About this subject
Global 'Dead-End' Government Data Portal Link Ratio
This page tracks the dead-end link ratio—a measure of how many government open-data portals contain broken or outdated links. The ratio (0–1) quantifies systemic neglect in digital infrastructure by exposing how often public resources become inaccessible over time. No existing dataset currently monitors this decay across jurisdictions, making this a critical blind spot in transparency reporting.
The data is collected by automated crawlers scanning portal domains for HTTP 404 errors, redirects to unrelated pages, or links to archived content. Each portal is assessed at a single point in time, with results aggregated to show regional and global trends. The metric highlights the fragility of digital public services and the need for better maintenance in government data ecosystems.