What open data does to local governance

The development of open data and smart city initiatives in many metropolitan areas highlights the application of the principles of informational liberalism on an urban scale. Based on an ethnographic study in the Lyon metropolis, this article investigates what the circulation of data does to local governance. The author puts forward three hypotheses: Open data policies categorize data independently of the attachments that constitute them.
This categorization of data as a free and autonomous entity makes it governable and makes it possible to envisage its governance beyond the administrative and sectoral organization of public policy.
However, the constituent attachments of the data impede the implementation of this cross-sectoral governance.
Rather than a metropolitan data policy, plural data policies should be envisaged.