A 2010 report by the Transparency and Accountability Initiative argued that in countries where data was open and useable for change, three tiers of society had been engaged:

An influential and active civil society provided the ‘bottom up’ pressure for change through traditional advocacy and by setting up innovative websites demonstrating how open information could be used. Civil servants and state and federal administrators who saw open data as a way of improving efficiency provided the ‘middle layer’. Finally, high-level political leaders including Heads of States and Ministers provided the third layer."

In India, the millions of RTI requests that have been filed in the last decade serve as strong evidence of “bottom up” pressure for transparency in Indian society. In their BCURE training activities and other collaborations with government ministries, EPoD researchers have seen among the “middle layer” a broad recognition of the value of open data, or at least a willingness to learn.

It remains up to that top layer to invest in data infrastructure needed for government to be actively transparent. This is not cheap. But like physical infrastructure – roads, power grids, water systems – improvements may pay for themselves through efficiency gains in the long run, and will confer benefits on the population in the meantime.