Towards a more refined understanding of open government: analyzing recent studies and suggesting ideas for future research

Open government is complex and multifaceted. Governments and civil society organizations around the world are working to create more open governments through investments in the constitutive or core components of open government – namely, transparency, public participation, and information technology. The potential results of such open government investments include increasing accountability, trust, legitimacy, and government performance. Creating a more open government relies on the ability to continuously refine our understanding of the complicated relationships among the core components of open government, its potential results, and how context has influenced those relationships. Recently, open government scholars have attempted to disentangle the core components and results of open government, and several frameworks have been proposed. In this concluding chapter, we use Gil-Garcia et al.'s (2023) Integrative Framework of Open Government to highlight the important aspects of open government to refine our understanding and inform the development of a more integrative open government research agenda.