performance.
3.4. HHS open government portal website
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launched
its open government portal website (www.hhs.gov/open) in February
2010. The portal website provides links to many of the important
HHS open government resources including data sets, tools, initiatives,
records and reports, executive orders, and online discussion forums.
Two types of data sets are currently available. Downloadable data
sets are open-format data sets presented in generic file formats such
as csv or xml. Interactive data sets are the data sets that can be manip-
ulated on the website by users. The portal provides two types of tools:
widgets and RSS.
There are several discussion forums on the portal. One discussion
forum invites the public to submit their comments and suggestions
on the HHS Open Government Plan and rate the content on a
five-star scale. This enables HHS to continue to modify its Open
Government Plan. Another discussion forum is the Open HHS blog
hosted by the Department's CTO in which the public engage in
on-going conversations with the CTO. These discussion forums engage
the public in the Department's decision-making and governing process
through feedback, comment, and discussion. However, real-time inter-
action between the public and the Department is not quite possible yet
as public comments are posted upon the department's review and
approval. As a result, reviewing and posting public comments occur
only during regular business hours and there is a time lag between
comment submission and posting. The portal website allows the public
to find and stay connected to numerous social media sites hosted by or
related to various agencies under HHS. These sites include over 60
Facebook pages, over 130 Twitter feeds, over 25 YouTube channels,
over 30 blogs, and several Flickr accounts.
3.5. Health Data Initiative
HHS and the Institute of Medicine have launched a national initia-
tive to help consumers and communities get more value out of the
Nation's wealth of health-related data. This initiative, named the
Health Data Initiative, is a major new public–private effort that aims
to help the public understand health and health care performance
in their communities and to help spark and facilitate action to im-
prove performance. The goal of the initiative is to create a network
of health data suppliers and data appliers so that the data could be
used to create applications to raise awareness of community health
performance, increase pressure on decision-makers to improve
performance, and facilitate action to improve performance.
496 G. Lee, Y.H. Kwak / Government Information Quarterly 29 (2012) 492–503
HHS will be providing to the public a comprehensive Health Data Set
harvested from across the Department, free of charge and without any
intellectual property constraint. This data set will consist of hundreds
and thousands of measures of health care quality, cost, and access.
Then, working with a number of technology companies, researchers,
health advocates, employers, media outlets, consumer advocates, mar-
keters, and providers, HHS will seek to identify the uses of this
data that would best raise awareness of health performance, motivate
the public to improve performance, and help improvers do the
improving.
Some of the potential applications include (1) interactive online
health maps that help the public understand health performance in
their geographic area versus in other areas, (2) social networking
applications that allow health improvement leaders to connect with
each other, compare performance, share best practices, and challenge
each other, (3) competitions and challenges regarding how commu-
nities can innovate to improve health performance, (4) viral online
games that help to educate people about community health, and
(5) integration of community health-related data into new value-
added services, such as real estate websites.
4. Open Government Maturity Model (OGMM)
Based on our analysis of the five cases discussed above, additional
field interviews, archival data, and prior literatures, we develop and
propose an Open Government Maturity Model (OGMM) that govern-
ment agencies can use as a guiding framework to assess their current
level of open government maturity and to move to higher levels of
maturity in a systematic and incremental way. Although the Maturity
Model is developed mainly based on data from U.S. federal agencies,
we believe that it can be used by state or local government agencies
without major modifications because the core principles and objectives
of open government are the same for federal, state, and local govern-
ments. The model is depicted in Fig. 1. As government agencies move
to a higher maturity level, the public is more engaged and thus greater
public value of open government is realized. On the other hand, a
higher maturity level faces increased technical and managerial
complexity and greater challenges and risks.
One of the important principles of the Maturity Model is that
government agency should follow the proposed stages from the lowest
to higher maturity levels, instead of achieving all maturity levels at
once or skipping a level and jumping to the next level. For example,
we propose that data transparency is an important condition and
enabler for open participation and collaboration. Similarly, if agencies
have already developed open participation capabilities, open collabora-
tion and ubiquitous engagement can be implemented more effectively.
Our field observations of federal agencies’ open government initiatives,
focus group discussions, and literature review led us to the conclusion
that simultaneously pursuing multiple maturity levels of open govern-
ment often causes numerous challenging issues concerning resources,
budget, time, technology, cultural change, and adoption by the public.
Open government maturity
Public engagement 5 privacy standards and data architecture (DAMA_International, 2010).
Ubiquitous
Public value
Engagement
4 because doing so is not only impractical, but also ineffective. As the
Open
Collaboration
3 on the data that would most benefit the public. To do so, the agency
Open
Participation
2
Data
1 Transparency
Initial
Technical/managerial complexity
Conditions
Challenges/risks
Fig. 1. Open Government Maturity Model (OGMM).
By focusing on accomplishing one maturity level at a time, government
can effectively build infrastructure and capabilities for open govern-
ment without overburdening government employees or overwhelm-
ing and confusing the public. Table 2 describes the focus, capabilities/
processes, expected outcomes, and metrics for each maturity level of
open government. The Maturity Model distinguishes data-related
capabilities/processes and participation/collaboration-related ones
and delineates how they evolve through maturity levels. While each
level has a distinct focus, these capabilities are developed over time
and become increasingly mature through multiple stages.
4.1. Level 1—initial conditions
Level 1 of the OGMM refers to an initial stage where no or few
open government capabilities exist and social media is never or
seldom used. The Level 1 government agency focuses primarily on
cataloguing and broadcasting information to the public. It lacks interac-
tive communication capabilities such as social media and Web 2.0 tools
and relies on one-way, static communication methods. A typical Level
1 agency would have a website that provides the public with general
information about the agency. However, the public does not engage
in the agency's governing process in a meaningful way. This level is
similar to the first stage “catalogue” of Layne and Lee's e-government
growth model in which government provides minimal online presence
(Layne & Lee, 2001). The Level 1 agency does not publish much
in-depth data and only limited catalogue data is made available to
the public.
