Most research in research areas like e-government, e-participation and open government assumes a democratic norm. The open government (OG) concept is commonly based on a general liberal and deliberative ideology emphasising transparency, access, participation and collaboration, but also innovation and accountability are promoted. In this paper, we outline a terminology and suggest a method for how to investigate the concept more systematically in different policy documents, with a special emphasis on post-soviet countries. The result shows that the main focus in this regions OG policy documents is on freedom of information and accountability, and to a lesser extent on collaboration, while other aspects, such as diversity and innovation, are more rarely mentioned, if at all.