The purpose of this paper is to examine the main factors influencing government openness, develop a global government openness index (GGOI) for assessing the progress of government openness and investigate how the factors contribute to the advancement of open government by individual countries and country groups by income.,This study identifies the four factors and adopts them into four variables for making GGOI: accountability (ACC), citizen participation and freedom (CPF), transparency (TRA) and information and communication technology (ICT). To calculate GGOI, panel data for 134 countries from 2006 to 2015 were used.,GGOI scores constantly improved with an annual growth rate of 2.09 percent. Countries with high ACC values tend to have high TRA scores, resulting in high GGOI scores. While the differences in ACC and TRA were steady over the period, ICT increased the most in all groups. To boost ICT performance as a channel to support other variables, middle-income countries should make further effort for citizens to use ICT capabilities toward enhancing the levels of CPF and TRA.,This study presents a global picture of the advancement of open government and provides insights into specific areas that can be diagonalized.,The GGOI could be used as a useful assessment tool to measure the progress of government openness in countries and implement policies and action plans for improving government openness.,The GGOI covers the areas related to legal, administrative, participatory and technological factors and provides the factors’ inter-relationships for the composition of GGOI.

中文翻译：

---

衡量开放政府进程的因素及其关系

本文旨在研究影响政府开放度的主要因素，建立全球政府开放度指数（GGOI）来评估政府开放度的进展，并研究这些因素如何对各个国家和国家集团促进开放政府的发展做出贡献。这项研究确定了这四个因素，并将它们纳入了制定GGOI的四个变量：问责制（ACC），公民参与和自由（CPF），透明度（TRA）以及信息和通信技术（ICT）。为了计算GGOI，我们使用了2006年至2015年的134个国家的面板数据。GGOI分数以每年2.09％的增长率不断提高。ACC值较高的国家/地区的TRA分数往往较高，因此GGOI分数较高。在此期间，虽然ACC和TRA的差异保持稳定，但ICT在所有组中的增幅最大。为了提高ICT的绩效作为支持其他变量的渠道，中等收入国家应该进一步努力，使公民利用ICT的能力来提高CPF和TRA的水平。对特定领域的见解可能会被对角线化。GGOI可以用作衡量各国政府开放程度的有效工具，并可以执行旨在改善政府开放度的政策和行动计划。GGOI涵盖与法律，行政，参与和技术因素，并为GGOI的构成提供因素之间的相互关系。