The agency uses few or no metrics to assess its website performance
or public engagement although it occasionally measures number of vis-
itors and number of pages viewed. Since the agency's online capabilities
are mostly static and data is not updated frequently, the public does not
return to the website frequently and takes a passive role without much
meaningful engagement. As a result, the work of the Level 1 govern-
ment agency is often viewed by the public as a black box with little
transparency.
4.2. Level 2—data transparency
Level 2 represents the first step towards open government as
defined by the Open Government Directive. The use of social media
to foster open government is still relatively limited in Level 2, though
it contributes to increased data transparency to an extent. As the
amount of data is exploding in the Digital Economy and in the era
of Big Data, the Level 2 agency focuses on increasing transparency
of government processes and performance by publishing relevant
data online and sharing it with the public (Meijer & Thaens, 2009).
CMS Dashboard, FDA Transparency Initiative, and FDA TRACK
discussed earlier are great examples of open government initiatives
aiming to increase data transparency. The two most important tasks
at this level are (1) identifying high-value, high-impact data for the
public and (2) improving and assuring data quality in terms of accura-
cy, consistency, and timeliness. In addition, important data manage-
ment functions are established. For example, agencies establish data
The Level 2 agency does not try to publish all the data it owns,
Pareto principle (i.e., the 80/20 Rule) suggests, the agency focuses
needs to put in place an effective governance structure and process
to formally identify relevant data, assure its quality, and publish it
in a timely manner. Data quality is extremely critical as low quality
data may misinform and mislead the public about government work
and performance. Once bad data is published and shared, it is very
difficult to recall the information without causing damage to the
agency's reputation and to the public's trust on the agency.
Table 2
Open Government Maturity Model.
Level Focuses Capabilities/processes
Data
1 Initial • Information broadcasting • Only limited data is made
conditions available online
• Data is not updated frequently
2 Data • Transparency of government • High-value, high-impact
transparency processes and performance government data is published
• Data quality online
• Data quality improvement:
accuracy, consistency, and
timeliness
• Data privacy standards
• Data architecture is developed
• Data governance structure and
process are established
• Build a culture of transparency
3 Open • Public feedback, conversation, • Unstructured government data • Pervasive use of social media for
participation voting, and ideation is widely shared online
• Interactive communications • User-created contents are
• Crowd-sourcing posted and shared
• Data governance structure
and process are managed and
optimized
• Data privacy and security is
enhanced
4 Open • Interagency collaboration • Data analytics for obtaining new • Inter-agency collaboration on
collaboration • Open collaboration with the public insights and improving
• Co-creating value-added services decision-making
• Government employees
develop data analytics
capabilities
5 Ubiquitous • Increased transparency, participation, • Expanding the scope and depth • Expanding the scope and depth
engagement and collaboration of data transparency
• Ubiquitous and continuous public • Data is accessible easily by
engagement mobile devices
• Integrated public engagement • Seamless integration of data
analytics with mission-critical • Integrated and seamless deployment
government activities.
• Public value of data is fully
realized
Outcomes
Participation/collaboration
• One-way, static communication
• No or little online interactive
capabilities
• Feedback from the public on the
usefulness and quality of data
• Limited use of social media for
keeping the public informed
and engaged
• Experimenting social media for
public participation
interactive, on-going conversations,
story-telling, and communications
• Voting, polling, feedback, ideation
• Timely and consistent response to feedback • Reduced cost and time for innovation
• Crowd-sourcing to tap into the
ideas and expertise of the public
• Focus on mainstream social media
such as Facebook and Twitter
complex projects and decision-making
• Open collaboration solves complex
problems
• Public–private collaboration creates
value-added services
• Open collaboration for policy/rule making
• Collaborative response to national
emergencies and natural disasters
• Use of collaborative social media
such as Google Docs and Wiki
• Open collaboration process is
embedded and implemented online
of open participation and open
collaboration
• Use of mobile, ubiquitous computing
platforms for ubiquitous engagement
of multiple channels of social media
within and across agencies
• Integrated governance structure,
process, and ecosystem for public
engagement
• Government websites are not
frequently visited by the public
• No or little public engagement
• The public takes a passive role
• Government is viewed as a black box
• Increased public awareness of
government data and process
• Increased government accountability
• Improved data quality: accuracy,
consistency, and timeliness
• Reduction of FOIA requests and their
processing time
• Foundation for performance improvement
• Foundation for value-added services
• Cultural shift to openness begins
• The public is engaged through data
• Real-time, instant, diverse feedback from
the public
• On-going, community-based conversation
and discussion
• More innovation
• Increased sense of community centered
around government
• Cultural shift to openness
• The public is engaged through
conversation
• Synergistic effect of interagency
collaboration: time/cost savings and
higher quality outputs
• Time/cost savings and innovations
through open innovation
• The public benefits from high quality,
innovative new services
• New policies and rules are made
through open collaboration
• Effective responses to emergencies
and natural disasters
• Openness is widely accepted
• The public is engaged through
projects/tasks
• The public engages through multiple
social media channels
• The public engages in various
government activities through
ubiquitous computing platforms
• Public engagement throughout lifetime
• Virtuous cycles for sustaining public
engagement
• Openness becomes a norm for
government culture
• Benefits of open government are fully realized
Metrics
• No or few metrics are used
• Public awareness of government
websites
• Number of visitors, pages viewed
• Process-centric metrics
• Number of data sets published,
analysis tools, downloads, and
visitors
• Percentage of repeat visitors
• Data accuracy, consistency,
timeliness
G. Lee, Y.H. Kwak / Government Information Quarterly 29 (2012) 492–503
• Reduction in FOIA requests,
backlog, and response time
• Process-centric metrics
• Number of visitors, followers
• Number of comments and ideas
posted by the public
• Frequency of voting and polling
• Number of out-of-control
incidents
• Usefulness and quality of public
comments and ideas
• Process-centric metrics are mostly
used and outcome-centric metrics
are sometimes used
• Number of inter-agency
collaborations, public–private
collaborations,
citizen-government
collaborations
• Number and diversity of external
partners
• Number of new value-added
services
• Time and cost savings
• Quality and innovativeness
• Both process-centric and
outcome-centric metrics are
actively used
• Number of mobile users, mobile
platforms, applications, and
services
• Level of integration of open
government processes and services
• Extent of public engagement
throughout lifetime
• Net impact on productivity and
innovation
497
498 G. Lee, Y.H. Kwak / Government Information Quarterly 29 (2012) 492–503
Government agencies’ vast amounts of data are an important na-
tional resource which can be utilized to help the public understand
what the government does and how well they do it, and to hold them
accountable for any wrongdoings, thus preventing corruptions (Shim
& Eom, 2009). This data can also help to increase public awareness of
government work and to generate insights into how to improve
government performance. Therefore, increased data transparency pro-
vides the basis for the public to participate in and to collaborate on gov-
ernment work to mobilize action, create value-adding services, facilitate
innovation, and policy making (French, 2011; Napoli & Karaganis, 2010).
