Identifying Informational Needs for Open Government: The Case of Egypt

The success of open government initiatives depends on understanding the informational needs of the concerned citizens and other stakeholders as prerequisite for open access to relevant data and information. However, it has not been studied yet how such informational needs can or should be identified to build a common ground between the people and their governments. This paper focuses on the case of Egypt where social media have played a major role in the recent political transformation and where the call for government transparency is high on the political agenda. After describing the current practice of disseminating government information, the result of focus groups and interviews are presented regarding future informational needs, appropriate methods for requirements analysis, and transformation into technical and organizational support. Findings show that citizens and government in Egypt agree on basic principles of information sharing and that both sides are largely comfortable with using social media for information and opinion sharing. However, findings also reveal a significant demand for guidance and support in understanding the data and information provided, underlining the need for a continuous reflection of the actual citizen context as to support the information sharing within any open government initiative.