If you care about transparency, these are interesting times. WikiLeaks may have faded from the headlines, but growing numbers of people accept the notion that information collected by and about the government should be online, searchable, and mashable.

At least 16 nations have major open data initiatives; in many more, pressure is building for them to follow suit. The US has posted nearly 400,000 data sets at Data.gov, and organizations like the Sunlight Foundation and MAPlight.org are finding compelling ways to use public data—like linking political contributions to political actions. It’s the kind of thing that seems to prove Louis Brandeis’ famous comment: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.” But transparency alone is not a panacea, and it may even have a few nasty side effects. Take the case of the Bhoomi Project, an ambitious effort by the southern Indian state of Karnataka to digitize some 20 million land titles, making them more accessible. It was supposed to be a shining example of e-governance: open data that would benefit everyone and bring new efficiencies to the world’s largest democracy. Instead, the portal proved a boon to corporations and the wealthy, who hired lawyers and predatory land agents to challenge titles, hunt for errors in documentation, exploit gaps in records, identify targets for bribery, and snap up property. An initiative that was intended to level the playing field for small landholders ended up penalizing them; bribery costs and processing time actually increased.

A level playing field doesn’t mean much if you don’t know the rules or have the right sporting equipment. Uploading a million documents to the Internet doesn’t help people who don’t know how to sift through them. Michael Gurstein, a community informatics expert in Vancouver, British Columbia, has dubbed this problem the data divide. Indeed, a recent study on the use of open government data in Great Britain points out that most of the people using the information are already data sophisticates. The less sophisticated often don’t even know it’s there.

Data divides have consequences. Consider the recent adventures in the financial markets: The quants on Wall Street applied their savvy to manipulate theoretically open data for personal gain. Or look at the catastrophic effects of bundling unacceptable real estate risk into something that, to the less data-savvy, appeared to be financially sound mutual funds. The reality of these data divides is that information is anything but transparent to the majority of people—even if it’s technically available.

India also passed a Right to Information Act in 2005, requiring governments and agencies to digitize many records and respond quickly to any citizen’s request for information. It has the potential to shine light on pervasive inefficiencies and rampant corruption. But so far it’s helped only the middle class, not the massive underclass, which remains at risk of intimidation and violence. (Far from being encouraged to use open data, many have been murdered for doing so. The Guardian calls people silenced in this manner “Right to Information martyrs.”)

The concern that open data may simply empower the empowered is not an argument against open data; it’s an argument against looking at open data as an end in itself. Massive data dumps and even friendly online government portals are insufficient. Ordinary people need to know what information is available, and they need the training to be conversant in it. And if people are to have anything more than theoretical access to the information, it needs to be easy and cheap to use. That means investing in the kinds of organizations doing outreach, advocacy, and education in the communities least familiar with the benefits of data transparency. If we want truly open government, we still have to do the hard work of addressing basic and stubborn inequalities. However freely it flows, the data alone isn’t enough.

Jesse Lichtenstein (10.7.12gh@gmail .com) wrote about the aerospace industry on the Isle of Man in issue 19.05.