To foster the public's effective use of government data, the data needs to
be easily accessible and usable (Jaeger & Bertot, 2010). Using social
media tools, agencies seek feedback from the public on the usefulness
and accessibility of their data for continuous improvement. However,
in Level 2, the use of social media is limited and conventional websites
or emails are still widely used to receive public feedback. In preparation
for moving to Level 3, the Level 2 agency experiments with social media
for fostering public participation and tries to learn lessons from pilot
projects.
As the public starts to engage in government work through
accessing data, increased data transparency enables government agen-
cies to begin to shift their organizational culture towards openness and
sharing (Bertot, Jaeger, & Grimes, 2010). The Level 2 agency tends to
use process-centric metrics rather than outcome-centric metrics to
evaluate the performance of data transparency and public engagement.
Whereas process-centric metrics focus on measuring quantitative
performance of public engagement processes, outcome-centric metrics
focus on measuring the impact and value of public engagement both
quantitatively and qualitatively. Some of the process-centric metrics
in Level 2 include the number of published datasets, the number of
data downloads, and the number of visitors. Increasing data transpar-
ency should be the first step towards open government as it is relative-
ly easy and quick to implement. Furthermore, transparent data satisfies
the public's basic needs for information, and becomes a basis for
open participation and collaboration of the public and other external
constituents and stakeholders.
4.3. Level 3—open participation
Level 3 of the Maturity Model focuses on increasing open participa-
tion of the public in government work and decision through various
methods and tools including social media. Open participation enhances
policy decisions and government services by welcoming and utilizing
the input of the public. The HHS Open Government Portal Website is
a good example for this level. While Level 2 opens up government
data to the public, Level 3 opens the government to the public's ideas
and knowledge. The Level 3 agency strives to bring anecdotes, stories,
conversations, ideas, and comments from the public to everyone's at-
tention. To do so, the agency turns to social media and Web 2.0 tools,
including web dialogues, blogs, microblogging, social networking,
photo/video sharing, social bookmarking/tagging, and ideation tools.
These tools and technologies can be thought of as “expressive” social
media as opposed to “collaborative” social media that is an important
enabler for open collaboration in Level 4.
Contrary to the conventional feedback methods such as surveys and
questionnaires, expressive social media allows the public to engage in
informal, flexible, spontaneous, conversational interactions with
government. As a result, various e-Participation activities such as
e-Voting and e-Petitioning are enabled and facilitated (Sæbø, Rose, &
Flak, 2008). The Level 3 agency strives to crowdsource the public's
ideas, knowledge, expertise, and experience through voting, polling,
contest, blogging, microblogging, ideation, etc. (Howe, 2008). This
collective intelligence, based on a large number of individuals from
diverse backgrounds, helps government agencies to make informed,
reliable decisions in nearly real time (Bonabeau, 2009). The recent
technological development in the areas such as semantic Web helps
overcome the longstanding democratic trade-off between group size
and depth of argument, allowing a large-scale citizen group to engage
in rich and deep deliberation and discourse (Geller, Chun, & An,
2008; Hilbert, 2009). While there are many established and emergent
social media tools, the agency would do best to start with most widely
used tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Flickr.
The Level 3 agency still lacks outcome-centric metrics to a large
degree and relies mostly on process-centric metrics to measure the
level of public participation. The agency needs to measure the bene-
fits from open participation including real-time, instant, diverse feed-
back, on-going, community-based dialogues, reduced time and cost
for innovation, more innovation, and the public's increased sense of
community with government agencies. Through informal, on-going
interactions with the public, Level 3 government agencies get
momentum to nurture the open government culture and practice. It
is important for a Level 3 agency to build the capability to respond to
the public's feedback timely and consistently. This capability requires
formal processes, coordination mechanisms, and dedicated govern-
ment employees responding to public comments.
The Level 3 agency continues to increase data transparency by
embracing unstructured data and user-created contents. It refines and
optimizes data governance structure and process that was established
in Level 2. Data privacy and security is greatly enhanced in this maturity
level to mitigate the risks associated with publishing and sharing
user-created contents.
