1. Abstract: Opening Energy Dialogues withOpen Data in the UK
As energy infrastructure development, climate change and energy affordability all
collide in an energy trilemma (World Energy Council, 2016) across the globe, it is
important to understand how citizens are engaged in the process of energy
knowledge and debate in the democratic processes addressing the trilemma in part
or in whole. Open government data (OGD) programs were developed in recent
years, in part, to enhance public information for participation in democratic
processes, like discussions on energy issues. This research provides insight into
knowledge creation from OGD as a first step in examining the relationship between
data and democratic decision-making.
The research utilized interviews and a focus group of a range of actors in the open
data community to examine the role that citizens have in the creation of energy
knowledge in the United Kingdom. The research located and examined situated
knowledge, or knowledge from local perspectives/experiences, within the context of
energy. The study examined how energy-related OGD is utilized by citizens in maps
and other online projects and how these are utilized and accepted. Issues of
technical skills and imagined affordances of OGD impact the use citizens make of
data and the challenges they face in using OGD and sustaining their work.
The barrier of effective use of open data can be overcome through collaboration of
actors of differentiated skills, i.e. an open data ‘ecosystem’. The implication of this
work is that growing the ecosystem can improve data objectivity, through situated
knowledge, citizen engagement with energy issues and, potentially, the legitimacy of
decisions made based on more objective data. This conclusion provides direction for
shaping thinking around engagement programs and policies around collection and
use of data itself, which is the base for democratic decision-making and processes.