During the last decade, a new approach to bureaucratic reform in the field of public administration, open government, has aimed to increase government transparency and accountability and improve participation of citizens and other stakeholders of government. In the current era of digital governance transformations, evaluating governmental efforts to become open is a central concern of politicians, policymakers, and researchers. Various global maturity models have been developed, but the majority of them focus on the technological capacities of government rather than the historic affinity of openness and democratic governance. In this study, we attempt to address this problem by conceptualizing how governments harness technology innovations and by prescribing developmental phases for open government. Using the qualitative meta-synthesis method, we compare 10 open government maturity models to find the similarities and differences between them. Finally, we present a comprehensive model which evaluates the open government initiatives holistically and includes the following six major stages: (1) an initial stage; (2) a transparency and accountability stage; (3) an open collaboration stage; (4) a platform stage; (5) a democratic open government stage; and, finally, (6) an open governance stage.
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