The role of open data in fighting land corruption

The rapid progress in digital information and communication technologies  (ICTs) comes with both fresh opportunities and new challenges for different sectors and actors adopting the new solutions that become available over time. Since the mid-2000s, the global land governance community has piloted a series of open data and transparency initiatives largely based on such digital innovations, aiming at increasing accountability and counteracting corruption in the land sector, both at the local and global level. By combining a  desk-based review of the existing literature and data with a series of semi-structured interviews with a panel of sectoral experts, this study takes stock of more than a decade of interventions pioneering the use of open data to curb land corruption, and explores their impact, their achievements, the existing barriers and limitations, as well as potential ways to overcome them.