4.4. Level 4—open collaboration
Once government agencies reach the maturity of open participa-
tion, the next step is to foster open collaboration among government
agencies, the public, and the private sector. Our observation is that
some federal agencies use the terms participation and collaboration
interchangeably and do not clearly distinguish between them in their
open government plans. However, we believe that it is helpful to differ-
entiate between the two. Open participation refers to public engage-
ment in relatively simple interactive communications. It relies
primarily on expressive social media to connect people and help
share their idea. Open collaboration, on the other hand, refers to
pubic engagement in complex tasks or projects that aim to co-create
specific outputs (Bovaird, 2007). e-Rulemaking is a good example of
how government agencies and the public openly collaborate on
complex tasks through technological capabilities (Coglianese, 2006).
Such tasks include group writing and editing of documents, Wiki appli-
cations development, open source software development, organizing
events, etc. It relies on collaborative social media such as Wiki, Google
Docs, Yammer, and Jive Social Business Software.
We found that some agencies focus mostly on interagency collabo-
ration. However, we argue that open collaboration should go beyond it
and reach out not only to the public but also to the private sector to
realize the full potential of open collaboration. The Level 4 agency
collaborates with other agencies by utilizing government data and
public inputs and feedback and co-creates value-added government
services to the public and the private sector. The Health Data Initiative
discussed earlier is a good example. Some other applications of open
collaboration include policy/rule making, application development,
public response to national emergencies/natural disasters, and innova-
tion of products and services. The Level 4 agency implements and em-
beds open collaboration mechanisms such as public contests and
shared repositories in their open government tools and processes so
that anyone can engage in the collaboration process anywhere and
anytime.
Process-centric metrics are still being used dominantly in Level 4.
However, the Level 4 agency starts to use some meaningful outcome-
centric metrics such as cost and time savings and rate of innovation.
As the public engages in complex government tasks and projects, open-
ness is widely accepted in government agencies. Open collaboration
 G. Lee, Y.H. Kwak / Government Information Quarterly 29 (2012) 492–503
produces synergistic effects of multiple collaborating parties and results
in time/cost savings, higher quality, and more innovation for govern-
ment services and policy/rule making. Open collaboration may enable
efficient and effective grassroots responses to national emergencies
and natural disasters.
The Level 4 agency develops data analytics capabilities to obtain
new insights and improve decision-making by analyzing a large
volume of data. Since data analytics is an emerging area, it would be
important to train government employees to be competent at data
analysis. However, data analytics activities in this maturity level tend
to be isolated and disconnected from decision-making processes. As a
result, the benefits from data analytics will be relatively limited.
The Maturity Model proposes that government agencies should
progress through different maturity levels in an orderly manner.
Importantly, the 80/20 Rule applies not only to Level 2 but also to
Levels 3 and 4. Government agencies in Levels 2 to 4 should not imple-
ment everything all at once; they should only select high-value,
high-impact initiatives for each maturity level and focus on strengthen-
ing what is working rather than worrying too much about what is not
working. Once a solid foundation of data transparency, open participa-
tion, and open collaboration is built through Levels 2 to 4, agencies can
achieve a higher degree of the open government vision in Level 5.
4.5. Level 5—ubiquitous engagement
Built upon Levels 2 to 4, the Level 5 government agency takes
transparency, participation, and collaboration to the next level of
public engagement by expanding the scope and depth of them and
fully harnessing the power of social media and related technologies.
The agency improves and fine-tunes existing open government
initiatives to maximize their benefits. Furthermore, it expands
its portfolio of open government programs to further benefit the
public.
Level 5 can be characterized by two important attributes. First, pub-
lic engagement becomes easier and more universally accessible
through mobile and ubiquitous computing devices and applications.
The public accesses government data and participates and collaborates,
using virtually any intelligent devices such as smart phones, tablets,
laptops, desktops, and other computing appliances. Government
websites and social media sites are optimized for various computing
platforms. Second, government data, public engagement methods, so-
cial media tools, and government services are seamlessly integrated
within and across government agencies so that the public can easily
navigate and engage in various government activities without having
to jump around different applications or keep logging in and off.
Open government data, applications, and processes are interoperable
across agencies (Gottschalk, 2009) and they are integrated vertically
and horizontally (Layne & Lee, 2001; Pardo & Tayi, 2007). Data
analytics is well integrated with mission-critical government activities
and decision-making processes.
The Level 5 agency puts an effective governance structure and
process in place to enable continuous improvement and innovation
of public engagement programs. Furthermore, agencies, the public,
the private sector, and other stakeholders form and nurture a sustain-
able ecosystem and a virtuous cycle for effective public engagement.
In Level 5, agencies focus more on outcome-centric metrics than on
process-centric metrics. Outcome-centric metrics measure the
tangible and intangible outcomes of open government initiatives.
They measure not only financial performance but also non-financial
performance such as innovation and learning. Openness becomes a
norm for government culture and the public engages in government
throughout their entire lifetime. As a result, the public value of the
Open Government Directive is fully realized in Level 5. However,
none of the open government initiatives in our research sample has
yet reached Level 5.
499
5. Challenges and best practices for open
government implementation
Nearly all U.S. federal agencies developed their strategic plan for
open government initiatives by April 2010. Most of them have
implemented only a few pilot projects and just began the full scale
implementation of their strategic initiatives. That being said, it is
critical for them to understand managerial and technical challenges
associated with open government initiatives and to learn from their
own experience as well as from that of other agencies to identify best
practices (Dawes, 2010). Based on relevant literature (e.g., Layne &
Lee, 2001), our case studies, field interviews, and a focus group
discussion, we have identified key challenges and best practices for
each maturity level of open government (see Table 3 for a summary).
Since Level 1 is included in the Maturity Model only as the basis for
open government and not as part of it, we exclude Level 1 from our
discussion and focus on Levels 2 to 5.
5.1. Challenges
We find that a number of challenges and risks are common to
Levels 2 to 5. One such challenge is the issue of timely response.
