Why the wealthiest countries are also the most open with their data

That does not sit well with me. I'm from Canada and have spent a decade making use of gov't data and while Canada does open up a bunch of it, 90% of what they open is benign. The important data, or rather the data which would expose problems, is kept from the public.

These wealthy countries also have other ways to hide even the open data from prying eyes, they simply charge high prices for the data. This easily prevents the general public, who would use the data more critically, from actually using the data.

P.S. I was interrupted by a phone call. The other point I wanted to make, building off of the above, is that humans have created more and more complex results through cooperation than competition alone. I view cooperation as an essential part of modern society and progress.

This is an open data metric conceived by the creators of Sim City. What's important is what data they have, not what data a primitive city-state might have. And the resultant list is a complete farce: the UK and US is at the top next to Denmark. Russia has a score in openness about government spending that is 7-fold higher than Norway.

I can see various initiatives they have undertaken that would get them moving in the right direction such as joining the Open Development Technology Alliance (ODTA) - but I can't figure out the underlying reasons for success.