Open AccessChallenges and Opportunities for Collecting and Sharing Data on Water Governance Institutions
Author(s) -
Gallaher Samuel,
Heikkila Tanya
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of contemporary water research and education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1936-704X
pISSN - 1936-7031
DOI - 10.1111/j.1936-704x.2014.03181.x
Subject(s) - corporate governance , resource (disambiguation) , business , data governance , sample (material) , data sharing , data collection , usability , work (physics) , shared resource , public relations , political science , computer science , marketing , sociology , finance , engineering , computer security , data quality , social science , alternative medicine , computer network , metric (unit) , chemistry , pathology , chromatography , medicine , mechanical engineering , human–computer interaction
This article explores the usability and availability of data needed for investigating the interplay between institutional arrangements (i.e. rules, regulations, policy, compacts, laws) and water resource outcomes. It examines a sample of 33 water governance and water research organizations’ websites for publicly available datasets containing linked information on institutions and water resource conditions or outcomes. While scholars and decision‐makers alike have identified institutional arrangements as an important aspect of improving water governance, their calls for enhancing publicly available institutional data remain unanswered. Within our sample of websites, few datasets link institutions and water resource conditions or outcomes and those that do limit the institutional data to jurisdictional boundaries. More in‐depth and diverse institutional data are required to understand which governance tools and structures do and do not work in varying contexts. This will require funding of strategically located, place‐based data collection efforts, more transparent and replicable data collection instruments, and coding and storage of institutional data for enhanced data integration.