The current U.S. federal government budgeting cycle is about
18 months, and it is simply too long to timely fund open government
initiatives that require quick decisions and actions. As a result,
government agencies lack financial resources and human resources
required to implement the initiatives. One may make an assumption
that social medial and open government initiatives won't require
many resources. While the assumption is partially true, we find that so-
cial media/open government implementations often require significant
financial and human resources as well as non-trivial time commitment
on the part of government employees. Without sufficient funding and
dedicated personnel, developing and sustaining new public engage-
ment tools and programs will be a tough challenge for government
agencies.
The organizational culture of government agencies is another
important challenge common to all maturity levels. Although much
has changed recently, the typical government culture can still be char-
acterized as hierarchical, top-down, command-and-control, and siloed.
Without shifting the organizational culture towards more openness
and transparency, successful implementation of open government
initiatives seems illusive (Bertot et al., 2010). Agencies need to identify
effective incentive mechanisms to mobilize their employees to change
their mindset and behavior so that they can genuinely engage in open
government initiatives.
One of the challenges in building trust between the public and
government is concerns related to privacy and information security.
Prior research shows that important factors enabling the public to
adopt interactive online government services include perceived securi-
ty, perceived uncertainty, and perceived trust (Shareef, Kumar, Kumar,
& Dwivedi, 2011). Due to the open and autonomous nature of social
media and Web 2.0 technologies, the public and government agencies
are rightly concerned about (1) risks of accidentally disclosing
confidential information such as personally identifiable information
and (2) vulnerability of systems to acts of hacking, Denial of Services
(DoS) attacks, and intrusion of malware and spyware. Another impor-
tant challenge for all levels of open government maturity is the incom-
patibility or inconsistency between existing policies/rules and social
media usage (Bertot et al., 2012).
For Level 2 agencies, the challenges regarding data quality are
especially salient. Government agencies must ensure the accuracy,
consistency, timeliness, usability, and usefulness of the data that they
publish online and share with the public. To do so, agencies need to
put formal processes in place to govern the lifecycle of identifying, col-
lecting, and sharing of data. Taking advantage of a wide range of emer-
gent social media tools, agencies are likely to inform and communicate
500 G. Lee, Y.H. Kwak / Government Information Quarterly 29 (2012) 492–503
Table 3
Challenges and best practices for different maturity levels.
Level Challenges
Levels 2–5 • Timely budgeting
• Acquiring staffers and resources
• Inadequate network bandwidth
• Scalability
• Government's hierarchical culture
• Agency silos
• Protecting information security, privacy, and confidentiality
• Building trust with the public
• Legal, contractual, and policy issues
2 • Data quality and integrity: accuracy, consistency, and timeliness
• Data usability and usefulness
• Putting formal processes in place to govern the lifecycle of data
collecting and sharing
• Managing multiple communication channels to keep the public informed
3 • Creating and sustaining public engagement
• Monitoring and responding to public feedback and comments
• Keeping a balance between agency control and public autonomy
• Possibility of public conversations getting out of control
• Linking public input/feedback to policy/rule making
4 • Lack of accountability and responsibility
• Increased complexity
• Facilitating and coordinating productive collaboration
• Putting effective collaborative processes and tools in place
• Integrating with internal business processes
5 • Inter-agency integration of various OG processes and services
• A seamless, continuous experience for public participation and collaboration •
• Implementing ubiquitous computing platforms
• Managing the complexity of numerous public engagement services
• Creating a virtuous cycle and a sustainable ecosystem
with the public by multiple online channels. While providing options
for the public is desirable, managing multiple communication channels
requires not only skilled employees but also effective management
processes and governance structures.
In Level 3, government agencies start to engage the public by more
interactive methods, so an important challenge is creating and
sustaining public interest and engagement. As numerous social
media and Web 2.0 tools compete to gain people's attention, agencies
should not presume that the public will automatically come and
participate if they build venues for public engagement. Also, when
the public engages in open discussion forums, it is possible for public
conversations to get out of control. However, if agencies try to control
public comments too tightly, public participation is likely to decline
over time. Therefore, keeping the right balance between control and
autonomy in public engagement is an important issue.
Open collaboration pursued in Level 4 is likely to raise issues
around accountability and responsibility as many anonymous,
voluntary people collaborate on an ad-hoc basis. Few people may
collaborate all the way from the beginning to the end of a project
since many people come and go freely. In addition, the involvement
of a wide range of collaborators increases coordination complexity.
Government agencies need to find out effective coordination mecha-
nisms and processes for collaborative projects that are carried out by
the public in the cyber space. Integrating such collaboration processes
with the agency's internal business processes is an important chal-
lenge to address.
Integration and sustainability are important challenges for the
Ubiquitous Engagement pursued in Level 5. As government agencies
expand their portfolio of public engagement applications and utilize
mobile computing devices for further engagement of the public, the
seamless integration of those applications is required. To make public
engagement sustainable in the long run, agencies should create a virtu-
ous cycle of continuous feedback and improvement. Agencies should
Best practices
• Aligning OG initiatives with the agency goals and priorities
• Establishing effective OG governance
• Top management support
• Revise policies/rules that are hurdles
• Provision of OG incentive mechanisms
• Knowledge/best practice sharing and learning
• Phased and incremental approach
• Establishing a New Media Center
• Establish governance principles and processes for data sharing
• Centralized government data portals such as Data.gov
• Each agency's data portal to data sets
• Post high-value, high-impact data sets and tools first
• Dashboards for key performance data
• Creating social media based communities
• Using ideation platforms to crowd-source diverse and innovative ideas
• Public contests for the best applications utilizing government data
• Agency's OG blog and forum for public comments and participation
• Governance for public participation
• Processes and dedicated personnel to handle public feedback and comments
• Collaboration among government, private sector, and the public on medical
research
• Participation and Collaboration Resource Menu for government employees
• Use of Wiki to develop and share collective knowledge and intelligence
• Public participation and collaboration in patent examination
• Open source software development and sharing (e.g., HHS, NASA)
• Apps for smart phones and tablets
Integrating multiple public engagement platforms
• Engaging the public throughout their lifetime
• Exploring new ways of public engagement
• Continuous exploitation and improvement on transparency, participation, and
collaboration initiatives
create and nurture a self-sustaining ecosystem for social media-based
public engagement so that open government continues to evolve and
mature.
