From a Civic‐Tech to a Problem‐Centered Approach to Open Government Data: Implementation of Environmental Justice Dashboards

ABSTRACT This research investigates the configurations of openness and policy conditions influencing the implementation of environmental justice (EJ) open government data (OGD) dashboards across U.S. states. EJ dashboards represent a shift from a civic‐tech approach to OGD, which emphasizes the public release of vast amounts of data, to a problem‐centered approach where government agencies release and curate selected data to address a policy‐specific issue. Because of their differences, problem‐centered OGD initiatives require distinct organizational structures and processes to facilitate both data release (openness conditions) and the representation of the problem of interest (policy conditions). Using fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis, this research shows that the implementation of EJ‐OGD dashboards responds to either a supply–demand model or a government‐driven model. Lack of implementation results from low institutionalization of problem solving or complacency toward EJ issues. Overall, EJ‐OGD implementation is supported by an operationalizable problem definition and/or a dedicated administrative structure leading and informing policy‐specific data provision.