Civil society and governments around the world have recognized the potential developmental benefits that data released in open format could bring to the Global South. This open data, released in digital format, publicly available for anyone to use—promise to contribute to global development goals, such as economic growth, job creation, social and economic inclusion, and access to public services such as healthcare. Although emergent, there is growing evidence that in the right circumstances, open data could contribute to these goals (see Verhulst and Young 2016, as well as chapter 10 in this volume).

Despite the potential, there is also a body of literature suggesting that most open data initiatives are not having the desired impact, particularly in the Global South, for a variety of reasons. These include poor-quality or incomplete data, data in hard-to-use formats, and a mismatch between the data that are published and the data that are actually needed (World Wide Web Foundation 2017). Thus, it is becoming paramount to understand how to improve the connection between making the data available, sharing it, and fostering the actual uptake of open data to solve developmental problems. Recent evidence has shown that the governance relationship is an important factor in this equation. For example, in a review of twenty-three digital monitoring platforms of public services, Peixoto and Fox (2016) show that the existence of institutional arrangements increases the use and responsiveness of these initiatives. While valuable, these studies show broad patterns of the overall picture. In this chapter, we aim to delve into these patterns in detail.