5.2. Best practices
We find that some of the best practices are effective for all matu-
rity levels. Government agencies should not pursue open government
initiatives for the sake of implementing new technologies. Instead,
they should align the objectives of their open government initiatives
with the agency's broader goals and priorities. To make sure of such
alignment, agencies need to put in place effective governance mech-
anisms such as HHS's agency-wide Open Government Steering
Group and Government-wide Steering Committee. Furthermore, top
management's involvement, support, and commitment help to align
strategic goals and objectives of individual projects.
Cultural barriers need to be addressed. To shift the siloed,
command-and-control government culture towards transparent,
open, participatory culture, government agencies need to actively
communicate with and educate their employees. For example, HHS
uses its intranet for this purpose. Showcasing success stories is another
effective way of changing organizational culture. However, organiza-
tional culture would not change completely until the new paradigm
of openness is embedded in internal business processes and perfor-
mance management system. Therefore, decision-making processes,
training programs, and governance mechanisms need to be revised so
that they are compatible with the open government vision.
To overcome some of the critical hurdles for open government con-
cerning the policies and rules that are incompatible or conflicting with
open government practices and social media usage, there needs to be
centralized, concerted, proactive efforts to revise such policies/rules.
For example, OMB (Office of Management and Budget) has issued
memorandums to clarify how certain rules and policies apply to federal
 G. Lee, Y.H. Kwak / Government Information Quarterly 29 (2012) 492–503
agency's use of social media (Godwin, Campbell, Levy, & Bounds,
2008). Furthermore, GSA (General Services Administration) issued
documents related to the use of social media for federal agencies and
announced that it had negotiated terms-of-services agreements with
several social networking providers (General Services Administration,
2009). As a result, other federal agencies can take advantage of these
negotiated agreements when determining whether to use the pro-
viders’ services.
Since virtually all federal agencies are presently implementing
their open government initiatives, it is critical for them to share
their knowledge, best practices, lessons learned with others. Informal
or formal communities of practice and interagency work groups or
committees facilitate such mutual learning and sharing. HHS has
established its Community of Practice at the HHS University. In
addition to the lateral learning, vertical learning should take place
as well among federal government, state government, and local
government.
In Level 2, government agencies should establish effective gover-
nance mechanisms for data posting and sharing. HHS Data Council,
HHS CIO Council, and Data.Gov Working Groups are some of the
examples of governing bodies that advise senior leadership on data
transparency strategies, policies and processes. Principles for data
posting and sharing also need to be put in place. For example, data
should be primary, structured, timely, usable, and complete. Further-
more, agencies should develop a formal process for the identification,
prioritization, publication, and monitoring of data release as well as
handling of public feedback. Given the importance of information
privacy issues raised in Level 2, agencies need to consult with privacy
experts before posting new data.
In Level 3, government agencies need to create social media-based
communities to get the public to participate in government work.
Agencies need to leverage ideation tools to crowdsource diverse and
innovative ideas from the public. For example, GSA launched
Challenge.gov, an online challenge platform that empowers govern-
ment employees and the public to bring the best ideas to address the
nation's most pressing challenges (www.challenge.gov). As demon-
strated by the case of the HHS Open Government blog, agencies should
use their open government blog or discussion forum to receive public
comments and feedback.
Not many open government initiatives have specifically targeted
open collaboration with the private sector and/or the public to be in
Level 4. Nevertheless, we are beginning to see some emergent best
practices in this area. One best practice we found is an HHS online
resource menu that lists common tools and information resources
that agencies may wish to use in collaboration activities. Government
employees can use this resource menu to share their experiences and
lessons learned. An increasing number of agencies are using Wiki, a
very effective tool to develop and share collective knowledge and in-
telligence. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been engaging
external experts in reviewing patents (www.peertopatent.org).
HHS, NASA, and a few other agencies have been encouraging open
source software development and sharing to boost innovation and
productivity.
None of the open government initiatives in our research sample
appears to belong to Level 5 of the Maturity Model. Therefore, we
could not identify best practices supported by empirical evidence.
However, we propose a few best practices for this maturity level
based on prior literature and the insights obtained from our field in-
terviews. First, agencies need to deploy social media-based applica-
tions and tools that are compatible with and even optimized for
mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets so that users may
have the same experience of engagement regardless of the computing
device and platform they use. Furthermore, agencies should integrate
their engagement tools and platforms seamlessly so that users can
easily navigate various programs and services and do not have to
keep logging in and off.
501
6. Recommendations
Government agencies can benefit from our proposed Maturity
Model in planning for and implementing their public engagement pro-
grams that are largely enabled by social media and Web 2.0 tools.
While the previous section presented some of the best practices we
identified in this research, this section presents more comprehensive
recommendations for effectively implementing open government
initiatives. These recommendations are based on the insights obtained
from our field studies, archival analysis, and prior literature.
6.1. Implementation approach
• Agencies should use a phased approach and focus on achieving one
maturity level at a time. Trying to achieve all maturity levels simulta-
neously is likely to result in slow implementation pace, lack of re-
sources, employee burnout, lack of public interest, and maintenance
problems. Overly aggressive implementation approach will make
social media-based public engagement a short-lived fad and lead to
a long-term failure.
• Government agencies should start with high-value, high-impact
data, tools, and applications and focus on strengthening what is
working rather than spending an inordinate amount of time and
energy on what is not working.
• Although many social media services and open source tools are free
of charge, social media‐based public engagement initiatives none-
theless require non-trivial investment in terms of human resources,
time commitment, and network infrastructure. Allocating dedicated
personnel to specific initiatives is necessary to ensure continuous
monitoring and maintenance. Agencies should not take resource
constraints lightly and must clearly state a way to secure necessary
resources in their open government plans.
• Government agencies should integrate open government data, tools,
applications, and processes into existing processes and routines. Only
when this happens, open government principles can be persistently
adopted and implemented.
• Government agencies will inevitably go through a steep learning
curve as open government initiatives progress. That said, it is criti-
cal to develop and nurture communities of practice for knowledge
sharing and learning. Learning should take place not only within
an agency but also across agencies.
6.2. Leadership, governance, and culture
• Just as any mission-critical organization-wide initiative, open govern-
ment initiatives need strong and sustainable support and commit-
ment from senior leaders. Top management should clarify the goals
of the agency's open government initiatives and make sure they are
aligned with the agency's overall mission and strategic goals. Open
government initiatives that do not contribute to the agency's mission
are unlikely to be sustainable.
• Federal CTO, OMB, and GSA should develop a government-wide
open government strategy and guidelines to address and resolve
common issues, problems, and conflicts that individual agencies
face. Some of these common issues include incompatible terms of
services for social media sites, advertising and endorsement, use
of free services, persistent cookies, and compliance with the Privacy
Act of 1974. A centralized and concerted approach is needed for
clarifying issues, resolving conflicts, and removing roadblocks.
• Government agencies should establish effective governance mecha-
nisms for data sharing. Principles and rules for data sharing also
need to be put in place. For example, data should be primary, struc-
tured, timely, usable, and complete. Further, agencies should develop
a formal process for the identification, prioritization, publication, and
monitoring of data release as well as handling of public feedback.
502 G. Lee, Y.H. Kwak / Government Information Quarterly 29 (2012) 492–503
• Metrics are essential for managing open government initiatives.
In the early stages of open government implementation, we recom-
mend that agencies start with metrics that objectively measure
process performance such as number of data sets posted, number
of ideas submitted, etc. In later stages, agencies should measure
outcome and impact such as time and cost savings, innovation, etc.
Finally, agencies need to incorporate qualitative metrics to measure
intangible outcomes such as strategic impact and public satisfaction.
• Although OMB emphasizes the importance of awards and incentives
to increase public engagement, most agencies are still in early stages
in terms of putting incentive systems in place. Senior management
should institutionalize incentive systems for government employees
to engage the public.
• Cultural barriers to open government need to be addressed. Senior
management should recognize, celebrate, and advertise success
stories of public engagement to facilitate cultural change towards
openness and transparency. In addition, they need to persistently
communicate with and educate government employees about the
significance of social media-based public engagement.
• Both government employees need to be educated about best prac-
tices concerning the use of social media. We find from our field
study that the following set of guiding principles is useful for effective
use of social media. We call it the RESPECT principle:
o Reply promptly to public comments
o Enhance public value when posting messages
o Simplify your message
o Protect public privacy and agency reputation
o Ensure validity of information sources
o Correct problems immediately and effectively
o Tell the truth all the time
7. Conclusions
U.S. government agencies have embarked their journey to open
government for increased public engagement. Social media and
Web 2.0 tools play an important role in realizing their vision. Our
research proposes that there are different maturity levels of open
government. We propose that, by moving from one maturity level
to the next level in an orderly manner, government agencies can
avoid unnecessary risks, build their open government capabilities
systematically, and enable the public to adopt their open government
applications. With such an effective implementation approach, we
believe that government will become an important platform on
which the public and the private sector participate, collaborate, and
innovate.
Although we validated our model with a focused group and several
field interviews, future research needs to validate our model more
rigorously using quantitative empirical data. In addition, our model is
largely based on the government agency perspective and future
research can improve the model by incorporating the public's perspec-
tive. We acknowledge that there are situations in which the linear
progression of our proposed maturity model is not practical due to
many political, organizational, and financial factors. As a result, we
suspect that some agencies would not use the Maturity Model in its
entirety and may need to tailor it to meet their specific needs. For
example, depending on their missions, agencies may focus more or
less on data transparency, open participation, and open collaboration
and adjust the Model to support their focus. Future research needs to
examine how government agencies can manage this tension and cus-
tomize the Maturity Model to specific conditions. Another important
question to address in future research is how open government
capabilities identified in this research are dependent on one another.
Furthermore, open government metrics are currently under-
developed. Future research needs to develop reliable and valid metrics
to measure and demonstrate the return on investment in open govern-
ment. We hope that our model serves as an initial step to engage
researchers and practitioners in on-going conversation on open govern-
ment maturity models.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by IBM Center for the Business of Govern-
ment and Center for IT and the Global Economy at Kogod School of
Business in American University, Washington DC.
References
Andersen, K. V., & Henriksen, H. Z. (2006). E-government maturity models:
Extension of the Layne and Lee model. Government Information Quarterly, 23,
236–248.
Bertot, J. C., Jaeger, P. T., & Grimes, J. M. (2010). Using ICTs to create a culture of
transparency: E-government and social media as openness and anti-corruption
tools for societies. Government Information Quarterly, 27, 264–271.
Bertot, J. C., Jaeger, P. T., & Hansen, D. (2012). The impact of polices on government
social media usage: Issues, challenges, and recommendations. Government Information
Quarterly, 29, 30–40.
Bonabeau, E. (2009). Decisions 2.0: The power of collective intelligence. MIT Sloan
Management Review, 50(2), 45–52.
Bovaird, T. (2007). Beyond engagement and participation: User and community
coproduction of public services. Public Administration Review, 67(5), 846–860.
Chun, S. A., Shulman, S., Sandoval, R., & Hovy, E. (2010). Government 2.0: Making
connections between citizens, data and government. Information Polity, 15(1/2),
1–9.
Coglianese, C. (2006). Citizen participation in rulemaking: Past, present, and future.
Duke Law Journal, 55(5), 943–968.
DAMA_International (2010). The DAMA guide to the data management body of knowledge:
Technics Publications.
Dawes, S. S. (2010). Stewardship and usefulness: Policy principles for information-based
transparency. Government Information Quarterly, 27(4), 377–383.
Di Maio, A. (2010). Gartner group government maturity model. : Gartner Group.
Executive Office of the President (2009). Office of Management and Budget. Open
Government Directive.
French, P. E. (2011). Enhancing the legitimacy of local government pandemic influenza
planning through transparency and public engagement. Public Administration
Review, 71(2), 253–264.
Geller, J., Chun, S. A., & An, Y. J. (2008). Toward the semantic deep web. IEEE Computer,
41(9), 95–97.
General Services Administration (2009). GSA Social Media Policy. Retrieved from
http://www.gsa.gov/graphics/staffoffices/socialmediapolicy.pdf
Godwin, B., Campbell, S., Levy, J., & Bounds, J. (2008). Social media and the federal
government: Perceived and real barriers and potential solutions: Federal Web
Managers Council.
Gottschalk, P. (2009). Maturity levels for interoperability in digital government.
Government Information Quarterly, 26, 75–81.
Government Accountability Office (2010). Challenges In Federal Agencies' Use of Web 2.0
Technologies. : U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Hilbert, M. (2009). The maturing concept of E-democracy: From E-voting and online
consultations to democratic value out of jumbled online chatter. Journal of Information
Technology & Politics, 6(2), 87–110.
Howe, J. (2008). Crowdsourcing: Why the power of the crowd is driving the future of
business. : Random House.
Jaeger, P. T., & Bertot, J. C. (2010). Transparency and technological change: Ensuring
equal and sustained public access to government information. Government Information
Quarterly, 27, 371–376.
Klievink, B., & Janssen, M. (2009). Realizing joined-up government—Dynamic capabil-
ities and stage models for transformation. Government Information Quarterly, 26,
275–284.
Kotler, P., Kartajaya, H., & Setiawan, I. (2010). Marketing 3.0: From products to customers
to the human spirit. : Wiley.
Lathrop, D., & Ruma, L. (2010). Open government: Collaboration, transparency, and
participation in practice. : O'Reilly Media.
Layne, K., & Lee, J. (2001). Developing fully functional e-government: A four stage
model. Government Information Quarterly, 18, 122–136.
Luna-Reyes, L. F., Zhang, J., Gil-García, J. R., & Cresswell, A. M. (2005). Information
systems development as emergent socio-technical vhange: A practice approach.
European Journal of Information Systems, 14, 93–105.
McDermott, P. (2010). Building open government. Government Information Quarterly,
27, 401–413.
Meijer, A., & Thaens, M. (2009). Public information strategies: Making government
information available to citizens. Information Polity, 14(1/2), 31–45.
Napoli, P. M., & Karaganis, J. (2010). On making public policy with publicly available
data: The case of U.S. communications policymaking. Government Information
Quarterly, 27, 384–391.
Noveck, B. S. (2009). Wiki government: How technology can make government better,
democracy stronger, and citizens more powerful. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution
Press.
Pardo, T. A., & Tayi, G. K. (2007). Interorganizational information integration: A key
enabler for digital government. Government Information Quarterly, 24, 691–715.
 G. Lee, Y.H. Kwak / Government Information Quarterly 29 (2012) 492–503
Sæbø, Ø., Rose, J., & Flak, L. S. (2008). The shape of eParticipation: Characterizing an
emerging researcharea. Government Information Quarterly, 25(3), 400–428.
Shareef, M. A., Kumar, V., Kumar, U., & Dwivedi, Y. K. (2011). e-Government Adoption Model
(GAM): Differing service maturity levels. Government Information Quarterly, 28, 17–35.
Shim, D. C., & Eom, T. H. (2009). Anticorruption effects of information and communica-
tion technology (ICT) and social capital. International Review of Administrative Sci-
ences, 75, 99–116.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures
for developing grounded theory. London, U.K.: Thousand Oaks.
The White House (2009). Memorandum for the heads of executive departments and
agencies: Transparency and open government.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2010). HHS open government plan. The
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Valdés, G., Solar, M., Astudillo, H., Iribarren, M., Concha, G., & Visconti, M. (2011).
Conception, development and implementation of an e-government maturity
model in public agencies. Government Information Quarterly, 28, 176–187.
Gwanhoo Lee is an Associate Professor of Information Technology Management in the
Kogod School of Business at the American University, Washington, D.C. He is also the
Director of the Center for IT and the Global Economy (CITGE). His research areas in-
clude social media and Web 2.0, IT-enabled open collaboration, software development
503
management, project management, and technology adoption. His research has been
published in MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, European
Journal of Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, Information & Management,
Information Technology and People, IEEE Pervasive Computing, and Journal of Information
Technology Management. He earned his doctorate in management information systems
from the University of Minnesota.
Young Hoon Kwak is an Associate Professor of Project Management in the Department
of Decision Sciences at The George Washington University School of Business in
Washington, D.C. His primary research interests include strategic issues of project
management, management of technology, and infrastructure project management. His
scholarly works appear in California Management Review, IEEE Transactions on Engineering
Management, IEEE Engineering Management Review, Technovation: The International
Journal of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Technology Management, Interna-
tional Journal of Project Management, Project Management Journal, International Journal of
Managing Projects in Business, Risk Management: An International Journal, Journal of
Construction Engineering and Management, Journal of Management in Engineering, Journal
of Computing in Civil Engineering, Korean Management Review, and other research outlets.
He earned his M.S. and Ph.D. in Engineering and Project Management from the University
of California at Berkeley.